Helen Slayton-Hughes, a 40-year veteran of TV and film who is best known for her role as Ethel Beavers on the NBC hit Parks and Recreation, has died. She was 92 years old. The actor’s family confirmed the news on social media, and while no cause of death was given, it seems she had been dealing with an illness. News and tabloid site TMZ was the first to widely report the story.
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Slayton-Hughes’s earliest screen credits date back to 1980. In the 1980s she appeared in a handful of TV and film projects, including Nash Bridges and Shoot the Moon. Born in 1930, Slayton-Hughes would be well into her senior citizenship before she started getting really noticed, with an apperance in the award-winning 2005 film Good Night and Good Luck and a few appearances on Power Rangers Time Force. In the 2000s, she appeared in The West Wing, NYPD Blue, Arrested Development, and many more shows and movies, often in small roles as “the elderly woman” or something like it.
Slayton-Hughes became recognizable to younger viewers as the court stenographer, Ethel Beavers, on Parks and Recreation, a part that she took in 2011. She appeared in 11 episodes over the course of five years, and during that time, also appeared on shows like Raising Hope, True Blood, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and in the 2014 Veronica Mars movie.
“Helen passed away last night,” her family said in a statement. “Her pain has ended but her fierce spirit lives on. Thank you for the love and support of her and her work. Rest sweet one.”
Slayton-Hughes has continued to work with her Parks and Recreation collaborators since the series’ end: she collaborated with series creator Mike Schur, popping in for an episode on Peacock’s Rutherford Falls, and then appeared in the Netflix movie Moxie, which was directed by series star Amy Poehler. In recent years she also appeared in Netflix’s He’s All That, and alongside Marlon Wayans and Kelly Rowland in The Curse of Bridge Hollow.
Our condolences go out to Slayton-Hughes’s family, friends, collaborators, and fans during this difficult time.
