Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Do you ever wish you could predict the future? Well, some scientists try to do that every year, forecasting when cherry blossom trees will bloom each spring. It's a wild guess, but there is some science involved in it. And there is a lot riding on the peak bloom forecast. Tourism, climate change models, and more.
Listen to Shortwave on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts to hear how scientists are predicting the future. This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. Our guest today, John Lithgow, is an actor you can probably recall from a half dozen roles off the top of your head.
But the remarkable thing about his nearly 200 performances on stage, screen, and television is that 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. John Lithgow, welcome to Fresh Air.
Thank you, Dave. I feel welcome.
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Chapter 2: What roles is John Lithgow currently known for?
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. And I knew this about him before this even came up. This to me was fascinating.
Anyone who is that successful, that much of an asset for a publisher to be fired because he was impossible to work with. I just thought, well, there's something there.
Why don't you just tell us a bit about the action in this play? It's you as Roald Dahl and your fiancé and two representatives from your publishers. Give us a sense of what the issue is and what happens.
Yes. It's set in 1983, but it's about the events of 1982 when Israel was in deep conflict with Lebanon, mainly because they were trying to purge the PLO from Beirut. And they invaded Beirut brutally and brutally. Dahl wrote a book review a year later of a book about that invasion, which very much took the Palestinians' side.
And in that review, he betrayed his own anti-Semitism between the lines and in a few of the lines quite explicitly. And it caused a minor controversy then, which over the years grew into a bigger and bigger controversy about Roald Dahl because that was the time when he basically admitted to being very anti-Semitic. And yes, the setup is that at the same time,
His publishers, Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux in America and Jonathan Cape in London, they're about to release his new book, The Witches, which would be his fifth book. And they've all been sensational successes. And they were very worried that this one wouldn't sell because of the controversy he'd stirred. So that's the setup.
They are there to get him to back down and apologize and explain and rationalize what he's written. And he wants nothing to do with that.
There's a distinction to be made between criticizing the policies of the Israeli government and condemning Jewish people as a whole. But the lines can get fuzzy and assumptions can be made that anti-Semitism is at the heart of anybody criticizing Israel.
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Chapter 3: What controversies surround Roald Dahl and how are they explored in 'Giant'?
I'm convinced of that. And it was almost as if he was angry at life. because his life was so desperately difficult. And you take all those things into account, and this is a highly intelligent, extremely clever, witty, and charming man who just has this dark streak of cruelty. It's like he can't resist goading and tormenting people.
This play is being performed now and was performed in England at a time when there's very bitter division and controversy about actions of the Israeli military in Gaza. Not unlike in some ways this controversy about the – Invasion of Lebanon, which was launched in response to PLO rocket attacks in Israel.
This, of course, the Gaza invasion response to that savage attack, the October 7th attack by Hamas. I'm wondering what reaction you've heard to the play, what kind of conversations it sparked.
Well, everybody says it's just astounding how timely it is. It's a play about a moment 40 years ago. And here we were rehearsing it once again for Broadway and the same thing has happened. Not chasing after the PLO, chasing after Hezbollah and trying to put an end to it. missiles and raids from Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. There are lines in the play that you just hear people gasp.
They are so timely. It's almost describing what's happening now.
Yeah. We should note that in 2020, Roald Dahl's family posted an apology for his anti-Semitism on the family website, right?
Yes. They apologized and he never did.
Right. I wanted to talk about some of your other iconic roles. There are a lot of them and one of them that I really remembered was you playing Winston Churchill in the series The Crown, which was created by Peter Morgan. I love that series and you play this – I mean he's – well, he's an iconic figure for the English in the 20th century. I wanted to play a clip here.
This is one of many meetings that the prime minister had with the sovereign. The queen here is a fairly young Elizabeth played by Claire Foy. And the prime minister would regularly meet with the queen. This is one where an argument erupts when the queen relates that her husband, Prince Philip, wants to become an aviator. Let's listen.
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Chapter 4: How does John Lithgow relate to Roald Dahl's character in 'Giant'?
You've taken away his home. You've taken away his name. There comes a time where one must draw a line in the sand.
And the job of drawing that line falls to cabinet, ma'am, not to you. Something your dear late papa would certainly have taught you had he been granted more time to complete your education.
And that is John Lithgow practically spitting as Winston Churchill. And the queen. And the queen. There are so many of these scenes. When you got this role, I mean I imagine that Churchill is the kind of guy that everybody in England can do an impression of. Was it daunting to take this on? I mean the role had been played by a lot of other people.
It was extremely daunting and you're right. I mean – Everybody imitates Churchill. Everybody quotes Churchill. There are pubs named for Churchill. And I was completely astonished when I was asked to do it by Peter Morgan, the writer, and Stephen Daldry, the lead director. I wasn't about to say no. These were very impressive people, and if they wanted me, I would.
I was amazed that they wanted me, but I was flattered and extremely excited to play the part. But, you know, I was a yank. When I sat down with Stephen Daldry for breakfast in a diner, after I'd said yes, I said, Stephen, why did you cast me? And he said, well, Churchill's mother was an American. And, you know, she was. And that was the first little gesture of liberation.
The other thing that happened was I arrived in England and all the English actors were so enthusiastic about the idea. I mean, I've done a lot of acting in England, playing English roles, even listening to this clip that you've just played. I can hear my Americanism, but there's a certain excitement to mingling an American energy with an English character.
I mean, I'm speaking as objectively as I can about this. I've read this in one or two reviews. Sometimes it helps sort of enliven... The drama or the comedy, this was particularly true of Churchill. And they somehow felt they wanted to shake things up, as they did in every way on The Crown. The Crown is such a surprising show.
Because these very familiar characters whom you know in the most public way possible, the queen, the king, the prince, the princesses, to actually go into their lives and see them in intimate settings and having very, very human relationships. problems and conflicts. That was what was arresting about the crown. Well, in a sense, that was true of portraying Churchill this way.
You know, I really love the series. And, you know, when you came on and the first time you were on screen as charge, oh, God, yeah, there's John Lithgow. Yeah, I recognize him. Pretty soon, it wasn't John Lithgow. I mean, you were Churchill. I mean, and one of the things I read is that you placed little balls of some material in the jowls of your cheeks to give you that thing going.
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