INTERVIEW – Murder, She Kind of Wrote: Out “SNL” alum Paula Pell puts a goofy queer twist on Jessica Fletcher in “Mapleworth Murders”

Writer-actress Paula Pell knows it’s ridiculous: a dowdy, out-of-touch suburban broad with an accent that is somehow a little British – or Irish, or something – who solves murders in her quaint town. But the Emmy winner, who wrote for Saturday Night Live for nearly 20 years and recently made a dildo-assisted splash in front of the camera as Val in the Netflix original movie Wine Country, ate up every bit of Murder, She Wrote. So playing a randy, gay Jessica Fletcher? It’s the kind of role she’d kill for.
Luckily, she didn’t have to. Fellow comedian and 30 Rock actor John Lutz asked Pell if she’d be interested in portraying an amateur sleuth. She said absolutely. And now, for 12 short-form episodes on Quibi, she is. In the hilarious satire Mapleworth Murders, Pell’s Abigail Mapleworth solves insanely silly murder-mysteries in her own peculiar way, with help from her millennial, selfie-obsessed niece (Hayley Magnus).
Recently, Pell called to talk about the show’s shenanigans as a pandemic salve, why she thinks Angela Lansbury would be into the show, and that time she accidentally sent a dildo to her parents.
GayCalgary: I don’t think there could possibly be a better time for this show. I needed to laugh.
Paula Pell: That makes me so freakin’ happy. I hope that that is true for many people, and I hope that a lot of people watch it, because we loved making it so much. It was one of those moments, and there are so few. Wine Country was one of them. But those true things you do and you go, "If I were able to do that as my job, I would do...