Roald Dahl would be cancelled ‘immediately' today, says John Lithgow

Telegraph

03-05-2025

Roald Dahl would be 'immediately' cancelled in today's world, the Hollywood actor portraying him in the West End has said.
John Lithgow, who has won plaudits for his portrayal of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory author, said that Dahl would be 'in very, very hot water' in today's censorious age.
The actor portrays Dahl in the play Giant, in which the author grapples with the dilemma of whether to make a public apology to avoid the risk of being cancelled amid an anti-Semitism row.
The play, set in 1983, imagines an emergency meeting between Dahl, his Jewish publisher and an American sales director following the publication of an article by the children's author containing anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiment.
With the threat of a boycott of his forthcoming novel The Witches, Dahl must decide whether or not to apologise for the comments.
In an interview with Sky News, Lithgow said Dahl would 'immediately' be cancelled if such a scandal broke out today.
He also bemoaned the pressure on artists and writers to conform and self-censor their statements for fear of being victims of cancel culture.
'You can get misrepresented'
'It's terrible to be so careful about what you say, how it goes into the world and you can get misconstrued, misrepresented and cancelled just like that,' Lithgow.
The Telegraph revealed in 2023 that Puffin Books had made hundreds of changes to the author's original texts, with the approval of the Roald Dahl Story Company.
References to weight, height, mental health, gender and colour have been removed, and new passages added by the publishers to minimise offence.
In recent years Dahl has been criticised for anti-Semitism, misogyny and racism.
In an interview with the New Statesman magazine in 1983, he had said: 'There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it's a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I mean, there's always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere.'
He added: 'Even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason.'
Dahl acknowledged he was anti-Semitic and went on to add in an article in The Independent in 1990 that Jews 'control the media' and that it was 'a jolly clever thing to do'.
In 2020, the Dahl family and Roald Dahl Story Company apologised for his anti-Semitic views.
They said: 'Those prejudiced remarks are incomprehensible to us and stand in marked contrast to the man we knew and to the values at the heart of Roald Dahl's stories, which have positively impacted young people for generations.'
Many authors have come to the defence of Dahl's work, including Sir Salman Rushdie, who said that despite being 'a self confessed anti-Semite, with pronounced racist leanings' it was 'absurd' to rewrite his children's books.
Following the controversy over changes to his work, Puffin announced that it would produce uncensored versions of Dahl's stories.