David Remnick: These past couple of weeks, I've encountered an age-old dilemma when it comes to the arts. Just recently, I went to a stunning, a stunning performance at the Metropolitan Opera of Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. For five hours, I was transported by the music and the singing, and yet all the while, I realized that the composer, Wagner, was a terrible antisemite, a favorite of Adolf Hitler's. The production, ironically enough, was by Yuval Sharon, an innovator in modern opera and a Jew.

Around the same time, I attended a performance of Giant, Mark Rosenblatt's new play about the life, loves, and repugnant politics of Roald Dahl. You leave the theater thinking yet again: how is it possible for such a complicated and often hateful man to produce works of literature that are invariably described as beloved? How is it possible that the same imagination, the same person that conceived James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, could also give an interview in which he said, "Even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason."

The play Giant dramatizes the scandal that erupted after Roald Dahl had written a profoundly antisemitic article in 1983. The play premiered in London in 2024, and it opens now on Broadway with the great actor John Lithgow playing Roald Dahl. Dahl faces off against his American publisher, who would like him to retract those antisemitic remarks. The events took place some 40 years ago, but they couldn't be more relevant today. I spoke with John Lithgow this past week.

You've played so many roles over time. The Roald Dahl that's on stage, that's in this play, a really beautifully crafted play, is not the portrait of a good man. I wanted to ask, what's been your experience of playing people who are not just complicated, but arguably in their sum are nasty pieces of work?

John Lithgow: I've done a lot of that. I'm a character actor, so people seek me out to play kind of unusual characters, and half the time, unusual means wretched in different ways.

David Remnick: Do you relish that?

John Lithgow: Yes, just because I relish complication.

David Remnick: Who are the wretches you've played?

John Lithgow: Oh, gosh. I've done three Brian De Palma villains. I played the Trinity Killer on Dexter. I've played an awful lot of hypocrites and kind of devious scoundrels. They just come to me for these roles because I'm ready to play them.

David Remnick: Tell me, when you first read this play, and you're maybe doing some background reading as well on Roald Dahl, what did you make of his life? How do you prepare yourself to play a person who, at the center of the play, is his really wretched antisemitism?

John Lithgow: Biographical information was very valuable, finding out all about him when he was little. To me, that's a terrific way in. He grew up a sort of outsider Englishman who wanted in. At prep school, he was badly beaten as kids were, and he suffered some appalling setbacks in his life. Among them, his plane crash, his solo plane crash when he was an RAF pilot in Libya. By all rights, he should have been killed by it. He was smashed to bits alone on a Libyan desert and somehow survived. His whole life, he lived in pain. Six laminectomies.

David Remnick: Wow.

John Lithgow: His four-month-old son, Theo, was in his pram and hit by a taxi cab in New York and grew up with severe brain damages. His daughter, whom he completely adored, caught this variant of measles and died like that. I compiled his losses.

David Remnick: That's an interesting word. You "compiled" his losses. What does that mean?

John Lithgow: In just putting together this person. Everything about doing this play was figuring out what motivated him.

David Remnick: Now, the play centers on a moment in time in 1983. Dahl is at home. He is in a kind of what seems to be a country house that's going through a construction. He's with his girlfriend-

John Lithgow: Fiancée.

David Remnick: -soon-to-be wife, with whom he had a long affair. He's taken time out to write a book review about the Israeli-Lebanon War, which was brutal. Obviously, the issue was the PLO and the Israelis trying to chase the PLO out of Lebanon. It's a long and horrific story. He's written a book review that anyone's ears would read as not just critical of Israeli policy, but antisemitic. Am I getting it right?

John Lithgow: Yes. Well, explicitly critical of Israel, but his antisemitism is obvious, like a leaky car battery. It's just in between the lines, and in some cases, just explicit.

David Remnick: As I understand from Jeremy Treglown's biography of Roald Dahl, that his version that he sent to the magazine, the British magazine, used the word Jew more than Israeli. In order to cover for Dahl a little bit, the editors changed it to Israeli to make it less, as it were, centered on the ethnicity and on Jews than on Israeli policy, but even that didn't do the job.

John Lithgow: No, he betrayed his antisemitism.

David Remnick: Where did that come from?

John Lithgow: Who knows where antisemitism or any bigotry comes from. In playing the role, I just looked for the damage. To me, a person who suffered injury or carries demons, it just manifests itself in hatred of the other.

David Remnick: In a sense, what you're looking for is to be at once accurate and sympathetic in the deepest human sense.

John Lithgow: I guess "empathetic" is a better word. Just simply trying to understand. I think the play would be unwatchable if there weren't those moments where you saw pain in Dahl.

David Remnick: Because it would be too simplistic.

