Best Of: John Lithgow / Sondheim’s tumultuous life
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From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Dave Davies. Today, John Lithgow, veteran of hundreds of performances on stage, screen, and television. To play Winston Churchill in the series The Crown, he had an idea to help him nail the statesman's gravelly voice. He spooned pieces of apple with a melon baller and stuck them in the back of his cheeks for his first reading with the cast. And stuck them in the back and spoke.
And it was sensational, but my mouth immediately filled up with apple cider.
Lithgow is currently starring in the play Giant on Broadway. He plays the renowned children's author Roald Dahl, caught in a public controversy after he wrote an article laced with anti-Semitic statements. Also, we'll talk about Stephen Sondheim's life in music with Daniel Okrent, author of a new book, Stephen Sondheim, Art Isn't Easy. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Dave Davies. Our first guest today, John Lithgow, is an actor you can probably recall from a half dozen rolls off the top of your head. But the remarkable thing about his nearly 200 performances on stage, screen, and television is that at age 80, he's still going strong. You can see him playing an intelligence agent with Jeff Bridges in the FX action series The Old Man.
He plays the character Dumbledore in a new HBO Harry Potter series that premieres in December. And he's starring now on Broadway, doing eight performances a week in the play Giant, about a troubling side to renowned children's author Roald Dahl. Among Lithgow's many career honors are Oscar nominations for his roles in the film The World According to Garp and Terms of Endearment, and six Primetime Emmy Awards for playing Winston Churchill in The Crown, a serial killer in the series Dexter, and an alien visiting Earth in the sitcom Third Rock from the Sun. He's been nominated for six Tony Awards and won twice, including once for his very first appearance on Broadway. Lithgow has also written several children's books, a memoir titled Drama, an Actor's Education, and the Dumpty Trilogy, three books of satirical poems inspired by the current occupant of the White House.
Lithgow's current play, Giant, is set in 1983, when Roald Dahl ignited a controversy by writing an article with views that were widely seen as anti-Semitic. In the play, Dahl and his fiancée are at home in discussion with a British and an American representative of Dahl's publishers, who want him to say something to soften his message and diffuse the controversy. It soon emerges that the American rep is a practicing Jewish woman, and Dahl isn't backing down. The play was first performed in London, with Lithgow starring as Roald Dahl. He and the play won Lawrence Olivier Awards, the British equivalent of the Tony.
Who is John Lithgow and what is his current role?
John Lithgow, welcome to Fresh Air.
Thank you, Dave. I feel welcome.
You're playing Dahl who is kind of – it's oversimplistic to call him a villain here. But he's a very problematic character. Did you feel empathy for him and how did you connect with him?
Well, you look for ways you can empathize with every character. And if you're playing a scoundrel of any stripe, you just try to make it interesting. You try to figure out what made him that way. And Dahl is a man so famous for one thing and not known at all for this other thing, his kind of overbearing and sometimes cruel nature. I just found it fascinating, the different perceptions of him. And curiously, I have a good friend, the actress Maria Tucci, who is the widow of the editor Robert Gottlieb, who is the man who fired Roald Dahl from Alfred Knopf because he was just so insufferable and cruel to everybody he worked with there.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:25
2
Who is John Lithgow and what is his current role?
3:25–6:56
3
What controversy surrounds Roald Dahl in the play 'Giant'?
6:56–18:09
4
How does John Lithgow connect with the character Roald Dahl?
18:09–26:39
5
What is the significance of the play's setting in 1983?
26:39–36:25
6
How does the play address anti-Semitism and public perception?
36:25–49:08
Speakers
5 identifiedMore from Fresh Air
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