DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
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 "3rd 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 antisemitic. In the play, Dahl and his fiance are at home in discussion with the 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 Laurence Olivier Awards, the British equivalent of the Tony. John Lithgow, welcome to FRESH AIR.
JOHN LITHGOW: Thank you, Dave. I feel welcome.
DAVIES: You're playing Dahl, who is kind of - it's oversimplistic to call him a villain here, but, you know, he's a very problematic character. Did you feel empathy for him, and how did you connect with him?
LITHGOW: Oh, man. 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, I mean, 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.
DAVIES: Why don't you just tell us a bit about the action in this play? It's you as Roald Dahl and your fiance and two representatives from your publishers. Give us a sense of what the issue is and what happens.
LITHGOW: 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 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 antisemitism 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 antisemitic.
And yes, the setup is that at the same time, his publishers, Farrar, Straus 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.
DAVIES: You know, there's a distinction to be made between criticizing the policies of the Israeli government and condemning Jewish people as a whole. But, you know, the lines can get fuzzy and assumptions can be made that antisemitism is at the heart of anybody criticizing Israel. And I think part of the brilliance of this play is that in the first act, when we don't learn Dahl's exact words from the article he wrote or other comments that would be made public later, we're kind of invited to explore our own feelings about this and think, maybe Roald Dahl is just making a point about the conduct of war and not about the Jewish people.
LITHGOW: Yeah. It sort of throws an audience off balance, no matter what their political leanings and feelings are. You know, you back away from the phrase villain, and I appreciate that. We don't want him just to be the villain of the piece, but he's a dark character, or he's a character with a very dark side. But the play becomes this ferocious debate between him and this young American Jewish woman from a New York publishing house. And that debate is extremely articulate. It's very passionate on both sides. In the case of Dahl's side of the argument, the argument is polluted by antisemitism, but he's right on occasion. He's like a broken clock. And the audience (laughter) - I mean, up on the stage, you can almost hear their anxiety trying to grapple this.
DAVIES: Right. And the debate gets increasingly personal. And in the end, Dahl says some things which - I mean, I was at one performance, and there was one comment - I'm sure it's the one you know - that the audience audibly gasped. It was something he said to reporter, right?
LITHGOW: I deliberately don't quote it in interviews because it has such power in performance, but it is something he literally said. It's an unspeakable turn of phrase. And it's like - it is the moment at which people see the very darkest side of Dahl, and they see it very clearly, and it's right near the end of the play. So in a sense, the whole play has been building to that moment. My challenge in playing the role is to spend the whole play motivating that moment, almost explaining that moment, explaining it emotionally as much as politically.
DAVIES: Right. And he did have a hard life in a lot of ways, right?
LITHGOW: Well, that was my way in. He had a very hard life. There are several elements. You know, when you ask yourself what makes him hate like that, the various clues I found had to do with his upbringing and his experiences. He was born a Norwegian of a Norwegian family, but that family lived in Wales. His father had been brought to Cardiff to work in the shipping industry. But off he went to English boarding schools. At Repton, he was an outsider from the get-go trying to get on the inside. And in his life, he just suffered these terrible losses. In the same year, when he was very young, he lost both his father and his older sister. He went off to prep school, where he was brutally beaten. He had a horrifying plane accident in World War II when he was an RAF fighter pilot, a solo accident in the Libyan desert when, by rights, it should've killed him. But instead, it just left him in terrible pain for his entire life.
And he married Patricia Neal, who had three terrible strokes. Even though it was a very troubled marriage, he obsessively nursed her. Their 4-month-old son, his pram was hit by a taxi in New York City, and he grew up with brain damage. And he lost his daughter at the age of 7 from a variant of the measles.
These were tragedies that absolutely haunted him. 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.
DAVIES: You know, this play, you know, 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 7 attack by Hamas. I'm wondering what reaction you've heard to the play, what kind of conversations it sparked.
LITHGOW: 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, you know, missiles and raids from Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. There are lines in the play that you just hear people gasp. They're so timely. It's almost describing what's happening now.
