Prunella Scales dies at 93. Actor best known for playing Sybil Fawlty in British sitcom Fawlty Towers
Later roles include Queen Elizabeth II. Elizabeth took part. A Question of AttributionAlan Bennett’s stage and TV drama about the queen’s artistic advisor Anthony Blunt, who is also a Soviet spy. Scales portrays another British monarch in one-woman show An Evening with Queen Victoria.
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Scales was a versatile stage performer with theatrical roles ranging from Shakespeare’s comedies to morphine-addicted matriarch Mary Tyrone in a 1991 production by Eugene O’Neill. Long Day’s Journey into Night.
But he remained the best known Fawlty Towers. In 2006, Scales was the guest of honor at the reopening of the Gleneagles Hotel in the English seaside resort of Torquay; The unforgettably rude owner of this hotel inspired Cleese to create Basil Fawlty after staying there in the 1970s.
Scales was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2013. Between 2014 and 2019 she and her husband, actor Timothy West, explored waterways in Britain and abroad on his gentle travel show. Grand Canal Cruises. The program was praised for the honest way it portrayed Scales’ dementia.
West, her husband of 61 years, died in November 2024. Scales is survived by his sons, stepdaughter Juliet West, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
