Kelsey Grammer Explains That Mysterious ‘Cheers’ Feud with Ted Danson
It’s certainly not uncommon for the stars of hit TV shows to quietly hate each other behind the scenes. Sarah Jessica Parker had a falling out with Kim Cattrall while making Sex and the City, Will Smith fractured the reality of the Fresh Prince-verse because he didn’t get along with the original Aunt Viv and Chevy Chase seemingly antagonized every human being who stepped foot onto the set of Community.
But last fall we learned about a backstage feud that was mostly kept under wraps for decades. And it involves the show about a bar where everybody knows your name — because you have a life-altering alcohol dependency — Cheers.
While speaking with Kelsey Grammer during an episode of his podcast in October, Ted Danson made a startling admission. “I got stuck a little bit with you during the Cheers years. I have a memory of getting angry at you once,” Danson told his guest.
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“You came and told me that one day,” Grammer recalled. Danson then acknowledged that the incident is “stuck in both of our memories, adding, “I feel like, fuck. I don’t know. I feel like I missed out on the last 30 years of Kelsey Grammer. It’s my bad, my doing. And I almost feel like apologizing to you. No, I don’t ‘feel like.’ I apologize.”
The former co-stars didn’t elaborate too much beyond those cryptic statements, prompting a lot of Cheers fans to wonder what exactly happened between those two. Well, Grammer just revealed a bit more info about the secret beef that in no way involves a “will they or won’t they” love triangle.
Grammer recently spoke to The New York Post about what exactly went down between him and TV’s Sam Malone. “It got a little blown out of proportion,” Grammer claimed. “There really wasn’t an argument. It was at a time in my life when I was actually going through a lot of self-doubt, self-loathing, honestly. It was when I was drinking a lot. Ted had just come up and said, ‘You know, I’m kind of mad at you that sometimes you don’t show up ready to go.’ And I said, ‘Okay, I respect that.’ And that actually was sort of it.”
It’s been well-documented that Grammer went through some rough patches during the making of Cheers. He “was arrested on separate cocaine possession and drunk-driving charges” and the cast even held an intervention for him, hopefully not on the set of their fake bar. “I remember the intervention only worked so-so. But going to jail worked great," Danson told US Weekly in 1997.
So it seems as though Danson and Grammer’s dustup was mostly polite and respectful. “Now, maybe what happened for Ted was he stepped away from what might have been a better friendship,” Grammer theorized. “Maybe he just had to protect himself. I don’t really know. But, I said, ‘Thanks.’ We were fine with that.”
Grammer also suggested that there’s a very good chance that Danson might appear in the Frasier reboot — possibly because he’s in deep, deep denial right now.
