The Beauty of Mrs. Potts: My Lifetime Being Comforted by Angela Lansbury

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.

This week:

• Help me stop watching terrible TV.

• What Angela Lansbury meant to me. (Sappy alert!)

• All I can think about is negronis.

• The Glee drama never ends.

• Voldemort rises again.

Tale as Old as Time…

I’ve spent my lifetime being comforted by Angela Lansbury.

A proper millennial, my first introduction to Lansbury, who died this week at age 96, was when she voiced Mrs. Potts in the animated film Beauty and the Beast. By that point, she was already a legend: an Oscar nominee, a Broadway dame, and a household name.

To the child version of me, she was warmth personified. Her mumsy tenderness exuded from this singing, talking teapot, like the steam from a drink the character herself might pour. She created a Mrs. Potts that was on our level and familiar, but Lansbury brought with that an awe-inducing gravitas.

She reassures Belle. She dotes on Chip. She calms the Beast. But make no mistake about the regality she’s earned: When Mrs. Potts starts singing the first bars to “Beauty and the Beast,” it was clear that she was ushering in something important. Even I knew that, and when I first saw this movie I couldn’t even tie my shoes. She announced that we were about to watch one of the grandest sequences in cinematic history, something that would change our lives. And, because she’s Angela Lansbury, we felt safe and welcome basking in the moment, letting the wonder of it all wash over us.

I remember at the end of the number “Something There,” Mrs. Potts sings, “There must be something there that wasn’t there before,” and Chip asks, “What’s there, mama?” “I’ll tell you when you’re older,” she tells him, which was enough to satisfy me then.

Now that I am older and understand the wild swirl of complicated feelings she was winking at—love happening outside the window—I still turn to that little aside. Along the journey to whatever “happy ever after” means for me, I’ve needed that bolstering from Mrs. Potts. After every bump, there’s a new lesson. What is it exactly? “I’ll tell you when you’re older.” There’s still hope.

But there was more than just Beauty and the Beast. In Bedknobs and Broomsticks, she comforted me: It’s OK to take risks. Bob along on the bottom of the beautiful briny sea; it might be the best thing you ever do.

I first heard a song from Sweeney Todd as a lullaby. “Not While I’m Around” comforted me in obvious ways that a lullaby would, so many times. Later in life, Lansbury’s revelatory Mrs. Lovett comforted me by helping me realize you can be loving and still have a dark streak… if maybe not as dark as hers.

When I discovered all of the classic clips of her performing on Broadway, especially in Mame, I was reassured that being brassy, unapologetic, and campy will, somewhere—if not where I was right then—be celebrated.

Lansbury was astonishing. Watch Gaslight and The Manchurian Candidate. For the love of God, stop watching reruns of Law & Order: SVU and binge Murder She Wrote instead. I thought about this same thing when Betty White died: She meant as much to me as she meant to many generations before me. Will kids today have that connection with a performer on this scale, with this kind of longevity? Will my little nephews have that?

I mean, my nephews will be forced to watch Golden Girls episodes with me, whether they like it or not. And if my mother and sister have anything to say about it, Mrs. Potts will be a formidable part of their childhoods. But every time someone so special like this passes, it’s heartbreaking in a different way—if that makes any sense. Maybe I’ll figure out what I mean by that… when I’m older.

The Drink Order That Caused an Internet War

At some point in my life, I convinced myself that a negroni is delicious. It might have coincided with my early onset alcoholism. (Who could say?!) But I know the negroni is, in a word, polarizing. It’s with this knowledge that I watched the internet erupt into a violent frenzy over a negroni-centric viral video.

House of the Dragon stars Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke did a promotional interview for HBO where they interviewed each other, asking innocuous questions like, “what’s your favorite drink?” Alcohol hasn’t broken the internet in this fashion since Kim Kardashian defied physics to spray champagne onto her butt.

“Negroni. Sbagliato. With prosecco in it,” D’Arcy purred. (This is a real drink; in a sbagliato, the prosecco substitutes for the gin.) Half the internet acted like D’Arcy had just created some new kind of pornography: Their delivery is so sumptuous, and their choice of cocktail is so alluring and cool. The other half acted as if D’Arcy had created the coronavirus pandemic.

There’s a fun explainer on all of this drama—inexplicably, there is drama!—here. I’m just glad that this is the controversy of the week. All things considered, it’s a treat. A treat like, one might say, a negroni… sbagliato… with…

We Should Stop Believing

The juiciest and most consequential gossip surrounding a TV series at the moment stems from a series that went off the air seven years—and that most people wrote off as nerdy or embarrassing. Fellow Gleeks, the vindication is sweet.

OK, reveling in this might be in poor taste. There is so much tragedy that has happened to its cast. The Lea Michele drama is complicated, to say the least. (She’s so good in Funny Girl! She was so bad to many people!) Years since the show went off the air, Michele’s fellow Glee alums are showing the most public cattiness since Bette Davis and Joan Crawford when it comes to her success on Broadway.

Discovery+ just announced a docuseries about all of this. It will probably be tawdry and exploitative. Give it to me like a Slushie to the face.

Accio: Some Sense!

Harry Potter fans—at least the ones with a conscience—have a hard time reconciling their love of the franchise with the surging hatefulness of its creator. I’m personally in a constant, evolving relationship with that predicament. But this latest tweet from the author is food for thought.

What to watch this week:

Inside Amy Schumer: One of the funniest, smartest sketch series…ever?...finally comes back. (Thurs. on Paramount+)

Documentary Now!: One of the funniest, smartest TV satires…ever?...finally comes back. (Wed. on IFC)

What to skip this week:

Halloween Ends: Funnily enough, “Halloween ends” are the two greatest words this Spooky Season Grinch could hear. (Now in theaters and on Peacock)

Love Is Blind: I beg of all of you to find something more interesting to be ironically obsessed with. (Wed. on Netflix)

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