So earlier in this extremely busy work week, I was contemplating Jonathan Majors playing Sherlock Holmes, and since he had recently been in a movie with Michelle Pfeiffer, she popped to mind a fine Mrs. Hudson for his 221B Baker Street. But the wheels spinning in my head didn't stop there, and where they went wasn't filling out a Jonathan Majors 221B Baker Street cast.
No, it was more along the lines of how I, now being a fellow of a certain age, am suddenly finding more and more women with gray hair quite the attraction. Like John C. Reilly's Watson and Queen Victoria, I'm suddenly realizing that Mrs. Hudson is much more than a grandmotherly figure. And, suddenly, the potential casting for the landlady of Baker Street just went wild.
Can Jamie Lee Curtis do a British accent?
Probably don't have to have her coached on that, as Emma Thompson's also in her sixties, but we don't have to go British automatically. Mary Steenbergen would be a charming Mrs. Hudson, if she could just dump H.G. Wells. (Long story, if you're not old enough to recall that film.) In fact, we could go a lot of ways with Mrs. Hudson.
Like that touch of gangster flavor that BBC Sherlock sprinkled on her? A Katey Sagal version of Mrs. Hudson, anyone? A flirtier Mrs. Hudson played by Jennifer Tilly? Oh, lordy, Geena Davis?
Every movie crush I had in earlier decades is now Mrs. Hudson material!
And Jennifer Coolidge is in everything now, so why not 221 Baker Street?
Catherine O'Hara, Annette Benning, Jennifer Saunders, Julianne Moore, Allison Janney, Tilda Swinton . . . Mrs. Hudson has so little build-up on Watson's printed pages that she can be tweaked all sorts of ways in her casting. And she definitely doesn't have to be matronly.
Of course, I'm not likely to get entirely over Kelly Macdonald's Mrs. Hudson anytime soon. If Watson hadn't blown her up, she could have held on the the role for decades, if the movie going public only had the vision to see the true genius of Holmes and Watson.
Ah, well, we can all dream, can't we? And apparently of Mrs. Hudson!
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