Yahoo News Where are the original Fawlty Towers cast now?
John Cleese is rebooting his classic BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers, it was announced this week.
The British actor and writer, who starred in the original series as hotel owner Basil Fawlty, is collaborating on the new show with Spinal Tap filmmaker Rob Reiner.
He will write and star in the revival, which is currently in development, along with his daughter, Camilla Cleese.
The Fawlty Towers reboot will reportedly explore “how Cleese’s over-the-top, cynical and misanthropic Basil Fawlty navigates the modern world”.
Cleese claimed that an initial meeting about the series had yielded “one of the best creative sessions I can remember”.
So what happened to the main four castmembers of Fawlty Towers?
John Cleese
After Fawlty Towers finished, Cleese, who played bedraggled hotelier Basil Fawlty, went on to enjoy a successful film career.
Highlights include 1981’s Time Bandits, directed by fellow Monty Python star Terry Gilliam, and the screwball comedy A Fish Called Wanda (1988), which Cleese also wrote.
He would also play “R” and “Q” in two James Bond films –The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day – and had a small role in the Harry Potter film franchise.
Later in life, Cleese has become known for his criticisms of “woke” culture and political correctness, and starred in the 2018 sitcom Hold the Sunset.
Prunella Scales
Scales, who played Basil’s domineering wife Sybil Fawlty, went on to enjoy a prolific career after Fawlty Towers came to an end.
Perhaps her best-known post-Fawlty role came in 1991’s A Question of Attribution, written by Alan Bennett, which saw Scales earn a Bafta nomination for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II.
For 10 years, Scales appeared in advertisements for Tesco supermarkets, playing “Dotty” Turnbull, alongside Jane Horrocks.
Between 2014 and 2021, she hosted the Channel 4 travel series Great Canal Journeys alongside her husband, the actor Timothy West.
Sadly, Scales was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease back in 2014, and was forced to retire from acting in 2020.
Connie Booth
Booth played hotel employee Polly in Fawlty Towers, and also co-created the series alongside her then husband Cleese.
They had split up by the time Fawlty Towers finished airing, however, and Booth has been reluctant to discuss the series in interviews in the years since.
After finishing work on the show, Booth continued to act in various film, TV and theatre projects throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.
In 1995, she gave up acting and became a psychotherapist for the remainder of her career.
Sachs, who played the role of Spanish waiter Manuel, became known for his voiceover work after finding fame on Fawlty Towers.
In 2008, Sachs was the victim of an infamous radio prank by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand, in which the duo left obscene messages on his telephone answering machine. The stunt prompted widespread outrage and condemnation.
Sachs died on 23 November 2016, having been diagnosed with vascular dementia four years earler.