John Lithgow: It would be just hard to watch. Surely it's there, he did feel terrible grief about the loss of Olivia. He cared for his son, Theo. In fact, even invented a little shunt that could drain the fluid from his brain at this child. He was just obsessively caring. Now, to me, that extraordinary duality is just very compelling. When you're creating drama, that's what you look for: these contradictions.

David Remnick: One of the aspects of this that maybe you couldn't have anticipated is that the run in London took place against the background of October 7th. It's not as if the political atmosphere has gotten any less fraught where the Middle East or antisemitism is concerned now that you're in New York. Can you feel that in the room?

John Lithgow: Oh, gosh, yes. History has caught up with us in waves. When we were rehearsing a play set in 1983, but all about the events of 1982 in Beirut, that was a major incursion into Beirut once again by Israel. Here we are in the spring of 2026, doing the play for Broadway, and the same thing happened. Yet another major incursion into Lebanon. There are lines in the play where you can almost hear the audience gasp. They are so applicable to the present moment, even though they're about the year 1982. There are some lines I could but will not quote, but you'll know them, you've seen the play, where I say them out loud, and I can just hear. [gasps]

David Remnick: Tell me one.

John Lithgow: There's the very famous line that Dahl specifically told to Mike Coren of the New Statesman. "Even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason."

David Remnick: I think it's at that point that people in the audience who didn't really know this about Dahl couldn't escape it.

John Lithgow: Yes. The charge of antisemitism hangs in the air like bad weather all through the play. That's the moment when there's a gigantic clap of thunder, and everybody knows, "Oh, my God, he--" It's verbatim what he did say to Mike Coren. Mike Coren was at our opening night last night. [laughs]

David Remnick: There's an ancillary subject that comes along with this play is wonderful art created by people who are not so nice. We read Céline still. He was a Nazi or a fascist sympathizer. The list is unfortunately very, very long. In recent years, Dahl's books themselves have been edited to remove offensive things about characters, race, their weight, their gender. Do you agree with that?

John Lithgow: No, no, I don't, and neither do a lot of very important voices in the literary world and other worlds. In fact, they now publish two parallel versions of Roald Dahl. You can buy either the bowdlerized or the original.

David Remnick: I think it's kind of crazy.

John Lithgow: It's completely nuts. The other choice is don't read what Roald Dahl wrote. No, you don't have to read, write it.

David Remnick: I suppose you'd have the same problem with Huckleberry Finn.

John Lithgow: Yes, exactly. When you think about how compulsive and almost anal Dahl was about the placement of commas and things.

David Remnick: There's a famous letter [laughs] that I came across in our archives, in the New Yorker archives, where he is so angry at the copy editors for excessive commas, because we use what's called the Oxford comma on the [unintelligible 00:11:44]. He says, "You have sprinkled commas about all over the pages as though you were putting raisins in a plum pudding." [laughs] God damn it. Not for me. He was furious. It was a funny letter, but filled with rage.

John Lithgow: Dahl can appall you, but you have to respect the fact that he took all of that fiercely seriously. Just the fact that he has died doesn't mean you can mess around with his writing. All you can do is not buy it and not read it to your children.

David Remnick: I sometimes watch you play these scoundrels or outsized figures, and you can feel the relish going on. You've played Roger Ailes, the great sexual harasser and Fox chief, Bill Clinton, Winston Churchill. Let's listen to a clip of you as Churchill in The Crown.

Winston Churchill: I look at you now, and I realize that the time is fast approaching for me to step down. Not because I'm unwell or unfit for office, but because you are ready. Therefore, I have discharged my duty to your father.

David Remnick: That's an actor having a great time. [laughs]

John Lithgow: Oh, I don't remember any of that. [laughs]

David Remnick: Really? Why would that be?

John Lithgow: It comes back to me, and it's wonderful to listen to, although I think my dialect is a little better now than it was then.

David Remnick: Really?

John Lithgow: Yes, I can be critical. [laughs]

David Remnick: Of yourself?

John Lithgow: Yes.

David Remnick: Do you not like watching your old stuff?

John Lithgow: Well, I'm selective. Curiously, the more acted it is, the more comfortable I am watching it. [laughs]

David Remnick: For example, what would that be?

John Lithgow: I certainly love watching the Churchill episodes. I just think they're so beautifully done in every way. The fact that I fit in with a bunch of English actors is a matter of great pride on my part. I love watching myself in 3rd Rock from the Sun, which is the most over-the-top, kind of disgracefully overdone comedy, but I just think it's hilarious. Somehow, the further afield I go, the more comfortable I am watching myself.

David Remnick: Let's play a clip from 3rd Rock from the Sun. You won three Emmys and a Golden Globe for that. Let's just hear you in 3rd Rock from the Sun.

