John Lithgow has given fans their first real glimpse into what it takes to become Dumbledore, and the answer, it turns out, involves a great deal of untangling.
The 80-year-old actor appeared on the Today show on Friday, 17 April, to promote his Broadway role in Giant, but the conversation quickly turned to his part as Albus Dumbledore in the upcoming HBO Harry Potter series.
The beard, he revealed, has been a source of some unexpected difficulty.
“The beard goes down to my knees,” he said. “It gets tangled in my buttons and my fly. It’s just impossible.”
Wardrobe challenges aside, Lithgow described stepping onto the Hogwarts set at Leavesden Studios as something genuinely overwhelming.
“You cannot even imagine,” he said.
“They have created Hogwarts up there in Leavesden Studios. A lot of it is left over from the movie days, but they have just brilliantly expanded, created a world. And to enter into that world, it’s kind of breathtaking.”
He was candid about the nerves that accompanied his first days of filming.
The pressure of knowing he was setting the tone for a character he would be playing for years was not lost on him.
“The first I worked on the show was two night shoots in a row and you’re always a little bit addled doing that by three in the morning,” he recalled.
“I knew that this was the first thing I did and the first scene on Privet Drive and I knew that whatever I do now, I’ve set the template for the next several years. I better do it right.”
He added simply: “I’ve done a lot of acting in my day but I still get stage fright.”
The series, which began production in July, will adapt each of J.K. Rowling’s seven Harry Potter books into separate seasons, with the eight-episode first season covering The Philosopher’s Stone.
Dominic McLaughlin plays Harry, Arabella Stanton is Hermione and Alastair Stout takes on Ron Weasley. The first trailer was released on 25 March.
Lithgow previously revealed in an interview with The New York Times in March that he had considered leaving the project over its connection to Rowling and her anti-trans views, though he ultimately decided to stay.
He does not agree with her rhetoric, he said, and described the series itself as “clearly on the side of the angels, against intolerance and bigotry.”
He acknowledged it is a subject he expects to discuss “in every interview I will ever do for the rest of my life.”
