John Lithgow on the Controversial Authors Roald Dahl and J. K. Rowling
The actor, who stars in the new Broadway production “Giant,” about Dahl’s fraught legacy, discusses whether we can separate the art from the artist.
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Show Notes
The new play “Giant,” on Broadway, dramatizes the scandal around Roald Dahl, the beloved children’s-book author who, in the nineteen-eighties, began making antisemitic statements and invoking stereotypes about Jewish influence. John Lithgow portrays Dahl as he faces off against his American publisher, who presses him to retract his statements. The events that the show focusses on took place more than forty years ago, but they couldn’t be more relevant today, as antisemitism surges during a war in the Middle East. Lithgow joins David Remnick to discuss the question of whether to separate the art from the artist—and about his own hesitation regarding his role as the wizard Dumbledore in HBO’s new “Harry Potter” series, because of J. K. Rowling’s history of anti-trans statements.
Further reading:
- “‘Giant’ Takes on Roald Dahl and his Antisemitism,” by John Lahr
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