This Is Why ‘Cheers’ Decided to Keep Frasier Crane Around
Although Dr. Frasier Crane has been on TV longer than some people currently going through midlife crises have been alive, that wasn’t originally the plan.
When Frasier, played by future Money Plane star Kelsey Grammer, first showed up on Cheers as Diane’s snooty new boyfriend, the role was only meant to last for a handful of episodes. But the producers decided to let the character stick around, seemingly due to Grammer’s performance.
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Well, now we know a little bit more about what exactly went into that decision-making. Ted Danson recently spoke with Cheers co-creators Glen and Les Charles for his Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast. Anyone who watched Cheers will remember their names from appearing in front of that smug-looking jerk in the bowler hat at the end of the opening credits.
The Charles brothers described how they brought in Frasier to “interrupt” the Sam-Diane relationship at the beginning of the show’s third season, just for a “few episodes.” So they set about creating a character who was the “opposite from Sam. You know, a pseudointellectual snob.”
They changed their minds about ditching Frasier, as they’d first planned, not because Grammer was funnier than they had expected, but because he played Frasier as a fully three-dimensional character, surprising the producers with his depth. “We really realized that we needed to bring Kelsey on when we started to see the vulnerability in the character,” Charles explained. “Because at first he was just this pompous, successful psychologist, and he had Diane, and everything was going great. But then when you started to see him breaking down, we realized there were levels to this guy. And he could really play them all.”
It’s true, even in those very first appearances, Frasier is surprisingly likable and earnest for a character who was, ostensibly, introduced purely as a romantic foil for the show’s protagonist. We were invited to laugh at Frasier, but he quickly became as sympathetic as any of the other Cheers barflies.
“Kelsey Grammer is one of our most talented (actors) I think,” Danson agreed, but pointed out that working with him was often nerve-racking.
“He would also show up, right up to the last second, with the script, and he literally, truly did not know his lines,” Danson explained. “And he was reading from the script. And it’d be like, ‘Oh God, how’s this going to work out? He’s carrying the show.’ He has tons of lines, and he would kind of barely have it. And then turn around, audience comes, he’d step out and he was, like, word-perfect.”
Danson refrained from mentioning that he wasn’t always so chill about Grammer’s work ethic, as the two discussed on an earlier podcast.
Of course, Grammer learns all of his lines in advance these days, now that he’s older, sober, and gets paid $2 million an episode to play Frasier Crane.
