Only Murders In The Building's Robot Doorman Has A Familiar Voice — We Confirmed Who It Is
Warning: The following contains spoilers about Season 5, Episode 4 of Hulu's Only Murders in the Building.
Only Murders in the Building has a running gag: kill Paul Rudd, then bring him back.
At the end of Season 2, Broadway thespian Ben Glenroy was poisoned by stage producer Donna DiMeo — then revived just long enough for her son, Cliff, to shove him down an elevator shaft in Season 3.
In Season 4, Rudd reappeared as Glenroy's Irish stunt double, Glen Stubbins — who promptly met his end at the hands of Marshall P. Pope.
Last fall, I asked series co-creator John Hoffman whether he intended to bring Rudd back yet again in Season 5. He played coy, but didn't rule it out.
"I mean, Paul likes a good, repetitive joke," he answered. "The fact that he likes the show as much as he does, and keeps at it with us, moves me to the point of making terrible choices. Dramatically, I can't take anything off the table."
Which brings us to Season 5, Episode 4 — and yet another resurrection of sorts. Charles and Mabel return from their morning coffee run to find the Arconia's late doorman, Lester, replaced by a Logic-Engineered Secure Tenant Robot. Or as he's better known: L.E.S.T.R.
Listen closely and you might recognize L.E.S.T.R.'s voice. I did. And when I asked Hoffman over Zoom on Aug. 19, he confirmed my hunch. By that point — hours into his press day — no one else had brought it up.
"You're the first that's known," he told me. "You're the only one [who asked me if it was Paul]. In a previous interview, they brought up the robot, and I'm waiting for the question. It doesn't come. And I said, 'OK, just so you know, there's a bit of a surprise around that robot.' They're like, 'What?' And I said, 'Wait for it, if you have to, until the finale episode. A card will come up that will give you an answer.'"
As Hoffman explains it, it was "not the original intention" to have Rudd voice L.E.S.T.R. "We were talking about a couple of different ways we might be able to [bring Paul back], and checking ourselves and going, 'God, we're really pushing it now,'" Hoffman recalled. "'Just knock it off everyone. Just drop it. That's a bad idea.'
"It was only after we had a couple of different versions of that robot voice, and we ran with [one of them] for most of the shooting season," that Hoffman got in touch with his three-time murder victim. "Thankfully, you don't ever see the person, so you can change the voice — and we did at the very, very end. When we were shooting Episode 9, I called Paul up and I said, 'OK, so we discussed, and there's no way we can give you anything else, but we have a thought....' And the best man in the world said, 'When do I come and when do I do that?'"
Rudd will continue to voice L.E.S.T.R. throughout Season 5, and Hoffman hopes audiences will be as tickled by the comedian's delivery as he was.
"I thought he was just brilliant in it," the showrunner says. "He gives reads that—" He pauses, then laughs. "He gives reads that don't make sense for a human being."
So, did you guess it was Paul Rudd behind L.E.S.T.R.'s voice? Leave a comment and let us know.