At first, after having heard all of the spoilers, Lithgow said "no, I'm not doing that".
 |
| Showtime |
In a brand new career retrospective video for GQ, John Lithgow revealed how he learned Trinity Killer's entire Dexter Season 4 storyline before ever even agreed to the part. In the interview he explains that while creator Clyde Phillips and producer John Goldwyn were pitching him Dexter, he asked so many questions that he eventually ended up with Arthur Mitchell's entire character arc, which was more than the Dexter duo had planned to actually share with him.
John Lithgow: "I got a terrific pitch from Clyde Phillips. He and John Goldwyn, the producer, sat with me at CAA and banished my agents. They said, 'No, nobody else can hear this and you can't tell anybody about this, but we are going to tell you about the Trinity Killer.' And they told me the entire, detailed, unfolding story, but I kept on saying, 'Wait a minute, what happened to the baby?' You know, things like that. And they would have to tell me, and I kept on saying, 'More, more, more,' to the point where they had given me way more information than they intended. But they were trying to persuade me to take the part. And having heard all of that, I said, 'No, I won't tell anybody any of this, but no, I'm not doing that.' And then my agent and my lawyer got on my case and said, 'John, you gotta do this.' So I said yes, and had a great time doing it. But the curious thing was, I met all these wonderful actors in Dexter, this whole company of actors, they had kept all these information from them. So I was the only person who knew."
The Dexter-related part of the interview begins at 4:59.