[laughter]

Actress 1: Dick, what are you doing?

Dick: I'm just working on my computer.

[laughter]

Actor 1: It's not even on.

Dick: Yes, it is.

Actress 1: No, it's not.

Dick: It's just warming up.

[laughter]

Actor 1: You don't know how to use a computer.

[laughter]

Dick: Shut up.

Actor 1: Well, he has no idea.

[laughter]

Dick: I am a superior being. I came to Earth on a spaceship that could fit in my pants.

[laughter]

Dick: What am I supposed to do with technology so backwards it can't even read your thought waves?

John Lithgow: [laughs] Now that, I don't remember a single phrase of that.

David Remnick: Really?

John Lithgow: I don't even remember the scene. That's partly why I still love watching it. [laughs]

David Remnick: Does this stuff all go out of your head? Can you remember being in World According to Garp, or [crosstalk]?

John Lithgow: Oh, yes, I remember, but not the specifics of it. I did 138 episodes of 3rd Rock from the Sun, and I remember about 20 of them very vividly. I think I remember them all, but then they show up, and it's like, "I don't remember doing any of this."

David Remnick: Is it easier to be on a sitcom than it is to be in a two-and-a-half-hour play where the mood is anything but jovial at all moments?

John Lithgow: On a very basic level, it's exactly the same process. Just all the logistics are very different. It was a glorious, fun six years doing that show. I led a very normal life. I worked from 10:00 until 4:00, except on Tuesdays when we performed the show at night. I was working hand-in-glove with this incredible team of a dozen-plus comedy writers and with this effortless ensemble of comic actors, most of them from the stage, and we had a live audience. It's like preparing a summer stock show in the course of five days and then, bam, putting it in front of the audience and listening to them laugh their heads off.

David Remnick: Sounds like a gas.

John Lithgow: It was great, and it was also very untaxing. Every two weeks, we would have a week off for the writers to catch up, and I was home to literally cook supper for the kids at night.

David Remnick: I would imagine making a living as opposed to a play that may or may not launch.

John Lithgow: Yes. You have to sort of ignore the whole fact of money if you want to really pursue what you want to do as an actor.

David Remnick: Do you?

John Lithgow: When I did the Giant at the Royal Court Theatre, it basically cost me about $10,000, but I wanted to do that more than anything else.

David Remnick: How did it cost you $10,000? What do you mean?

John Lithgow: They pay you like equity minimum, which is a lot less in London than it is in New York. London is an expensive place to live.

David Remnick: Even though you're eventually filling sizable theatres?

John Lithgow: It's like buying futures.

[laughter]

John Lithgow: Whatever happened with Giant, I wanted to do that play, and I didn't want anybody else to do it.

[MUSIC - Serge Devant: Addicted]

David Remnick: I'm speaking with the actor John Lithgow, who plays Roald Dahl in a new play called Giant. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, and we'll continue in just a moment.

[MUSIC - Serge Devant: Addicted]

David Remnick: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I'm speaking today with the actor John Lithgow. Lithgow's been one of the most respected and most successful actors working for a very long time. He won a Tony Award for his Broadway debut more than 50 years ago. At the age of 80, he seems busier than ever and better than ever.

I just saw him on Broadway playing the role of the writer Roald Dahl in Mark Rosenblatt's play Giant. It deals with the scandal around Roald Dahl's antisemitism. Lithgow will also have a major role in HBO's Harry Potter series as the wizard Dumbledore. Although Lithgow has said that he has some reservations about working on a series by J.K. Rowling, whose views on trans identity have caused a great deal of criticism among many readers.

John Lithgow: I tend to think of this as the last Broadway show I will do, just because I am 80. I signed on to play Dumbledore in the HBO Harry Potter.

David Remnick: Which could go on for years.

John Lithgow: That will go on for years, and it's very hard to think about doing a play in between seasons because a play is a good four or five months minimum if you want to do it right.

David Remnick: The stars are in line.

John Lithgow: You have to have the energy to do that, and you have to have the time to do that, and my energy is dwindling. It's not as easy to learn lines [laughs]-

David Remnick: Is it now?

John Lithgow: -as it used to be. No, of course.

David Remnick: The last thing I want to do ever is to disappoint you. You just had an interview with The New York Times in which you said, with some, I don't know, kind of silent sigh in the background, that you're going to be asked in every interview for the rest of your career about J.K. Rowling, who obviously is the author of all the Harry Potter books, and her views on trans people, which I think to many ears can be as ugly as any prejudice around. At the same time, you both disagree with her, and you've chosen to take this on. Tell me a little bit about that.