DAVIES: Yeah. We should note that, in 2020, Roald Dahl's family posted an apology for his antisemitism on the family website, right?
LITHGOW: Yes, they apologized and he never did.
DAVIES: Right. We need to take a break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with actor John Lithgow. He stars as Roald Dahl in the new Broadway play "Giant." We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with actor John Lithgow. He's currently starring on Broadway as writer Roald Dahl defending himself against accusations that he is antisemitic. The play is called "Giant."
I wanted to talk about some of your other iconic roles. (Laughter) 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE CROWN")
CLAIRE FOY: (As Queen Elizabeth II) He's learning to fly.
LITHGOW: (As Winston Churchill) Whatever for? Have we not enough qualified pilots to take him where he needs to go?
FOY: (As Queen Elizabeth II) No, he wants to fly himself. It's a boyhood dream. It's what he's always wanted.
LITHGOW: (As Winston Churchill) Why was government not consulted?
FOY: (As Queen Elizabeth II) Because it's a private matter. And I am in favor.
LITHGOW: (As Winston Churchill) Nothing you or his royal highness do is a private matter. And the father of the future king of England risking his life needlessly is quite unacceptable.
FOY: (As Queen Elizabeth II) Please, do not curtail my husband's personal freedoms any further. 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.
LITHGOW: (As Winston Churchill) 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.
DAVIES: That is John Lithgow practically spitting as Winston Churchill.
LITHGOW: (Laughter) At the queen, at the queen.
DAVIES: At the queen. Oh. 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.
LITHGOW: 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 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.
DAVIES: (Laughter).
LITHGOW: 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. It - 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 problems and conflicts, that was what was arresting about "The Crown." Well, in a sense, that was true of portraying Churchill this way.
DAVIES: Right. You know, well, I really loved the series. And, you know, when you came on and the first time you were on screen as - I thought, oh, good. Yeah, there's John Lithgow. Yeah, I recognize him. Pretty soon, it wasn't John Lithgow. I mean, you were Churchill (laughter). I mean...
LITHGOW: Well...
DAVIES: And one of the things I read is that you placed little balls of some material in your - the jowls of your cheeks to give you that (impersonating Winston Churchill) - right? - that thing going or...
LITHGOW: Yes, yes. I experimented with that when I was still in America, before I went over there. I used a melon baller to create these little balls of apple, and I put them in the (as Winston Churchill) back of my cheeks. And Churchill had this unique lisp that was generated by the back of his tongue.
And it worked wonderfully. I even took my melon baller and an apple to one of the first rehearsals, which was nothing but sitting around the table and talking. But I proposed this idea in front of everybody. I carved out two little apple balls and stuck them in the back (as Winston Churchill) and spoke some of my lines, and I believe I read one of the scenes.
DAVIES: (Laughter).
LITHGOW: And it was sensational, but my mouth immediately filled up with apple cider, you know? I mean, and I was spitting all over the table. Well, we hired this great tooth-meister, a man named Christopher Lyons, who does all the great false teeth for Tilda Swinton and Meryl Streep as Maggie Thatcher. Well, he made these little silicon pumpers, we call them, that clicked onto my back teeth. It changed everything (laughter). I mean, it made me (as Winston Churchill) sound like Churchill because he did have this - he sounded like he had marbles in the back of his mouth.
But it also just made me feel so different from myself. I mean, I've worked with the RSC, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and at the National, and I've done about 10 roles of Englishmen in England. And I'm better at it. I must say, listening to myself as Churchill, I still had a lot to learn.
DAVIES: Really? You're better at an English accent now than you were when you played Churchill?
LITHGOW: Oh, I think so. I'm doing Dumbledore in "Harry Potter" with a marvelous dialect coach who's watching me like a hawk. And she doesn't give me many notes anymore, but she certainly did the first few months.
DAVIES: Yeah. This is for the HBO series based on "Harry Potter." Have you finished shooting that, the first series?
LITHGOW: I have finished. There's - they still have another month to go, but they squeezed all my stuff in to allow me to do "Giant" on Broadway. So my last month of work was brutal. It aged me, but then that - with Dumbledore, that comes in handy.
