The Hidden Meaning in the Glass Onion Cameos

Still, it’s nice to see the old gang, which includes Angela Lansbury! In what amounts to Lansbury’s final screen appearance, the Tony and Oscar winning actor is one of Blanc’s best buds. This is also the most knowing wink to audiences since Lansbury is the star of what’s arguably the most popular murder mystery TV show of all time, Murder, She Wrote. From 1984 to 1996, Lansbury starred as Jessica Fletcher, a modern day Agatha Christie who initially fancies herself a fiction writer, but in all her many weekly adventures in amateur sleuthing finds herself becoming something closer to a true crime author.

For Gen-Xers like Johnson and older millennials, Murder, She Wrote is one of the formative gateways into “whodunit” fiction—it is also a show we catch Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas) watching in Knives Out. Lansbury of course also has a larger, storied career on stage and screen, appearing in other famous tales of murder where she did the killing, such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber the Fleet Street, the latter of which was a sinister Stephen Sondheim musical where she originated the role of a woman who ground victims up into meat pies. And speaking of Sondheim…

Stephen Sondheim

Yep, it appears that Blanc (and Johnson) can count the legendary Broadway composer among their BFFs too! Sondheim is likewise on Zoom with the bathing Benoit, trying to convince his friend to stop being so morose. This also marks Sondheim’s final screen appearance after a lifetime of cameos and working behind the screens, including last year’s West Side Story remake where he altered lyrics at Steven Spielberg’s request. Sondheim passed away shortly afterward at the age of 91. In a bit of a curious coincidence, Johnson has been the director of four legends’ final big screen performances to date: Lansbury, Sondheim, Christopher Plummer in Knives Out, and Carrie Fisher in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

However, Sondheim’s appearance in Glass Onion is more than a winking cameo; it is also a humble acknowledgment to Johnson’s forebears. In addition to being one of musical theater’s brightest luminaries, Sondheim also co-wrote with Anthony Perkins (yes, of Psycho fame!) one of the most underrated whodunit movies ever made: The Last of Sheila (1973). We already unpacked here how the setup of Glass Onion is inspired directly by Sondheim’s deeply cynical satire. In that film, a group of old showbiz friends gather on a yacht in the Italian Riviera to play games and do drugs. Yet things are not as they seem, even before a person or two winds up dead.

Kareem-Abdul Jabbar

Another of Benoit’s most intimate friends—in fact, the most intimate as Kareem reveals the mysterious Philip (more on him in a bit) warned him of Blanc’s malaise—is the esteemed basketball star and talented polymath, Kareem-Abdul Jabbar. Best remembered for his astonishing 20 seasons in the NBA, during which time he helped win six NBA championships and obtained the title of NBA Most Valuable Player for a record six times, Jabbar is also a distinguished author and activist.

In terms of writing, this includes dabbling in the realm of murder mysteries. On the page, he’s written or co-written an eclectic range of fiction and non-fiction alike. This can include shining a light on the forgotten heroes of the Black soldiers comprising the 761st Tank Battalion… and penning with Anna Waterhouse three detective novels about Mycroft Holmes, the older brother of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps not incidentally, he also contributed to writing the 2019 one-season revival of mystery TV show Veronica Mars.