John Lithgow celebrates his monumental Tony Award win for 'Giant'

The actor won his third career Tony for playing Roald Dahl in Mark Rosenblatt's explosive debut play, for which he previously won the Olivier Award in London.

Summary

• John Lithgow discusses winning his third Tony Award for playing Roald Dahl in Giant
• He discusses the kind and collaborative spirit among the company despite the play's dark subject matter of Dahl's antisemitism

“They’ve gotten heavier over the years,” said John Lithgow of the Tony Award statuette after winning Best Leading Actor in a Play for his star turn as children’s author and essayist Roald Dahl in Giant.

Lithgow won Tonys in 2002 for Sweet Smell of Success and 1973 for The Changing Room, and he already won an Olivier Award for Giant in London. On stage at Radio City Music Hall on June 7, he saluted the kindness among the company of Giant despite the drama’s dark-streaked subject of Dahl's cruel antisemitism.

How does he prepare for that darkness each night? “Acting is a combination of technical and emotional,” he said at a press conference following his win. “Yyou get the technical down and the emotional gradually fills out.”

He added that like the play itself, Dahl was “so complex and complicated. There was so much calculation at every point. Why is this man doing this?”

That question looms largest and darkest near the play’s end, when Dahl’s cruel streak rages. “It ends with a moment that is inexplicably horrible. My challenge was to try to help people understand where that kind of cruelty comes from.”

The way Lithgow sees it, the play’s topical, timely, and provocative story is “the gift we give to an audience.” As they leave the theatre, audiences ruminate on that very serious subject of antisemitism, as well as cruelty of all kinds and hatred of the other.

Asked how doing this play was a unique experience, Lithgow paused and thought. “It's been the perfect version of creating an inclusive theatre,” he said, adding that playwright Mark Rosenblatt and director Nicholas Hytner made him part of the process early on, in part because of his physical traits.

“I was tall, bald, bald, and old. Roald Dahl was a couple of inches taller than me. You just don't find those actors growing on trees," Lithgow said. "I was about to do something else, and Nick wanted to poach me. I read it and I said, 'This is what I want to do. It's not ready, but I want to be part of the process, getting it ready and then doing it.'”

And, now, for getting a Tony for doing it. That's a pretty giant feat.

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Photo credit: John Lithgow in Giant on Broadway. (Photo by Joan Marcus)