Angela Lansbury’s Iconic ‘Homicide She Wrote’ Position Was Initially Written For One other Actress

It’s inconceivable to think about every other actress fixing crimes in Cabot Cove than Angela Lansbury, but she wasn’t the primary alternative for the function of sleuthing novelist Jessica Fletcher.

Whereas Lansbury, who died Tuesday at age 96, starred in hit thriller sequence “Homicide, She Wrote” for 12 seasons, one other actress was initially supposed for the function.

In a 1984 interview with Folks, Lansbury revealed that the sequence had been created with “All within the Household” star Jean Stapleton in thoughts.

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“[Series creator] Peter Fischer had initially written it for Jean Stapleton, however she had simply misplaced her husband and didn’t need to do something,” Lansbury defined.

“After I learn it, I felt that Peter’s script might have been written for me. Apart from, there are so few respectable roles for ladies on tv, and I used to be instantly taken by Jessica,” she continued.

Whereas Lansbury had made sporadic guest-starring roles in tv through the years, her profession as much as that time had centered on movie and Broadway.

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When “Homicide, She Wrote” got here her means, she admitted “there was nothing thrilling for me on Broadway for the time being. Inside the identical week, I used to be despatched two tv scripts. One was a scenario comedy from Norman Lear and the opposite was the two-hour pilot for ‘Homicide, She Wrote’.”

Lansbury, pushing 60 on the time, mentioned she was instantly drawn to Jessica Fletcher as a result of she was a lady her personal age who portrayed as being “an important and clever being.”

Nonetheless, she admitted she’d had “no thought” how “all-absorbing” it could be to star in a one-hour drama sequence, and that her determination to signal on was “motivated by ego.”

“Trying to carry off my very own present is a superb problem. If I can do it, on the age of 59, it will likely be a small miracle. I felt that it could have been a spot in my appearing expertise if I had by no means accomplished a tv sequence. I needed to play to that massive viewers simply as soon as,” she mentioned.