‘Cheers’ Stars Called in Sick to Get Wasted on Shrooms

“John Ratzenberger Bought a Boat” turned into the most psychedelic episode of Cheers ever. Unfortunately, the cameras weren’t rolling to turn it into a night of must-see TV. 

Woody Harrelson and Ted Danson got to reminiscing with George Wendt on this week’s Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast. The guys remembered a particular episode of Cheers that was “very female-heavy,” meaning a Diane storyline gave the men fewer lines than usual. “John had just bought a boat and he was anxious to show it off,” Wendt remembered. “So we cooked up this little getaway.” 

By the time they got to the dock, explained Danson, “Woody and I were already stoned.” But not too stoned to get on a pay phone to call into work with made-up excuses for skipping out. Danson told his Cheers bosses, “I’m not feeling too good,” then handed the phone to his co-stars so they could claim similar illnesses. “So it was clear that we were playing hooky.” 

Kelsey Grammer, no stranger to intoxication, slept his way through the hijinks, said Danson. “He had been up all night playing cards, went down to the lower bunk and fell asleep the whole way.”

But as for Sam Malone and Woody Boyd? “Woody turns to me and goes, ‘Have you ever had mushrooms?’” remembered Danson, telling Harrelson that he’d never had the pleasure. “And he said, ‘Well, this will be a good time. We have nothing to do. We’ll be out on a boat.’” 

Rookie Danson, who was really hungry from lack of breakfast, devoured “an extraordinary amount of mushrooms.” Uh-oh. 

Waves from a recent hurricane rocked Ratzenberger’s boat as they sailed. Down below, Danson “sat there getting more and more and more freaked out,” he said. While Harrelson seemed stoned/relaxed on his bunk, “I am panicking. I’m having trouble breathing. I’ll go up top.”

Wendt, who hadn’t swallowed shrooms himself, knew something was up. Danson sat next to TV’s Norm and “you went, ‘You’re high on something, aren’t you?’ And I kind of nodded sheepishly. And John was like, ‘Oh, for crying out loud.’” That put Wendt on trip-sitting duty, spending the next 45 minutes reminding Danson to breathe. 

Down below, Harrelson wasn’t doing much better. He eventually came up to the deck because he was afraid he might jump off the back of the boat without cooler heads around. “I looked at you, and you looked skeletal,” said Danson. “You looked like Woody the Skeleton in my eyes.”

Those must have been skeleton-shrooms because Harrelson experienced the same thing. “I remember you looked like that too,” he told Danson. He also recalled that Wendt was tripping himself, but not so — he was simply seasick from the waves. 

“He was our lifesaver,” insisted Danson.

In Harrelson’s mushroom-addled brain, Wendt “looked like a hologram of yourself.”

All’s well that ends well, right? Not quite — there was still hell to pay when the hungover, seasick cast returned to Cheers. “We were in such trouble,” said Wendt. “I didn't think anyone would give a shit.”

“They called us in one at a time to give us shit!” remembered Danson. 

“Well, it was fair,” said the instigator Harrelson. “We shouldn’t have done that.”