40 Behind-The-Scenes Facts From Murder, She Wrote

Believe it or not, Lansbury wasn’t the first choice to play Jessica Fletcher. Doris Day and Jean Stapleton were both offered the role before her. Producer Peter Fischer told The New York Times in 1985, “[Stapleton] didn't understand the character. I think after playing Edith Bunker she wanted something more sophisticated than this bicycle-riding widow from Maine.”

Lansbury was always open about wanting to be paid well. During an interview with Star2.com about Murder, She Wrote, the actress said, “Why did I go to television? I went to television to make some money, because you don’t make any money in the theater, and you don’t make money from the occasional movie.”

Murder, She Wrote had a living legend among its fans. Lansbury told the Daily Mirror in 2016, “Frank Sinatra and his wife invited my husband and I for dinner. He proceeded to ask me all about the show and how we put it together. It turned out he was a huge fan. I mean, Frank Sinatra! I was very touched to realize it gave him some sense of entertainment to watch this silly show.”

Lansbury told The New York Times in 1985 that she didn’t always enjoy being the star of Murder, She Wrote. She said, “It takes up my whole life. It’s totally non-stop, the shooting, and I have no time for home life or socializing or relaxing. When I’m not working, I’m sleeping. On the one hand, I love the success and am enjoying that tremendously. On the other, I resist this takeover that it represents of my life.”

In 1995 Murder, She Wrote was competing with the mega-popular sitcom Friends for ratings, so Lansbury and the writers decided to just make a mockery of the competition. The episode was titled “Murder Among Friends” and featured a fictional TV show called Buds. And guess what? Jessica Fletcher didn’t rate the show at all!

In 1991 Lansbury took the helm of Murder, She Wrote and shook things up considerably. Universal Television vice-president Charles Engel told TV Guide in 1992, “There were many naysayers in Hollywood about Angela’s taking over. People were confused because Angela at one time said she only wanted to work four days a week. Now people asked, she wants to run it? Oh boy, does she want to ride this ship down!” But instead, she kept the show going for many more years.

Lansbury had no real desire to do television, but by 1983 Broadway work was harder to find. She got two TV scripts sent to her that year, one for a sitcom and one for Murder, She Wrote. Her agents advised her to do the sitcom, but she had fallen in love with the character of Jessica and wanted to play her. It was a gamble that paid off.

After Producer Peter Fischer left, Jessica got herself a second home in New York and stories were set there instead. Fischer didn’t approve. In 2012 he told the Definitive Guide to Murder, She Wrote website, “[Jessica] was very much a part of Cabot Cove where she and Frank had laid down roots, where they had friends, where she had a sense of community. To throw this over to become a ‘big city’ woman violated everything I believed about her.”

By the time Murder, She Wrote was in its second season, it was a big success. And Lansbury was surprised. She told the Los Angeles Times in 1985 that she “didn’t honestly expect the show to take off in the amazing way that it has. I thought, well, it’ll run a season.” That assessment proved to be something of a miscalculation.

Jessica Fletcher lives in the fictional Cabot Cove, an incredibly dangerous place to settle. In 2012 BBC Radio 4 did some math and concluded that Cabot Cove had 149 murders per 100,000 people. That is much higher than some of the real-life “murder capitals” of the world. Why did anybody live there?

The idea behind Jessica Fletcher was that she could be a younger version of another famous female sleuth, Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. Lansbury was 58 when she first started playing Jessica, while Marple is at least in her 70s in the original Christie stories. Interestingly, Lansbury also played Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack’d four years before Murder, She Wrote!

In an August 1984 interview with The Boston Globe, Angela Lansbury sang the praises of her “quality production.” She proudly declared, “There is no violence in our episodes. Jessica finds herself in physical jeopardy but not confronted by physical combat. One never sees the murder committed, only the aftermath. There are no car chases, either.”

In 2013 writer Thomas B. Sawyer gave an interview to Michael Cavacini’s showbiz blog about Murder, She Wrote. Sawyer remembered, “The character of Jessica Fletcher, as originally conceived, used such a tiny fraction of Angela’s incredible range as an actress.” But as soon as the scriptwriter learned how excellent Lansbury was at portraying fury, he would make sure Jessica got angry in each of his episodes so “the show would immediately take on that energy.”

