Angela Lansbury nearly missed out on Murder, She Wrote role

Angela Lansbury has died at the age of 96.

An Oscar and Tony award-winning actress, the role she’s most famous for playing is Jessica Fletcher, the amateur sleuth at the centre of the long-running US television series Murder, She Wrote.

The crime drama aired for 12 seasons, which included 256 episodes and four feature films. Lansbury was nearly 60 years old when she was cast as a retired English teacher who takes up mystery writing in her early widowhood.

But the iconic role, which went on to define a large portion of Lansbury’s career, nearly went to another actor.

In a 2015 interview with the Television Academy, All in the Family star Jean Stapleton, who played Edith Bunker in the seminal American sitcom, revealed she was offered the role first.

“Angela will attest to that as well,” Stapleton told her interviewer of the revelation. “Every time I saw Angela in those years, she’d say, ‘Thank you, Jean.’”

Stapleton went on to explain why she turned down the role that would make Lansbury a fixture of Sunday night TV, as well as a four-time Emmy winner. “It didn’t seem to be the kind of role I could really sink my teeth into, and it just didn’t have enough colour for me and I found that those in charge are rather rigid about changes that I had discussed. And I thought it would be a hard row.”

Lansbury died “peacefully in her sleep”, according to her family, who also released a statement: “The children of Dame Angela Lansbury are sad to announce that their mother died peacefully in her sleep at home in Los Angeles at 1.30am today, Tuesday, October 11, 2022, just five days shy of her 97th birthday.”

“In addition to her three children, Anthony, Deirdre and David, she is survived by three grandchildren, Peter, Katherine and Ian, plus five great grandchildren and her brother, producer Edgar Lansbury. She was preceded in death by her husband of 53 years, Peter Shaw.”