Warning! SPOILERS ahead for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.
Glass Onion director Rian Johnson weaves an intricate and twisting tale, made all the more surprising with a slew of celebrity cameos.
ing Craig in Glass Onion is an all-star cast including Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kate Hudson, Kathryn Hahn, Dave Bautista, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, and Madelyn Cline, but theirs aren’t the only famous faces recognizable in the movie. The audience not only learns more about Benoit Blanc’s private life but the strange privileges that Edward Norton’s Miles Bron is afforded due to his massive levels of wealth as well. Both sides of the story provide unique opportunities for cameos in Glass Onion, and Rian Johnson's latest murder mystery has utilized these opportunities to the max.
Yo-Yo Ma
Probably the most unexpected cameo of all in Glass Onion, renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma makes a brief appearance at a party thrown by Kate Hudson’s problematic former model Birdie Jay. Yo-Yo Ma helps Birdie and her friends solve a puzzle box sent to them by Miles which contains a piece of classical music. Yo-Yo Ma’s Glass Onion cameo comes out of nowhere, making it all the more delightful, especially when considering that Yo-Yo Ma has hardly appeared in any other popular media during his entire legendary career.
Stephen Sondheim
One of the most famous composers of all time, Stephen Sondheim filmed a cameo for Glass Onion before his ing in November 2021. Sondheim is celebrated for his work on musicals such as West Side Story (recently adapted by Steven Spielberg), and Into The Woods, among many more. During a sequence in which the audience is given a peek into how Benoit Blanc has been dealing with the Covid lockdown, Blanc is on a Zoom call with Sondheim while in his bathtub playing the online multiplayer game Among Us. Glass Onion reveals that Blanc is playing Among Us with a few other equally famous friends who are trying to get him out of his lockdown funk.
Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury’s cameo in Glass Onion is as bittersweet as Stephen Sondheim’s, as she sadly ed away in October 2022. Rian Johnson including Lansbury in Glass Onion should be no surprise, after all, she’s one of the queens of the murder mystery genre, having played the leading role of Jessica Fletcher in the iconic show Murder, She Wrote for over 12 years. Like Sondheim, Lansbury plays herself in one of the most star-studded Zoom calls of all time, trying to cheer up Benoit Blanc after not having had a case to sink his teeth into for so long.
Natasha Lyonne
Natasha Lyonne is famously one of Rian Johnson’s closest friends, and her cameo in Glass Onion is certainly a welcome one. Lyonne too seems to be one of Benoit Blanc’s friends, taking part in the same Zoom call as Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury. Lyonne’s cameo in Glass Onion also points to her and Rian Johnson’s TV series Poker Face, which Johnson created and Lyonne stars in. Poker Face is another venture into murder mystery territory for Johnson, and it remains a possibility that Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc could make a surprise cameo appearance there in return.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
The last member of Benoit Blanc’s inner circle Zoom call is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a legendary basketball player, activist, and writer. Like the others, Abdul-Jabbar cameos as himself in Glass Onion, the icing on top of a massively famous cake of Benoit Blanc’s seemingly closest friends. Blanc is of course quite famous himself, known as the “greatest detective in the world,” and “the last of the gentleman sleuths,” so perhaps his fabulous group of friends shouldn’t have come as such a surprise.
Ethan Hawke
Movie star Ethan Hawke’s cameo in Glass Onion is short but effective, and Hawke is credited only as Efficient Man. Hawke shows up at the pier in Greece where Miles Bron’s guests are waiting to be whisked away to his private island. As the movie takes place during the height of the Covid pandemic, Hawke’s character is charged with giving each of the guests some sort of oral injection, which is heavily implied as being a cure or vaccine for Covid, parodying one of the many privileges that the ultra-wealthy likely got to enjoy while the rest of the world was stuck in lockdown.
Hugh Grant
Always a delightful addition, Hugh Grant’s cameo in Glass Onion offers another look into Benoit Blanc’s private life. Hugh Grant plays Phillip, Benoit Blanc’s partner, who seems to have taken up baking during the lockdown, just as many did during that period. During an extended flashback sequence, it is Philip who opens up the door to his and Blanc’s apartment and reveals Blanc’s first potential client since the pandemic started.
Serena Williams
Miles Bron’s wealth has allowed him to purchase an entire private island and outfit it with all that money can buy, including a well-equipped gym. Perhaps more surprising, however, is that Bron’s well-equipped gym comes with its own personal trainer, who is none other than tennis superstar Serena Williams. Though Williams isn’t on the island in person, she does offer to give Blanc and Janelle Monáe’s Glass Onion character Andi Brand a training session through a virtual screen hung on the wall of the gym.
Honorable Mentions
As if all those cameos weren’t enough, Glass Onion also references a few other celebrities throughout the film, some of whom have an important role to play. Jeremy Renner, for instance, has his own line of homemade hot sauce in the movie, which plays a pivotal role in a scheme cooked up by Benoit Blanc to catch the killer. Jared Leto, likewise, has his own brand of hard kombucha in Glass Onion, which is ed around by the poolside.
Additionally, on his private island, Miles Bron has installed a terrifyingly loud clock, which reads out the time across the whole island for each hour. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the voice of that clock. Interestingly enough, Gordon-Levitt has had similar cameos in every single one of Rian Johnson’s films. He also had a cameo in the first Knives Out movie, in which he voices an intensely violent piece of dialogue in a parody of Law & Order watched by Marta Cabrera’s (Ana de Armas) sister. All of these cameos, combined with a main cast of hilarious, suspicious, and mystifying characters, make Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery a highly enjoyable and memorable film.