DAVIES: You know, I have to ask, at age 80 - you know, I'm not 80, but I'm older. I'm an older person now, and boy, my short-term memory isn't what it used to be. And I'm - I am just amazed that you - I mean, you're in practically every scene of this play on Broadway. You're doing eight shows a week. Is it hard to remember, to learn lines that - you know, that many lines?
LITHGOW: It's harder than it used to be to learn the lines, but once they're in there, I'm fine.
DAVIES: Yeah. Yeah.
LITHGOW: Yeah, my brain is a little bit tired. My body's tired. I mean, 80 is (laughter) - it's - it was no surprise. You're an old man at 80.
DAVIES: Well, you got plenty left in you. You better, because this HBO production is going to last how many years (laughter)?
LITHGOW: Well, the handy thing is I'm playing all these broken-down old men (laughter). So I get better cast every year.
DAVIES: All right. Let's take another break here. Let me reintroduce you. We're speaking with John Lithgow. He stars as writer Roald Dahl in the new Broadway play "Giant." He'll talk more about his career after this short break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF GARY BURTON'S "MOVE")
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies. Our guest is actor John Lithgow, known for countless performances on stage, screen and television, including "The World According To Garp," "Terms Of Endearment," "The Crown," "Dexter" and "3rd Rock From The Sun," to name a few. You can see him now 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 on Broadway in the play "Giant," exploring the antisemitic views of renowned children's author Roald Dahl.
You are no stranger to the stage, right? I think you were first on a stage at age 2. Your parents were both actors. Your dad was a director and manager of a lot of regional theater. Give us a sense of what your childhood was like and how you had embraced acting.
LITHGOW: Well, I had a real kind of Midwestern, small-town, Booth Tarkington sort of childhood up until the age of, I guess, 11, sixth grade. My father was a professor at Antioch College and created this summer Shakespeare festival that lasted for years and years and became more and more professional. And at a certain point, he decided, I'm going to become a professional theater man instead of a university professor. And off we went. And that was at the end of my sixth grade year. And between then and my - the end - and my graduation from high school, I lived in about eight different places. We just moved and moved and moved because it's not an easy life, creating and running regional theaters, God knows.
Four Shakespeare festivals in Ohio and ultimately, 10 years running the McCarter Theater in Princeton, but I was off to college by that time. So I - the word is peripatetic. I was just - I was like a service brat, except in the service of American classical repertory theater (laughter).
DAVIES: Yeah, I know you did a lot of different kinds of jobs, kind of helping your dad out with the theater companies that he managed. When did you really get the acting bug - when you had that experience and said, gosh, this is what I want to do?
LITHGOW: It was in college. I mean, I arrived at Harvard, where all the campus theater was extracurricular. And within two weeks, I was cast in a major role, Reverend Anderson in "The Devil's Disciple" at the Big Globe Theater. And, boom, I was the campus star. I mean, I was already an experienced actor without any intention of becoming an actor, which is the best possible way to become an actor (laughter). And it's like - and by the time I finished college, well, off I went to London to study in earnest at LAMDA. But it was that period - a wonderful, creative four years where I played major roles. I directed and designed. I directed two Mozart operas and staged a ballet. It was just - it was - there was no question, this is what I'm going to do with my life.
DAVIES: You know, I know that - from your memoir that you have a long and deep relationship with the city of London. I mean, when you returned to the States, your sister was annoyed that you had come back with a British accent. You wrote, I emanated Englishness like a cheap cologne.
(LAUGHTER)
LITHGOW: That's a nice turn of phrase. I don't remember writing (laughter)...
DAVIES: It is a good one. How did you - did you purge it consciously from your...
LITHGOW: Yeah, I - you know, I was in this wonderful LAMDA program called - it's the D group, which is foreign language students - which is 80% Americans, young American acting students. And I figured, well, I'm going to make a conscious effort not to absorb an English accent 'cause after all, I'm going back to act in America. But, you know, after two years in London, it's true. My sister simply wouldn't speak to me. She said I sounded so pretentious because of my English accent. And I said, what accent?