Lansbury was very concerned about her appearance as she became more and more of a TV superstar. Her weight was especially a worry. She ended up dieting before the 1987 season and went down from a size 14 to a 10. But, according to a TV Guide article published that year, she always insisted that the camera operators “treat[ed] her with care and consideration.”

In 2013 NBC announced plans for a reboot of Murder, She Wrote with Octavia Spencer in the lead role. Lansbury wasn’t happy. She told The Hollywood Reporter in November of that year, “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.” But luckily for her, the reboot plans fell through.

Peter S. Fischer, one of the show’s creators, ended up leaving after seven years. In 2012 he explained to The Definitive Guide to Murder, She Wrote that there was a simple explanation. He admitted, “I didn’t know how, as a writer, to keep finding really fresh ideas. I knew we could rehash old plots with different locales and different names and the ratings would hold up, but I would have been bored and we would have been shortchanging the audience.”

Lansbury told Star2.com in 2018, “Making Jessica Fletcher the character I ended up playing took me several years. She started off a little bit goofy, but finally, I made her a woman of my age and of my intellect. I think that is what made her such an appealing character for the world — because she was somebody that people could understand and make part of their lives.”

Fans have realized that throughout all of Murder, She Wrote Jessica never drove. She just took public transport or was driven around by other people. Lansbury told the Los Angeles Times in 1985, “She did not drive a car; I don’t quite know why. As it turned out, it was a very good thing she didn’t, because it precludes, in a sense, the need for car chases.”

Lansbury proudly told TV Guide in 1986 that the show was a “cerebral exercise.” She went on, “When we were filming in Oregon, we found there were a lot of bars where the proprietors set up a pool among the customers, the prize money going to the person who guessed the identity of the murderer... That kind of audience interest, I guess, is what brings in the ratings.”

Lansbury was angry that she never got an Emmy for playing Jessica Fletcher. She lamented to the Radio Times in December 2017, “Everywhere else in the U.S., Murder, She Wrote was huge, but not in Hollywood — no, no, no, they didn’t want to know. I wasn’t upset… well, I was upset, really. It rankled me. I can’t say it didn’t.”

In some ways, Murder, She Wrote was a family affair. Lansbury’s husband Peter Shaw served as her business manager and also as a producer, so he was often present on the set. Her son, Anthony, was a dialogue coach and then a director, while her stepson, David, was another producer.

When Lansbury took over the show, she made it clear that everyone would follow her rules. In December 1992 TV Guide reported that a “young, muscular” actor had once kept Lansbury waiting to film a scene, so she blacklisted him from the show. Lansbury informed the magazine herself, “I do not suffer fools.” Quite so.

None other than Mickey Rooney appeared in Season Ten’s “Bloodlines,” the 200th episode of the show. He’d worked with Lansbury before; the two of them had starred in the 1944 film National Velvet. Their reunion featured heavily in the promo material. The episode also featured Tippi Hedren, so it was star-studded all round.

Lansbury was very careful that Jessica would never seem out of character… or be insulted for being old. She told the Los Angeles Times in 1985, “Any kind of reference to her being an old fogey or being out of date, or making a deprecatory remark about a type of person — I don’t think Jessica’s about that.” She had “shouted a few times” about it.

If you have ever taken the Universal Studios theme park tram tour, you will have seen the Cabot Cove harbor set — even if you didn't know it! That's because the Jaws lake on that tour was apparently the set for Murder, She Wrote. So every time Jessica was down near that water, just remember, there might have been a terrifying animatronic shark lurking in the depths nearby.

In 1996 CBS sources claimed to The Washington Post that the network was losing money on every episode of Murder, She Wrote. Lansbury was having none of it. She shot back via the newspaper, “I don't believe that. It is an expensive show. I know the costs are very high. But Roseanne costs over $1 million an episode, and it’s a half-hour sitcom.”

In March 1985 Lansbury told TV Guide, “I’m not going to work this hard forever. It’s almost forced labor.” That might have been overstating it, but Lansbury was doing 12-to-15-hour working days at the time. She did add, “But you have to be thrilled with the way we’ve gone over. Not only the critics, but the numbers.”

Once Lansbury took over the show, she really took over. Even seemingly unimportant props had to be subject to her approval. In 1986 TV Guide observed her telling the assistant director, “Those flowers on the table are not right for the lifestyle of the family in this scene. They should be changed to chrysanthemums.”

