Every murderer is undoubtedly someone’s old acquaintance, as Agatha Christie once memorably remarked. Perhaps for this reason, Rian Johnson crammed the screen with friends in his most recent mystery, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. If Daniel Craig’s portrayal of Benoit Blanc, who is as charming as ever, is accurate, then he must be aware of the people he associates with if he is to be the alert hound dog seeking concealed murderers wherever they may reside. Even some killers, or at the very least, fellow detectives, might be present.
In fact, Johnson and Craig utilize their second Benoit Blanc film to call a lot of their real-life pals to the party, many of whose appearances have covert purposes that only the sharpest observers would pick up on. Let’s elaborate…
Angela Lansbury
The group of buddies Benoit is revealed to have over Zoom is one of the first and most popular cameos. We learn Blanc had spent weeks in the bathtub, wallowing in an existential malaise and anxious for a new case to engage his intellect during Craig’s first scene in Glass Onion, which is set back in the horrifying early days of the pandemic. His friends assemble on Zoom to play the online cooperative mystery deduction game Among Us in an effort to cheer him up. It does not assist.
Nevertheless, it’s good to see the old crew, including Angela Lansbury! The Tony and Oscar-winning actor plays one of Blanc’s closest friends in what may be Lansbury’s last appearance on screen. Given that Lansbury is the star of Murder, She Wrote, possibly the most well-known murder mystery television program of all time, this is also the wink that fans will pick up on the most. From 1984 through 1996, Lansbury played Jessica Fletcher, a modern-day Agatha Christie who originally thinks of herself as a fiction writer but ends up becoming more of a real crime author through all of her numerous weekly adventures in amateur sleuthing.
Murder, She Wrote is one of the key introductions to “whodunit” literature for older millennials and Gen-Xers like Johnson; it’s also a program that Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas) is shown watching in Knives Out. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the latter of which was a spooky Stephen Sondheim musical and in which she originated the role of a woman who ground victims up into meat pies, are two other notable murder mysteries where Lansbury performed the deed. In relation to Sondheim,
Ethan Hawke
We’ll be honest, it took us a second to confirm that we weren’t nuts. Yes, that is Ethan Hawke playing the unnamed valet for Miles Bron, the shady millionaire with his own island (Edward Norton). At the pier where Blanc and Miles’ other guests are preparing to embark on a boat to travel to Miles’ exclusive Greek villa, Hawke’s manservant appears. After that, Hawke sprays an unidentified substance on each visitor to declare them “excellent.”
In Hawke’s career, he has appeared in a handful of movies that are at least loosely related to mysteries: Training Day (2001), Taking Lives (2004), and possibly Gattaca. He also played the unexpected murderer in one of these movies! However, we assume that his appearance is really merely there since he is Johnson’s friend and enjoyed traveling to Greece to film this scene.
Hugh Grant
Glass Onion defers returning to Benoit Blanc’s domestic life until the third act in the most delicious surprise cameo, revealing Philip is more than simply a buddy or valet: It is Benoit Blanc’s boyfriend (and possibly husband?) and Hugh Grant portrays him!
The young and brash The romantic comedies Sense and Sensibility (1995), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999), and Love Actually are among Grant’s most known works from the 1990s and 2000s. The actor’s skill is far more diverse, though, as he was able to demonstrate once more with the most recent limited series mystery, The Undoing. Grant plays Jonathan, a prominent oncologist on that HBO show, and his wife Grace, a successful psychologist. However, once an acquaintance dies, the police start to question Grace’s husband about the death. Grace also does this.
Kareem-Abdul Jabbar
The renowned basketball player and gifted polymath Kareem-Abdul Jabbar is one of Benoit’s closest friends—in fact, the closest friend as Kareem discloses the enigmatic Philip (more on him later) forewarned him of Blanc’s condition. Jabbar is a renowned author and activist who is best known for his incredible 20 seasons in the NBA, during which he helped win six NBA championships and was named the league’s Most Valuable Player a record six times.
This includes experimenting with the genre of murder mysteries as it relates to writing. He has penned or co-authored a wide variety of books, including fiction and nonfiction. This may involve bringing attention to the unsung heroes among the Black men that make up the 761st Tank Battalion… and co-authoring three detective novels with Anna Waterhouse about Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock Holmes’ older sibling. Not coincidentally, he also contributed to the writing of the Veronica Mars one-season resurrection in 2019.
Natasha Lyonne
Natasha Lyonne makes an appearance as the fifth companion in Blanc’s Among Us Zoom party, which may be a more recent allusion to mystery literature. Lyonne is well-known for a variety of films and television programs, such as American Pie (1999) and Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019), but these days she is best recognized as the star, producer, and co–creator of Russian Doll. At first sight, that Netflix series seems to be a parody of the Groundhog Day plot, in which Nadia, played by Lyonne, learns she is caught in a time loop where she dies at the end of every day and is then returned back to the same dull party. She discovers that she is a victim of a sinister plot the more she investigates, though, and that it is.
Stephen Sondheim
Yes, it would seem that Blanc (and Johnson) are also close friends with the illustrious Broadway composer! Similar to Benoit, Sondheim is on Zoom with him while he bathes, attempting to persuade him to cheer up. After a lifetime of cameos and working behind the scenes, including last year’s West Side Story remake when he changed lyrics at Steven Spielberg’s request, this also serves as Sondheim’s final on-screen presence. Shortly later, Sondheim, who was 91 years old, passed suddenly. To date, Johnson has directed the final performances on a major motion picture by four legendary actors: Lansbury, Sondheim, Christopher Plummer in Knives Out, and Carrie Fisher in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Sondheim’s participation in Glass Onion, meanwhile, is more than just a winking cameo; it also serves as a modest homage to Johnson’s forefathers. One of the greatest figures in musical theater, Sondheim also co-wrote The Last of Sheila with Anthony Perkins (yes, of Psycho fame! ), one of the most underappreciated mystery films ever created. We’ve already discussed how Sondheim’s sharply satirical play served as direct inspiration for the setting of Glass Onion. On a yacht off the Italian Riviera, a bunch of former showbiz pals assemble to play games and experiment with drugs in that movie. But even before one or two people pass away, things are not as they seem.
Yo-Yo Ma
A cameo can occasionally be seen as such. And yes, it is amusing to see National Medal of Arts recipient and American cellist Yo-Yo Ma fighting at Birdie Jay’s (Kate Hudson) party at the start of Glass Onion. He’s also there to show the audience how ignorant modern pop culture has become by pointing out how influencer Birdie Jay would sooner believe her Shazam app than Yo-Yo Ma about the classical music playing in Miles Bron’s mystery box. However, there is one thing: Ma, where is your mask?
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