DAVIES: (Laughter).
LITHGOW: You know, clearly, I'd absorbed it without knowing it. I just basically began to tell people, no, I'm not English. I'm just pretentious.
DAVIES: I have to talk about "3rd Rock From The Sun." This was the sitcom you were in for, what, six years - right? - '96 to 2001. And I thought we'd just start with a clip. You and three others play a group of aliens who've landed on Earth on some kind of observational mission. You look like normal people, but here's the opening scene of Episode 1, when the four of you are in a car and you've just landed on Earth. And you're in this parked car, and you're examining yourselves in your new human form, kind of getting used to your new bodies. And next to you is another car with a couple making out, and we'll hear that you're - you and your fellow aliens notice the couple and make some inaccurate guesses about what they're up to. Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE FROM TV SHOW, "3RD ROCK FROM THE SUN")
LITHGOW: (As Dick) Everyone fully formed?
KRISTEN JOHNSTON: (As Sally) Uh-huh.
FRENCH STEWART: (As Harry) Yeah.
JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT: (As Tommy) Yeah.
LITHGOW: (As Dick) Everyone got 10 fingers, 11 toes?
(LAUGHTER)
JOHNSTON: (As Sally) Check.
STEWART: (As Harry) Check.
GORDON-LEVITT: (As Tommy) Check.
LITHGOW: (As Dick) Good. I guess we're in. Everyone comfortable?
STEWART: (As Harry) I have three holes in my face.
(LAUGHTER)
LITHGOW: (As Dick) Can anyone get your head to swivel to the rear?
STEWART: (As Harry) No.
GORDON-LEVITT: (As Tommy) No.
JOHNSTON: (As Sally) No.
LITHGOW: (As Dick) Then how are you supposed to lick your back?
(LAUGHTER)
GORDON-LEVITT: (As Tommy) Maybe you do what they're doing.
LITHGOW: (As Dick) Look, life forms, and they're cleaning each other.
(LAUGHTER)
JOHNSTON: (As Sally) Look at us. I can't believe we look like them.
(LAUGHTER)
JOHNSTON: (As Sally) Is anybody else sweating under their breasts?
(LAUGHTER)
LITHGOW: (As Dick) No. In fact, I don't have any.
STEWART: (As Harry) I have tiny ones.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVIES: And that is our guest, John Lithgow, along with Kristen Johnston, French Stewart and Joseph Gordon-Levitt from the opening episode of "3rd Rock From The Sun." Fun to hear?
LITHGOW: (Laughter) Well, yes, but I (laughter) - you know, there was a long sort of learning curve for those four aliens. One of the great things about "3rd Rock" is how the comedy got more and more complex and sophisticated as they became more like humans. But it's kind of wonderful. I haven't heard that for - gosh, 20 years, 25 years, that opening scene. It's wonderful. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was one of those voices, and he was only 13 years old (laughter).
DAVIES: Yeah. And the show was actually taped Tuesday nights - right? - in front of a live audience, right?
LITHGOW: Yeah.
DAVIES: So - and I've heard you say that one of the great things about theater is that you're telling the story at the same instant the audience is experiencing it, which is so different from shooting a movie or a TV show that's, you know, edited.
LITHGOW: Yes, we were spending four days preparing to perform for a live studio audience, and it was a point of honor for us to make them genuinely laugh their heads off so that there - that no canned laughter was necessary. We would get them laughing for, like, 15 and 20 seconds. It was just thrilling. And, you know, when I talk about that lightning-in-a-bottle experience of telling a story while the audience is hearing it, they - we were able to capture that.
DAVIES: We are speaking with John Lithgow. He stars as writer Roald Dahl in the new Broadway play "Giant." We'll continue our conversation after this short break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF GEORGE FENTON & PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA'S "THE NEW VAN")
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with actor John Lithgow. He's currently starring on Broadway as writer Roald Dahl defending himself against accusations that he is antisemitic. The play is called "Giant."
