Kelsey Grammer Thought It Was ‘Time to Let Frasier Go’ More Than 30 Years Ago
It was recently announced that Paramount+ won’t be bringing the Frasier reboot back for a third season, either because fans were mixed on the new iteration of the beloved sitcom, or possibly because Kelsey Grammer’s per episode fee could be measured in private islands.
Still, Grammer seems oddly optimistic that Frasier might continue, and the show is reportedly being shopped around for a new home, which makes it all the more shocking to hear Grammer talk about how he believed that the Frasier Crane well had run dry more than three decades ago.
Grammer recently guested on NPR’s Bullseye with Jesse Thorn, and recounted the story of how Frasier came to be. As we’ve mentioned before, when Cheers wrapped up after 11 seasons, Grammer’s original plan for a follow-up show didn’t involve Frasier Crane at all. Grammer and his collaborators pitched Paramount a whole new comedy series about a Malcolm Forbes-like media mogul who gets paralyzed from the waist down in a motorcycle accident, and befriends his new physical therapist.
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Why the radical departure? “I thought it was time to let Frasier go. I thought it was time to let him go,” Grammer revealed to Thorn.
“To be honest, Kelsey, it probably was,” Thorn responded. “It somehow worked. But even now, looking back, I’m not sure how.”
After submitting a “pretty funny” pilot script for his new project, about a character who would be bedridden for the entire first season, Grammer was invited to go out for dinner with Paramount President John Pike. After taking their seats and ordering a drink, Pike bluntly told the star: “Kelsey, I think a sitcom should be funny,” which Grammer immediately realized meant that he “didn’t like the script.” According to Grammer, Pike then added, “Honestly, I want you to play Frasier.”
So Grammer relented and agreed to play Dr. Crane once again. But he had a few provisos, one being that Frasier would have to abandon his kid. Grammer noted that he wanted Frasier to remain an “honorable dad,” but insisted that he had to have “some distance from the child.” Why? Because if there was a kid, it would be “the most interesting thing on the show, because they grow up on the show.” In other words, the child actor would have gotten all the much attention.
“A six-year-old three years later is a nine-year-old. A nine-year-old, three years after that, if it’s a successful show, is fully in the full bloom of — a boy or a young woman — of puberty and they are the most interesting thing in the room. They just are. That’s just the way things go. And I said, ‘I’m not going to do that.’”
While Frasier’s son Frederick remained largely off-screen in Boston, Frasier was still upstaged thanks to a Jack Russell Terrier named Eddie.
“That was a curse from the writers I guess,” Grammer lamented.
