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Television|Prunella Scales, Sybil on ‘Fawlty Towers,’ Dies at 93
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/arts/television/prunella-scales-dead.html
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Best known “for playing unfortunate wives,” she had a decades-long career in the theater and on television.
Oct. 28, 2025Updated 8:05 a.m. ET
Prunella Scales, the British actress best known for her role as Sybil Fawlty, the unflappable foil to her hotheaded husband, Basil, in the sitcom “Fawlty Towers,” died on Monday at her home in London. She was 93.
Her death was confirmed on social media by her sons, Samuel and Joseph. No cause was cited, but Ms. Scales had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2014.
“She was watching ‘Fawlty Towers’ the day before she died,” her sons said.
In an almost seven-decade career, Ms. Scales appeared in scores of plays and television series, and gained a reputation for excelling in comedic parts. Her breakout television role was in the BBC sitcom “The Marriage Lines” (1961-66), in which she starred as a newlywed, frustrated homemaker settling into domesticity with her office worker husband (played by Richard Briers).
In “Fawlty Towers,” which aired on BBC Two in 1975 and 1979 and later on PBS, Ms. Scales elevated the character of exasperated spouse to a new level.
Starring opposite John Cleese, who played the high-strung manager of a dysfunctional seaside hotel, Ms. Scales was his elaborately coiffed and impeccably dressed wife who stood as a picture of eye-rolling calm as farce unfolded around her.
She was often found smoking in a back room while on the telephone with a friend, her gossiping frequently punctuated with a drawling “Oh, I know!” Confronted with her husband’s shenanigans, she cut him down to size with a withering look or a short, sharp “BASIL!” — no mean feat for the petite 5-foot-3 Ms. Scales facing the 6-foot-5 Mr. Cleese.