A piece from 1985 in The New York Times quoted Lansbury as saying something rather shocking. She had been fighting “tooth and nail” to prevent Jessica from starting a relationship with a Cabot Cove handyman because her character had to “consort with people of a certain intellectual level.” Even in the ’80s that would have seemed a rather snobbish attitude.

As the show went on, Lansbury was determined that Jessica dressed well. She informed TV Guide in December 1988, “People didn’t want to see me looking frumpy. Women didn’t and neither did men… Anyway, she was traveling more. She was getting used to her widowhood. She discovered that she was attractive and that men paid attention.” She arranged for Jessica to wear stylish designer items from then on. 

In 1995 the show’s time slot moved from Sundays to Thursdays, and Lansbury was very displeased. She told the Spokesman-Review she was “terribly upset” and went on, “Here we were going into our 12th season. I don’t think I would have ever agreed to do this 12th season if I knew this was going to happen. I just couldn’t understand. I couldn’t find any logic to their thinking, and neither could anybody else.”

Reggae performers Chaka Demus and Pliers released a track in 1993 called “Murder She Wrote” — a title inspired by the show. Lansbury, though, didn’t learn about it until 2019, when she was 93 years old. CBC DJ Tom Power told her during an interview and she replied, “Oh, reggae. Oh, I’m thrilled to be part of reggae.”

Lansbury sometimes had issues with how little she got to do on the show. She told TV Guide in 1988, “Jessica is a listener, a questioner. She’s a cerebral soul. She’s seldom emotionally involved in the plots… I don’t mind. It’s fun. But you know, someone likened my job on Murder, She Wrote to my being a horse pulling a milk wagon, while I’m ready to run the Grand National.”

Lansbury was furious when the show was canceled in 1996. And she wasn’t the only one. The actress told The Washington Post that year, “Now I find myself dealing with a public who are desperately unhappy that we’re going off. I am constantly being stopped in the street by fans of the show.” Some of them, she added, told her, “You made CBS! How could they do that to you?”

Sadly, actor Lloyd Nolan was in his final days when he appeared in Murder, She Wrote. An unnamed producer told TV Guide in 1986, “He simply couldn’t handle his lines. Other actresses would have walked off, saying, ‘Call me when he’s ready.’ But not Angela. She worked with Lloyd with the patience of a saint. She coached him, whispered his cues, even took him by the hand at one point, and said, ‘Don’t get upset, Lloyd. I blow lines, too.’”

The writers extracted a sort of revenge on CBS for axing the show. The last episode was titled “Death by Demographics,” and it was all about a radio station trying to attract a younger, cooler audience. Murder was the result, of course. But it ended with the pointed line, “The advertisers seem finally to have discovered the idea that people like us are an invaluable segment of the market.”

Apparently, Lansbury could sometimes get very difficult on set. In 1987 a source informed The Globe, “Frankly, Angela wasn’t a terrific person to work with last season. She was sluggish, easily tired, and cranky. She argued with the wardrobe girls that she looked fat in her clothes.” But as soon as she got on a good diet, they said, she changed for the better.

It saddened Lansbury to wave goodbye to the show. In May 1996, once filming was wrapped, she told the Washington Post, “I found it very difficult to get through the last episode, actually. I was very emotional about it. You know – 12 years! It got to be like getting up in the morning. Ah well. When it’s over, it’s over.”

Over the years, fans have concocted a theory about Murder, She Wrote. Why was Jessica surrounded by murder victims wherever she went? It wasn’t just in Cabot Cove: whenever she left town a dead body would also show up in the new place sooner or later. It was an insane number of slayings for one person to encounter. Could it have been Jessica killing all those people?

Jessica’s full name is Jessica Beatrice Fletcher, and the “Beatrice” is in there as a tribute to Lansbury’s best friend, Beatrice Arthur of Golden Girls. And Jessica’s late husband is called Frank because Beatrice’s original surname was “Frankel.” The two ladies were obviously very close. Who knows, maybe they used to gossip about all these behind-the-scenes secrets.

Angela Lansbury was known for her wit and emotional depth, and she credited her Irish and English sides for each respective trait. Her mother, also an actress, was from Ireland, while her father, a merchant and politician, was English.

