John Lithgow Says His ‘3rd Rock from the Sun’ Days Were His ‘Happiest Years As Actor’
The esteemed John Lithgow has won two Tony Awards for his work on Broadway, and has been nominated twice for Oscars for his heart-wrenching work in Terms of Endearment and The World According to Garp. But despite his continued success in dramas like last year’s Conclave, Lithgow claims the most joyful years of his professional life were spent as goofy alien Dick Solomon on the sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun.
“It was the six happiest years as an actor,” Lithgow said this week on the Smartless podcast. “Just interacting with this great writing staff, the 3rd Rock staff was so terrific and it was so inane.”
Lithgow loved the experience of flying by the seat of his comedy pants, “just spending all your time figuring out the funny,” he explained. “And entertaining a studio audience on just three days rehearsal. You get a fresh script the next week. And 3rd Rock, of course, was just flat-out, nutball farce.”
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But like many great experiences, it almost didn’t happen. Prestigious dramatic actors usually don’t jump the tracks to do nutball TV shows. “I never thought I would do that,” he admitted. He even turned down the part of Frasier on Cheers, a fact that 3rd Rock director James Burrows reminded him of years later. “At that point, I had a few movies under my belt,” he said. “I had a couple of Oscar nominations. It was so beneath my dignity.”
I’ll just let Lithgow say it. “I was such an asshole,” he confessed. “A pretentious asshole.”
Saturday Night Live turned him around. Lithgow hosted three times in the 1980s, where he met writers Bonnie and Terry Turner. Based on that friendship, “they pitched (3rd Rock) to me,” he explained. “I was the only person they could even imagine playing Dick Solomon, because it had to be an alien who was completely clueless but could try anything.”
But Lithgow still didn’t say yes right away. He felt tricked into the pitch meeting, believing he was just meeting his pals Bonnie and Terry for lunch. But the show’s other producers were there for the “well, it’s about a family of aliens” pitch. His initial reaction? “My God, how do I say no to this fast enough?”
Five minutes into the pitch, however, Lithgow was in. “It just seemed suddenly like, what in the world have I been waiting for?”
NBC bought the show as a midseason replacement, meaning the cast and creators could make 13 episodes before anyone got a chance to see it. With no critics or low ratings to discourage them, “we realized, oh my God, we really have something here,” Lithgow said. “We felt like we had the Hope Diamond in our pocket.”
The delayed start gave producers the chance to frontload the funniest of the early episodes right up front. “We had 13 chances,” Lithgow said about the show finding its comic rhythm. “It was released mid-season in January, and bam, it just hit like that.”
