On today’s episode of the Daily Variety podcast, writer and producer Aaron Tracy talks about Imagine/iHeart Media’s wildly popular podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl. Tracy, the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The BFG, and many other classics, unravels her extraordinary and wild life in a 10-part series.
Listen to the entire episode here:
Tracy’s effort dissects Dahl in all sorts of ways, including his exposed anti-Semitism, and brings the story to a major conclusion as to why the British writer’s work still resonates so strongly in popular culture.
aaron tracy
jamia wilson
“Until Roald Dahl came along, children’s books had very sweet, bittersweet happy endings. Roald Dahl was a bigot, because of his personality, and he was very bitter to a lot of people, including those close to him, and I think that’s why he carried that into so many of his books because of his harsh personality. His books aren’t sweet and bitter, and children love to be told the truth,” says Tracy. At the age at which many children meet Dahl, “children are beginning to realize that the world is not a fair place. It’s not a meritocracy. Bad things happen. And Roald Dahl takes them seriously and shows them that there are monsters in the world, that there are cruel adults.” I think they really enjoyed making us understand that. And he created characters who tried to fight those things, and that’s a big part of why they were successful. And so many other children’s authors followed his lead.
Tracy talks about how her career has evolved to include podcasting and audio drama in addition to traditional television and film projects. He aims to turn “The Secret World of…” format into a regular podcast series. And yes, Dahl’s story has so many fascinating twists and turns that he’s considering expanding it with video. Before finding fame as a writer, Dahl was a British spy during World War II who was tasked with seducing the wives of leaders in Washington, D.C., in order to gather intelligence.
Dahl, who died in 1990 at age 74, “lived this great, exciting life,” Tracy says. “I started reading everything I could about him, and I think his life was really a search for identity, trying to figure out who he was. He stepped into different, typically male, different worlds at the time, and he was trying to figure out who he was, but also what it meant to be a man in this century.”
(Top photo: Roald Dahl in 1971)
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