I also wanted to talk about "The World According To Garp." This is really taking us back - 1982. You earned an Oscar nomination for playing Roberta Muldoon, a trans woman, who is your height, which was 6-foot-4. This is, of course, based on the novel by John Irving. And we'll hear a clip here. Robin Williams plays a writer named T.S. Garp, and in this scene, he's visiting a home that his mother, Jenny, operates for women who've been abused or traumatized. Your character, Roberta, lives there. As I mentioned, you're a trans woman. And in this scene, Garp, who is played by Robin Williams, has just had a tense encounter with one of the women at the home, and you're - you've intervened to break it up and you walk away and kind of get acquainted with Garp. Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP")
LITHGOW: (As Roberta Muldoon) No sense making things any worse than they are.
ROBIN WILLIAMS: (As T.S. Garp) This whole house is full of them.
LITHGOW: (As Roberta Muldoon) I know, I know. Everyone here has something missing or some wound that won't heal, and your mother tries to nurse them back to health. She's a wonderful person.
WILLIAMS: (As T.S. Garp) Well, are you visiting somebody here?
LITHGOW: (As Roberta Muldoon) No, why?
WILLIAMS: (As T.S. Garp) Well, you just seem like the only normal person around the place.
LITHGOW: (As Roberta Muldoon) Oh, I don't know.
WILLIAMS: (As T.S. Garp) Pardon me. I hate to use a corny line like this, but haven't I seen you before?
LITHGOW: (As Roberta Muldoon) You like football?
WILLIAMS: (As T.S. Garp) Oh, yeah. I used to watch it quite a bit.
LITHGOW: (As Roberta Muldoon) Well, you might have seen me. I was a tight end with the Philadelphia Eagles. Number 90 - Robert Muldoon.
WILLIAMS: (As T.S. Garp) Oh. Oh.
LITHGOW: (As Roberta Muldoon) I had a great pair of hands.
WILLIAMS: (As T.S. Garp) Yes, you did. Yeah.
DAVIES: And that is Robin Williams with our guest John Lithgow in "The World According To Garp."
Got an Oscar nomination for that performance. What are your memories of that role, you know, getting into that character?
LITHGOW: Oh, the very, very happy memories. It was a beautifully written character in the novel. And I'd read the novel a couple of years before, never dreaming it would be a movie. And I loved the character of Roberta Muldoon. But when I was asked to go in and meet George Roy Hill, the director, who was casting "World According To Garp," I couldn't figure out what part he would want me for. And my agent's assistant said, well, I'm not sure because there must be a typo on the casting. It's the character of Roberta.
DAVIES: (Laughter).
LITHGOW: And suddenly, I remembered the character, and I thought, oh, my God, this is my role. This is perfect. I went off, and I was very excited to play it 'cause I loved the character in the book. Went off and met with George Roy Hill and the great casting director, Marion Dougherty, who had fingered me for this role, and George ruled it out immediately. He felt I was too tall, and pairing me next to Robin would be too comical. And so I was very disappointed. And about eight months passed, during which time, he must have seen 100 people for the role of Roberta Muldoon, including genuine athletes and genuine transgender women and actors of all stripes. They kept on looking and finally came back to me, and I screen tested for it, and finally got the part. You know, they dressed me in drag. And by a coincidence, I had read a book a couple of years ago called "Conundrum," a memoir by Jan Morris, a transgender travel journalist from England who fearlessly described in great detail every stage of the process, including the surgical process, and the experience of first living her life as a woman and feeling more complete for the first time. And I simply kind of improvised the role of Jan Morris in front of the camera while George Roy Hill asked me questions from off camera. And that's what got me the role. He just found me completely convincing in the role.
DAVIES: Well, you know, that was more than 40 years ago that I saw that. And I still - when I think of that film, I think of you in that role. Another one that I remember that's of the same era is you playing a professional killer in the Brian De Palma film "Blow Out," which is...
LITHGOW: Oh, yeah.
DAVIES: A murder thriller with John Travolta and Nancy Allen.
LITHGOW: Yeah.
DAVIES: There's particularly a scene where you're in a phone booth calling the police, acting as a sexual predator who kills women and is confessing to a crime. As part of the plot, he's actually not that. He's a professional assassin. And it was just so affecting that I still remember that.
