Given the fervent fandom for Only Murders In The Building, its tantalising mysteries and the fact that its Season 2 finale has only just landed, we'll preface all of this story with a whopping great SPOILER ALERT. And with that out of the way, we can now get to the meat: after a quick cameo in said finale, Paul Rudd is part of the cast for Season 3 of the show.
Rudd in his brief appearance as part of a one-year time jump at the end of Season 2, plays Ben Glenroy, the lead in director Oliver Puttnam's (Martin Short) big return to Broadway. A big return that is slightly spoiled when Ben keels over dead as the curtain rises on the first night. It's also revealed that he and co-star Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin) had beef, with Charles warning him away from a yet-to-be-revealed "her"…
Talking to Deadline show co-creator John Hoffman talked about how they scored Rudd. "We’re all fans of his. But also, Paul has a pretty close relationship with Martin Short and he also made a film with Selena Gomez, and she adores him. But the kicker is that Paul has revered Steve Martin since he was a kid, so all of these things came together for this very big ask,” Hoffman says.
"We were saying, 'is there any world where a major movie star could come and do this five minutes for our season finale?' But more importantly, when we come around to shooting Season 3, many, many months from now, would he be available because he’s now a certain kind of victim within our show? We need to have time with him; would he come back and play with us in Season 3? God love Paul Rudd because he immediately said yes."
Season 3, then, will be set in the aftermath of Ben's death but also flash back to his time in rehearsal (unless the plan is for Rudd to just play a corpse all through the season which in its own way would be funny).
Yet perhaps the biggest mystery for sleuths Charles, Oliver and Mabel (Gomez) to solve will be, how the heck does Rudd stay looking so young?