Angela Lansbury wants to Murder NBC.
As I mentioned a week or so back, the singing maven of the movie theater was supposed* to be involved with this new reboot of “Murder She Wrote” that the net is packaging as a weekly vehicle for Octavia Spencer.
It was made to sound like Lansbury was OK with the idea. Thing is, the 88-year-old veteran of stage and screen isn’t.
“I think it’s a mistake to call it `Murder, She Wrote,'” Lansbury tells the AP, “because `Murder, She Wrote’ will always be about a Cabot Cove and this wonderful little group of people who told those lovely stories and enjoyed a piece of that place, and also enjoyed Jessica Fletcher, who is a rare and very individual kind of person …
“So I’m sorry that they have to use the title `Murder, She Wrote,’ even though they have access to it and it’s their right.”
Lansbury likes Octavia Spencer’s work, but wish she wasn’t stealing her roles (though, I think Lansbury might be confused here, Spencer is supposed to be playing a new character – not Jessica Fletcher).
“I saw her in `The Help’ and thought she was absolutely wonderful, a lovely actress,” Lansbury said. “So I wish her well, but I wish it wasn’t in `Murder, She Wrote.'”
* She’d been approached, they say, but it might also have been PR spin to keep the purists at bay.