Rian Johnson tried to teach Angela Lansbury ‘Among Us’ for ‘Glass Onion’
The legendary Angela Lansbury was many things: multi-award-winning actress, singer, producer, successful Charles Manson evader, and an icon of both screen and stage. She’s won Oscars, Tony Awards, Golden Gloves, BAFTA Lifetime Achievement Awards, and even received a damehood from Queen Elizabeth II herself. In one of the most acclaimed entertainment careers of all time, there was seemingly nothing that Lansbury couldn’t do.
But director Rian Johnson managed to find a blind spot in Lansbury’s remarkable scope of talent – evidently, she wasn’t much of a gamer.
If you’re not afraid of inconsequential spoilers for Johnson’s latest film Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, then you’ll probably like to know that when we first become reacquainted with master detective Benoit Blanc, he’s in the middle of a Zoom call. More specifically, he’s playing the popular online video game Among Us with a host of celebrity friends.
In the four corners of his Zoom call, Blanc is greeted by actress Natasha Lyonne, basketball icon Kareen Abdul-Jabar, Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim, and Lansbury. Comically, Blanc can’t seem to get a hold of the murder mystery at the heart of the sci-fi online game, and his fellow players are happy to tell him as such.
According to Johnson, Lansbury herself could have been in those same shoes. “She was very patient in letting me describe the rules of Among Us, up to a point,” Johnson told The New York Times. “At which point she just said, ‘You know what? Just tell me what the lines are. I’ll trust you.’”
Johnson emphasized that Lansbury “couldn’t have been lovelier and more generous,” but had to come to the conclusion that the actress was “not a gamer.” Even if that was the case, Glass Onion proved to be Lansbury’s (and Sonheim’s) final film appearance, making Among Us the final area of cinematic expertise that she got to show off.
