Katt Williams has pleaded innocent to a robbery charge filed after a photographer accused the comedian of stealing her camera. District attorney spokesman Shiara Davila-Morales said last week that Williams entered the plea Wednesday and was ordered to return to court Feb. 3 for a scheduling hearing. Williams was charged along with Death Row Records founder Suge Knight after reportedly taking the camera as the photographer tried to take a picture in Beverly Hills on Sept. 5. Knight has also pleaded innocent to the charge. The 43-year-old Williams has starred in several comedy specials and appeared in films. He could face up to seven years in prison if convicted.
Angela Lansbury has moved yet again. This time, home is the Los Angeles’ Ahmanson Theatre, where the 89-yearold Tony winner and honorary Oscar recipient has settled in for a six-week run of Noel Coward’s comedy Blithe Spirit. This is Lansbury’s third time with Coward’s 1941 farce, which is propelled by a medium who accidentally conjures the ghost of a writer’s precocious wife. Lansbury played the clairvoyant Madame Arcati on Broadway in 2009 and reprised the role last spring on the West End. “It’s a role that I enjoy playing tremendously,” Lansbury said, adding it was a no-brainer returning to a part “that really, really makes the audience sit up and say, ‘Oh my gosh, what is she doing now?’” A passion for bicycling may be the only tie binding the eccentric Arcati and Lansbury’s best-known character: the earthbound mystery writer-turned-sleuth Jessica Fletcher, whom the actress portrayed on the television series Murder, She Wrote from 1984-96. “People say to me, ‘Well, how can you play Jessica Fletcher and then you come along and play Madame Arcati?’” Lansbury said. “I say, ‘It’s all about imagination.’ That’s what acting is, is imagination. If you don’t have imagination, you’re not going to want to play different roles. I’ve always wanted to attack roles that didn’t appear to be something I’d ever done before.” Lansbury added that, personally, she is “nowhere near” either character, “even though a lot of people would say, ‘Well, you must be like Jessica.’ I’m probably closer to Jessica than I am to Arcati, because I’m a very ordinary person.”