John Lithgow: The great big large project of doing another version of Harry Potter is basically retelling wonderful stories that Rowling created, and they are very stirring stories. I think there's reasons why they've resonated with young people, and young people have grown up and are still obsessed with Harry Potter. Dumbledore is a wonderful role. Doing it in England with-- Half the crew worked on The Crown. There was everything attractive about the job, and job security into my late years. You don't ignore those issues. The whole subject of Rowling's imputed prejudice, it came up after everything was already underway. I'd already said yes, and it really would have been--

David Remnick: This was quite a while ago?

John Lithgow: It was quite a while ago. I was urged to walk away, and I was not about to do that.

David Remnick: I'm not judging at all, but tell me why you decided not to walk away if you [crosstalk].

John Lithgow: I just felt the reasons to do it were much, much stronger than the reasons to protest against what Rowling has done and said. I do disagree with much of it. Much of it, I think, has been twisted and misrepresented, and she has sort of doubled down on it at her own cause.

David Remnick: What surprises me with her sometimes is the ferocity and even, I have to say, cruelty in the tone with which she sometimes-- It's usually transmitted by Twitter or some form of social media.

John Lithgow: Yes, I'm surprised by it, too, and disappointed by it.

David Remnick: Did you meet her?

John Lithgow: I have not met her. The other positive on the Harry Potter project is the people who have taken it on themselves. Franchesca Gardner and Mark Milot are this extraordinary partnership who first worked together on Succession. Franchesca grew up adoring the Harry Potter canon, and she persuaded me. She was the big reason why I took it on. In many ways, it's a crazy thing to do.

David Remnick: Why is that?

John Lithgow: Because I will still be playing Dumbledore when I'm 88 years old if I last that long. It does rule out an awful lot else in my life, and it's a huge dislocation. My wife and I, we will now spend about two-thirds of every year in London.

David Remnick: Which you regret?

John Lithgow: It's difficult. I love London. I've worked there and studied there many, many times over the years, so I know it well.

David Remnick: Your kids are grown?

John Lithgow: My kids are grown, but we have grandkids, little grandkids and teenage grandkids, and it's hard to be away from them.

David Remnick: Did your kids like watching you in movies or on stage, or did they run away from it?

John Lithgow: I'm just curious. They don't talk about it much. [laughs] They would much rather I just be my major role, should be their father.

David Remnick: You get the sense that they would have preferred that you were a certified public accountant?

John Lithgow: No, no. I'm second-generation myself. You have a parent who's involved in the business of storytelling and fantasy, and parts of their brain are always somewhere else.

David Remnick: You can feel it when they were growing up, that tension between your brain being on them or your focus being on them?

John Lithgow: You would have to ask them, but I think it was hard for them on many occasions, and I was away a lot.

David Remnick: I remember somebody interviewing John Updike. I guess he was in his 70s at this point, and they asked him a very straightforward question. They said, "John, you've written 50, 60 books," whatever it was at that point. "What of it do you think will last? What is your assessment of what's the best of it?" I wonder if I asked you that question, could you answer it?

John Lithgow: I don't think any actor is much remembered after 20, 40 years. It broke my heart one day on the set of 3rd Rock from the Sun when we referred to Cary Grant-

David Remnick: Nobody knew.

John Lithgow: -and Joe Gordon-Levitt said, "Who's that?" It's like, "Wow."

David Remnick: Wow.

John Lithgow: [laughs] We write on water, which is all right. What I do, it's what I love, theater. Why I love theater primarily is because I'm telling the story at the very moment they're experiencing it, and that electrical connection is what's so exciting. That's what you're after. They say, "Movies go on forever." They don't. There's a sell-by date.

David Remnick: Oh God.

John Lithgow: There are the roles that I feel were mine and mine alone, like nobody else could touch me. Roberta Muldoon and Dick Solomon in 3rd Rock from the Sun, you can't imagine anybody else playing that role. I feel that way about Roald Dahl. It is a wonderful feeling to know I own this one. This is my role. It was almost invented for me. That's a great feeling. You're also kidding yourself-

[laughter]

John Lithgow: -when you brag about that to people.

David Remnick: Because you think 50 years from now, 25 years from now, somebody's going to play the very same role?

John Lithgow: Yes, somebody will do a revival, and it's fine. I completely accept that I will have long, long since passed my sell-by date.

David Remnick: John Lithgow, thank you so much.

John Lithgow: [laughs] Of course. It's great to talk to you, David.

[laughter]

[MUSIC - Serge Devant: Addicted]

David Remnick: The play Giant, starring John Lithgow, is on Broadway. You could read more about the play at newyorker.com, including a terrific piece by the drama critic John Lahr, who profiles the playwright. You can subscribe to The New Yorker there as well, newyorker.com.

[MUSIC - Serge Devant: Addicted]

 

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