Kelsey Grammer Thought ‘Cheers’ Was ‘A Terrible Show’ Until They Offered Him A Job

Making your way in the world today takes everything you got — which, if you’re Kelsey Grammer, is a gazillion dollars and a hankering to bite the hand that feeds you.

Before Grammer joined the cast of Cheers as the snooty psychologist Dr. Frasier Crane in 1994, Grammer was Juilliard graduate and a lauded stage actor who was happily making a name for himself in the theatre world by starring in Shakespeare productions on Broadway and originating parts in Stephen Sondheim musicals. When Grammer’s Sunday in the Park with George co-star Mandy Patinkin recommended him to a New York casting director, the first TV audition Grammer attended was for an upcoming and surprisingly progressive sitcom called Brothers, which would feature a rare openly gay character and his conservatively straight siblings. Grammer didn’t get the part.

Grammer’s second attempt at breaking into television was for another sitcom, this one an existing but little-known show about a bunch of horny bartenders and their customers, or something stupid like that. At a recent screening for new episodes of Grammer’s Frasier reboot, the actor who has been cashing exorbitant checks for playing the titular snob over the last four decades revealed that, when the casting director told him about a part opening up on Cheers, he didn’t even recognize the show’s title.

Then, when he remembered once watching the Cheers pilot while working as a bartender himself, Grammer says he recalled thinking, “What a terrible show. I would never want to be on something like that.”

Grammer recalled the conversation with the casting director, telling the crowd at the Gotham screening, “She said, ‘There’s a new character coming on to Cheers.’ I thought, ‘What the hell is Cheers?’ She said, ‘It’s a television show that’s very popular right now. Sam and Diane are the characters.’”

When Grammer finally remembered watching the very first episode of Cheers and finding it too god-awful for an actor of his caliber to ever join the cast, the casting director had to talk him into taking the biggest opportunity that would ever fall into his lap. “She explained a little more about it. There was a requirement to keep it secret, like it was some kind of industrial espionage thing,” Grammer recalled of the conversation. “And I thought, ‘This is very cool and clandestine, so I’ll keep my mouth shut.’ She called me in, I went on tape, I got a call.”

However, Grammer’s Cheers audition didn’t quite feel like a massive success. “We read through the scenes. There were three scenes, and I didn’t get a single laugh,” explained Grammer. 

Frustrated, Grammer stormed out of the audition, years later saying, “I put the sides down the table, turned everybody and said, ‘I’m really glad I came. I’m going to go out on the street, see if I get some laughs out there.’ And I left.”

Grammer recalled taking a trip to San Diego to clear his head following what he thought was a horribly bombed audition. But upon returning to his Los Angeles home, Grammer found, “sitting on the table was a bottle of Dom Perignon, and it said, ‘Welcome to Cheers.’ Which was a great moment in my life.”

But, not to be satisfied even for a second, Grammer recalled, “Of course, then I said, ‘Well, I’m going to have to fix the show, because it’s no good.’”