The ‘3rd Rock from the Sun’ star is playing Dahl in a new play that revisits the author’s infamous antisemitic remarks after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. He tells Jasper Rees why recent events have ‘quickened everybody’s attention’
If you’re lucky,” says John Lithgow, “an actor gets to speak a few lines in his career that you just absolutely know are going to have a terrific impact. And in this case I’m afraid it’s Roald Dahl. That’s a line that you cannot unhear.”
Lithgow – star of 3rd Rock from the Sun, Winston Churchill in The Crown, the voice of Lord Farquaad in Shrek – is the grandest American actor to be lured to the Royal Court in many years, and he has been showered with rave reviews for his performance in Giant. Mark Rosenblatt’s acclaimed debut play imagines a summer afternoon in 1983 when a UK publisher and a US sales director visit the children’s author at his home in Buckinghamshire. Hoping to protect sales of The Witches, they urge Dahl to disavow his antisemitic remarks made in response to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon the previous year.
Instead, the big unfriendly giant doubles down. In a phone interview with the New Statesman, he expands on his mistrust of Jews. “Even a stinker like Hitler,” he concludes, “didn’t just pick on them for no reason.” In 2020, Dahl’s family would issue a public apology….