Game of Thrones: is Angela Lansbury heading for Westeros?
Name: Angela Lansbury.
Age: 90.
Appearance: World’s best grandma.
What, better than mine? By far.
How come? Is your grandma acknowledged as a lovely person with a record of being on the right side of every social argument since the 1940s?
Yes. Is she the granddaughter of the former Labour party leader George Lansbury? Did she get nominated for an Oscar for a film she made with Ingrid Bergman when she was 17?
I don’t know. She’d probably have mentioned it. Is she thought to be about to mark her ninth decade in showbusiness with a cameo in Game of Thrones?
I have to admit it’s unlikely. Game Lansbury! In truth, it wasn’t a fair match. She has had basically the best and longest career imaginable, becoming a movie star, then a musical theatre star, then a television star, then a fun old lady.
Don’t I remember her from such films as National Velvet, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Manchurian Candidate and Beauty and the Beast? You do. And don’t forget Blue Hawaii – she plays Elvis Presley’s mum.
I’ll try not to. So, now she’s going to be in Game of Thrones, you say? Well, so says the German newspaper Bild, yes. It claims to have heard a rumour that she’s in Northern Ireland filming two episodes of the seventh series.
Oh well, anyone can claim they’ve heard a rumour. Lansbury’s publicist hasn’t denied she’s doing it, nor has HBO, the maker of the show.
My grandma hasn’t denied it, either. Yes, but this is how they announce things on Game of Thrones. First a rumour gets out that a venerable British actor with US recognition is going to appear in the next series. Then everyone talks. Then Ian McShane or Jim Broadbent or whoever is confirmed.
Or my grandma. I think we’ve established that she lacks the US profile.
Sure. But she’s very tactful. Didn’t McShane give the plot away and then tell anyone who cared to “get a fucking life. It’s only tits and dragons”? Yes. You don’t get that with Angela “Safe Hands” Lansbury.
Do pitch: “During a cruise holiday with friends, Jessica Fletcher arrives on Westeros, where an extremely large number of unexplained murders have occurred.”
Don’t pitch: “Mordor, She Wrote.”