Angela Lansbury on the beginnings of "Murder, She Wrote" - TelevisionAcademy.com/Interviews

well you may be pleased to know that I made the decision that I wanted to get into television I was coming up to being 60 years old and I was really tired I've been on the road a lot and I was ready to sort of not settle well settle down in a sense and it seemed like a good idea to use that time to invest it in television if I could so I told my agent sir William Morris Agency that I I would really like to do something on of an ongoing nature in television a series and they sent me some scripts that were really just dreadful they had me sort of playing the maid or the housekeeper in some ensemble piece this is not my agents but these were the producers who they contacted from Rhodes for their client Angela Lansbury and when I got them I was really pissed off I thought jiminee I've been working all these years in the theater and in movies I don't have a Q rating no I don't but I certainly have a little bit of a reputation certainly being somebody who knows how to do what I do which is act and I send them back and I said do you mean to tell me that I've been working in the theater getting 10% of the gross and keeping the curtain up for 15 years in New York and you've got to offer is that what you call a television opportunity for me at my age well they thought again and within about a week's time that fast I got two scripts in the mail one of them was Murder She Wrote and the other was from Norman Lear and it was for a series a sitcom to do with Charles Durning I read them both and I really didn't know what to make except that I thought that the Murder She Wrote idea was interesting because it was a woman who was a sleuth she was a detective and she was a kind of a plain ordinary country woman who was widowed and who took up writing and she wrote mystery stories and in the course of her daily life she suddenly took up sleuthing so I came out to the coast and the first person I saw was Norman Lear and I was taken to his offices at Universal and he introduced me to Charles Durning and we kind of read through a scene and at the end of that eye I left that meeting very unsure about what I was getting into there I didn't think I felt I didn't think I was right for the world war and I was taken over and to see Peter Fisher and you see Harvey Shepherd he was a head of programming at CBS and Peter Fisher was a producer a showrunner producer at Universal and also the writers building and Richard Levinson they were all there in the meeting I walk into the room and they're very very nice and charming to me and they say we hear that you like our script can we talk to you about it and what our aims are how we want to develop it how we see it down the road this is Peter Fisher he'll be writing and with it with his crew of writers and etc etc well after the interview obviously they had decided that they liked yours truly that they felt I'd be right for this role this woman called Jessica Fletcher and I went home I went back to New York and before I even left I have to say that as far as I was concerned there was no contest this lady mrs. Fletcher was the one that I felt that I could bring something to so I went back to New York repeat was and I said I think this is the one I should go for so I call them up all my agents and said I if there if they want me I would like to you to make a deal for me to make the pilot for Murder She Wrote and that's how it all began you

Channel: FoundationINTERVIEWS

Views: 175,115

Rating: 4.940177 out of 5

Keywords: Angela Lansbury, Murder, She Wrote Murder, She Wrote (TV Program)

Id: uJ-_3TfJrX8

Length: 4min 56sec (296 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 16 2012