LITHGOW: You can't imagine how you're complimenting me, Dave. I remember that so vividly. I was costumed as an electrician, you know, with a hard hat, like a city utility worker. And yet, on the phone, I was pretending to be a sort of frail, psychotic killer. And, I mean, I had such fun playing that scene. For you to invoke it 40 years later, well...
DAVIES: Yeah.
LITHGOW: ...You've made my day (laughter).
DAVIES: For better or worse, that's one of my images of John Lithgow.
LITHGOW: And it's one of Brian's great films, I think. And John - one of John Travolta's great performances.
DAVIES: You know, one thing we haven't talked about is that you've written children's books, and you entertain children, right? You've done children's shows quite a bit, which I assume is not the best paying gigs you get. What do you like about entertaining kids?
LITHGOW: Well, I haven't done it in a while, but there was a good 15-year period there where it was virtually a second career, sort of under the radar. I did write the nine picture books. And of those nine, like six of them were based on songs or narrations with orchestra that I performed for kids in concert, including songs that I had made up. With music written by a wonderful composer, Bill Elliott.
It's just entertaining children. First of all, it began entertaining my own children. So it was very personal to me. I ended up doing three albums for kids. And I started doing concerts with major orchestras, like hour-long concerts. And I must've performed with about a dozen of them, you know, including the Pittsburgh and the Baltimore and the Chicago and the San Diego and San Francisco.
What was thrilling about it - and you're right. Why, it was not for money at all. It was just an ecstatic experience entertaining children. I've always felt that what we actors aspire to is suspension of disbelief, making an audience believe for even a half a second that what they're seeing is what is actually happening and not a fiction. It's the real thing. And it'll make you laugh, cry or scream out in terror.
And just that feeling that, oh, I pulled it off. I really - I fooled them for a second, like a magician pulling off a great trick. You never really fool adults. You know you're in the same theater with them. And they're watching actors, paid actors, speaking other people's words. But kids completely suspend their disbelief, completely. They are absolutely thrilled by everything they see. And my concerts with them were these kind of - all sorts of interactive games.
I would play this game called Guess the Animals where I would start to draw an animal on an enormous easel. And they would start screaming, it's a hippo, it's a hippo. And I would say, it's a what, it's a what? I thought you would get this. It's a hippo. And I would say, oh, you got it. It's a hippo. And then I would sing the great hippo song - mud, mud, glorious mud - by Flanders and Swann. It was just giving them this wonderful time. And in the case of orchestra concerts, giving them a great experience in a concert hall and a great first look at an orchestra.
DAVIES: You are prolific. I mean, how do you juggle all this? Do you have a staff of people that help you keep it straight?
LITHGOW: No, no. Well, I have an indispensable assistant. But unfortunately, she's in LA and I'm in New York, so everything is done online. I just - I'm always bursting with projects, far more than half of them I never complete, but bright ideas that just sort of light me up and I have to try them. My brother describes me as that silver dome that you put your hand on in physics class in high school when the static makes your hair stick out on end. He said, that's you.
DAVIES: (Laughter).
LITHGOW: You're just full of ideas all the time. It never stops. Some of it is the kind of fear that I don't have anything else to do, that nobody will hire me to act, (laughter) you know? It's like, let me fill up my time with something creative. I drive my wife completely crazy.
DAVIES: And you must be a heck of a granddad with all that kid stuff.
LITHGOW: Oh, my God. I love...
DAVIES: Yeah. Yeah.
LITHGOW: I love my grandchildren so much. I've got a - and they go from age 20 down to age 8 months at the moment. So that's a great crowd.
DAVIES: Well, John Lithgow, it's been fun. Thank you so much for spending some time with us.
LITHGOW: Great to talk to you, Dave. I had a wonderful time.
DAVIES: John Lithgow stars as writer Roald Dahl in the new Broadway play "Giant." Coming up, John Powers reviews "Stay Alive," a new book from Ian Buruma about life in Berlin during World War II. This is FRESH AIR.
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