A “defining moment” in Lansbury’s life was when her father died of cancer. She was just nine years old. “Nothing before or since has affected me so deeply,” she once said. And it was during this time that she began depending on acting as a coping mechanism.

Fearing for their lives during World War II, Lansbury’s mother moved the family overseas to New York. It wasn’t long after Lansbury got into acting that she nabbed her acclaimed roles in Gaslight and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

It’s rare for an actress to be Oscar-nominated in the first place, let alone on her first two gigs. But that’s what happened to Angela Lansbury with Gaslight and The Picture of Dorian Gray, after which she scored her first two Oscars nods.

Though she easily proved her worth as a film actress, Lansbury was often relegated to B-movie status. During this time, she often portrayed women much older than her actual age and with a villainous streak, which she felt squandered her true dramatic strengths.

Still, whether she was the lead or as a side character, Lansbury made her mark in all of her roles from the '40s and '50s. In The Harvey Girls and Till the Clouds Roll By, she finally put her acting and singing chops on display.

Meanwhile, Lansbury’s romantic life wasn’t going much better. Her marriage to actor Richard Cromwell in 1945 was over in less than a year when it became clear that he was gay. Still, the pair remained close friends until Cromwell’s death in 1960.

Lansbury wasn’t single for long, however. It was love at first sight with actor Peter Pullen Shaw, and the couple got married in 1949. Though Lansbury’s career waned in the '50s, her family only grew: Her children David, Anthony, and Deirdre were all born during this time.

After acting in many small roles with mixed reviews throughout the ‘50s, Lansbury’s career finally took an upswing with 1962’s The Manchurian Candidate, for which she was nominated for her third Oscar.

Lansbury's first appearance in a stage musical was Anyone Can Whistle, written by Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim. Though it was critically panned and only ran for nine performances, it marked the beginning of her future collaboration with Sondheim.

Hollywood stardom eluded her, but in the '60s, Lansbury became a Broadway sensation in Jerry Herman’s musical Mame. At 41 years old, this was Lansbury’s first ever starring role, and she earned her first Tony Award for her performance.

Despite achieving huge success on Broadway, the following years brought career disappointments and setbacks for Lansbury. One bright spot, however, was her role in 1971’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks, marking her first lead role in a screen musical and one of her first collaborations with Disney. 

Lansbury’s personal life wasn’t all magic and music. In 1970 alone, her husband underwent a hip replacement, her son Anthony overdosed on heroin and nearly died, and the family’s home in Malibu was burned down in a brush fire.

What Lansbury craved was anonymity, and that’s what she got when her family moved to a rural farmhouse in County Cork, Ireland. During this time, Anthony recovered from his drug addictions and the family healed away from the prying eyes of the public.

Lansbury couldn’t stay away from the theater for long, though. Her turn as Rose in Gypsy received wide praise. She only garnered more acclaim when the show moved to Broadway, where she scored her third Tony Award for her performance.

Lansbury’s contributions to theater continued into the '80s, and her role as the half-crazed Mrs. Lovett in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street made her a cult favorite and resulted in her fourth Tony Award win.

In the mid-80s, Lansbury nabbed perhaps the most iconic of her entire career: That of sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the TV series Murder, She Wrote. She was deeply involved with the 12-year-long series and was steadfast in her belief that Jessica should be a strong single female character. 

And 1991 was an important year for Lansbury, too: Not only was Murder, She Wrote just as popular as ever, but it was the year she voiced Mrs. Potts in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Her performance of the title song in the film earned the late legend Oscar, Golden Globe, and Grammy awards. 

For her contributions to theater, film, and television, Lansbury was appointed a CBE by the then Prince Charles, officially changing her title to Dame Angela Lansbury. After receiving this honor, Lansbury was as active as ever and even received an Emmy nomination for a guest role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Age didn't stop Lansbury from acting well into her golden years, with roles in Nanny McPhee and Mary Poppins Returns. In 2019, at age 94, Lansbury was still busy working, adding the film The Importance of Being Earnest to her lofty list of credits.

But ultimately, in October 2022, news broke that Angela Lansbury had passed away. Her children announced that, only five days before her 97th birthday, the legend of both stage and screen had quietly succumbed to old age. But in her absence, she's left a remarkable legacy forever on both Hollywood and the dramatic arts.