Olivier winner John Lithgow attacks Trump’s second presidency as ‘a disaster’ for US arts

The actor John Lithgow has described Donald Trump’s second presidency as “a pure disaster” for the arts in the US. Lithgow, speaking after his best actor victory at the Olivier awards in London on Sunday, singled out Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center, Washington DC’s national institution for the performing arts. “Our administration has done some shocking, destructive things,” he said, “but the one that grieves me most is taking over the Kennedy Center.”

The US president is now chair of the prestigious cultural complex (which was founded as a government-funded, bipartisan venue) and has installed new board members and a new interim leader, loyalist Ric Grenell. The board had been in the process of selecting a successor to outgoing leader Deborah Rutter, who in January announced her intention to step down after 11 years.

“Deborah Rutter was fired from her position as president – even though she’d already resigned and had [several] months to go,” said Lithgow. “She’s a very good friend of mine. We co-chaired a commission on the arts [launched by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2018] and spent three years finding out the state of the arts in America [was] in crisis. Well, it’s really in crisis now. First there was coronavirus, now there’s this.”

Lithgow was named best actor at the Oliviers for his performance as Roald Dahl in Mark Rosenblatt’s play Giant, which ran at the Royal Court last year and transfers to the West End later this month. In his acceptance speech, the actor – best known for the TV comedy 3rd Rock from the Sun – said that this moment was “more complicated than usual” for relations between the US and the UK but that he personally felt the special relationship was “intact”.

Lithgow described himself as “a curious kind of hybrid Englishman”, reflecting on the films and TV series he has made in the UK and his stage appearances, which have included Twelfth Night with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2007 and The Magistrate at the National Theatre in 2012.

“I grew up with Shakespeare,” he said. “My father was a producer of Shakespeare festivals in Ohio. He was a regional theatre artistic director. I was in 20 Shakespeare plays by the time I was 20 years old … I came over and went to Lamda [the London drama school] after my college years. When I returned, everyone thought I was English … My sister said to me: ‘I’m not going to talk to you until you stop talking in that pretentious English accent!’”

While assessing the current climate for the arts in the US as “a pure disaster – really disheartening”, Lithgow said that “it gives us all something to fight for and I think the arts are animated by that. Right now, everybody is in shock.” Once that shock has passed, he acknowledged that “bad times create good art”.