Lucille Bluth was the role Jessica Walter was born to play
Jessica Walter racked up a reported 161 film and TV credits over her 70year acting career. If that number had only been 160, she would have still been the best sort of actor: a safe pair of hands who gets consistent work shoring up individual episodes of long-running shows. The spectrum of series that Walter appeared in over the years was impressive: Flipper, Columbo, Hawaii Five-O, Quincy, Knot’s Landing, Magnum, and Law and Order are just a few. She would pop in for a single episode, class it up a little and leave.
However, she will be remembered for one show above all. As Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development, Walter landed the role she was born to play: a beautifully written, brilliantly wicked character that she elevated to icon status.
Arrested Development was nothing less than a star-making machine. Almost every person involved in the series has gone on to new heights. It made movie stars out of Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Michael Cera and David Cross, and launched the career of Alia Shawkat, now leading the cult comedy Search Party. Even the show’s longtime directors, the Russo Brothers, ended up making the biggest film of all time.
Yet Lucille was, arguably, the heart of the show. Even more so than Bateman’s Michael, the everyman caught in the middle of his awful warring relatives, Lucille held things together. A parental figure who was always present, consistent and fully in charge. Whenever any of her adult children looked as if they might be edging for the door, she would deploy an arsenal of psychological tactics – bullying, guilttripping, reverse psychology, flattery – to keep them in place. There’s no question that Lucille Bluth is a staggeringly bad parent. But you can’t deny that she knows her children well. She smothers Buster (“He’s become too much of a big shot to brush mother’s hair”). She attacks Lindsay with barely veiled criticisms about her weight (“You want your belt to buckle, not your chair”). She “doesn’t care” for Gob. She knows ex