Kelsey Grammer's spiritualist friend says John Mahoney is 'very happy' with the new 'Frasier' (original) (raw)
Kelsey Grammer opens our interview with a quote from a poem by Jorge Luis Borges. Because of course he does.
For nearly 40 years, Grammer has played, rather to perfection, the ever erudite Frasier Crane, so in the public imagination, Grammer and Crane seem like one and the same. Though one can’t imagine Grammer having nearly as many disastrous dinner parties as his fictional counterpart.
Without resorting to hyperbole, Frasier Crane is one of the greatest television characters ever, and certainly one of the most resilient. Since debuting on the third season premiere of Cheers in 1984, Crane has almost always been on television, from his eight seasons on Cheers on CBS, to eleven seasons on his own titular show on NBC, to reruns of both in syndication and on streaming, and now with a reboot of Frasier on Paramount +.
Kelsey Grammer as Frasier Crane.
Chris Haston/Paramount+
In between, Grammer also slipped in a guest appearance as Crane on a 1992 episode of Wings, making him the first actor to be nominated for an Emmy for playing the same character on three different shows. So what keeps bringing Grammer back to the well of Frasier Crane?
“What's great about Frasier is, there's an old poem by Jorge Luis Borges that I used to read, where he talks about how Shakespeare could take all of creation and treat it like a bauble in his hand. And I always thought that's what Frasier's like,” Grammer tells EW.
“Frasier treats the universe like a bauble. It's like it's a magical gift that he can just go anywhere in the world with. He can go to the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, and we can enjoy the ride with him because it's always just a little bit funny. Which goes back to something I learned a long time ago from a very famous old actor, who said, ‘You have to give the audience a wink, and you just have to let them know they're safe, that this isn't that serious, that we're going someplace funny.’ And Frasier knows how to wink.”
Here, Grammer discusses bringing Frasier out of TV history retirement, reuniting with Bebe Neuwirth, his love of The Golden Girls, the original show’s gay sensibility, and the possibility of any future Cheers tie-ins.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So what's it been like getting back in Frasier's shoes after all these years in this new phase of his life? And did you take any inspiration from your own life?
KELSEY GRAMMER: Well, people used to ask me, "How could you play a character for so long?" And honestly, I thought, "Well, how can you live for so long?" It's as simple as, "Was life okay today?" "Yeah, it was. I got up in the morning and I found something new to do. I found something wonderful about life again today." And why I'm still here is why Frasier's still here. So the idea of putting him back on as a character was easy. He's endlessly fascinating because life is endlessly fascinating. I'm a bit of an optimist personally, so I guess that bleeds into the performance.
But Frasier's got new challenges every time he turns around. Right now, of course, they are to get closer to his son [Freddy, played by Jack Cutmore-Scott], to make up for lost time, to move back to Boston to figure out what it was that he didn't quite pull off when he was there before. In one of the episodes, the character of Alan [Nicholas Lyndhurst] says something like, "Whatever happened to good enough? Whatever happened to, 'This'll do?'" Frasier's not that guy. He is going to fight for the rest of his life to find that indescribably perfect place. And whether or not he ever finds it, he's still going to keep searching.
Kelsey Grammer as Frasier Crane and Jack Cutmore-Scott as Freddy Crane.
Chris Haston/Paramount+
And has your approach to playing Frasier changed at all?
Well, he's a little mellower. He's a little less goofy about some things. He has certain knowledge now. He's now his dad. He's put on the role of his father and that's new to him, but I think he's ready for it. And as an homage to John Mahoney and to the role of Martin, we wanted to really include the fact that Frasier was now an orphan. That's what it comes down to. And now he's the guy that needs to live up to the role his dad showed him. It's a nice vibration, and it's lovely to have John kind of around in our subtext all the time. I have a lot of pretty "airy fairy" friends, and a lot of them are mediums or spiritualists or whatever. And I was talking to one of them who said, "Oh, by the way, John is very happy about this show." I said, "Well, I'm glad to hear that." [_Laughs_]
It was so nice seeing Bebe Neuwirth back as Lilith. Can you talk about working with her again? And do you have a hard time falling back into old rhythms, or is it very easy?
No, it's funny. It's not hard, no. You just rehearse a little. Bebe knows that character inside and out, and when she steps into the role of Lilith, she just steps into it. It's like putting on a set of gloves or just taking a shower — it's a real simple life activity. She knows how to act. She's really good at it. This character is one of the greats. She just puts her on and it's fantastic. And so their relationship is fun.
They have a child together, and they both have always been pretty responsible about that. In that nature is why we ended up having that episode to figure out what are we going to do with Frasier back in Boston where [Freddy's] mom has been all this time, and how are they going to share that? And it seemed like a perfectly appropriate thing to try to celebrate his birthday together, which didn't turn out so well.
Kelsey Grammer as Frasier Crane and Bebe Neuwirth as Dr. Lilith Sternin.
Chris Haston/Paramount+
With reboots, I think there's sometimes a tendency to want to change the formula of a show. Was there any point where you felt that Frasier should be maybe a single-camera show without a studio audience?
No. Nah. Multi-cam is a magnificent medium. It has been ignored lately or just not practiced lately. People have gone in another direction. Entertainment now is basically who can be the worst person in the world and who can say the meanest possible thing? Then that's how they get the most views, and we don't need it. We can just do a nice entertaining evening with the Cranes or the Crane-adjacent family and see what they come up with and recognize them in ourselves. I think that's always been the key of sitcoms. But the most famous shows were always sitcoms: Cheers, Seinfeld, Frasier, arguably. Friends, Cosby Show, The Jeffersons. Golden Girls. People still watch Golden Girls and say, "Oh my God, this show is wonderful." I do too. I'm sitting there like, "This is great."
You have a lot closer connection to these characters than I do, so do you have any ideas about what Niles and Daphne and Roz and all these characters are up to now in your own mind?
Well, we had all kinds of creative ideas about them, because originally, of course, I thought that I owed it to everybody that was in the previous show, the legacy cast, an opportunity to be in this one, but it just needed to be a different show, a different set of circumstances for all their lives. We had Niles being a professor somewhere and Daphne maybe living in New York. We had a whole bunch of ideas that possibly could've taken place. Frasier at one point was going to go to New York to discover something. When David and Jane and Peri basically looked like they weren't going to be part of the show, that's when Boston came up. That's when it seemed, "Oh, well, Frasier's got unfinished business to do in Boston. He left with his tail between his legs. He didn't fulfill his dream there. He didn't end up conquering the town the way he wanted to. So it's back to Boston we go."
Kelsey Grammer and Patrick Stewart from the original 'Frasier'.
Chris Haston/Paramount+
One of the things I've always loved about Frasier is the gay sensibility of the show, because even watching it now, the gay humor has aged so well. It's never vindictive. A lot of shows from the '90s haven't aged as well. So can you talk about what about Frasier, whether it was the writers or whatever, contributed to that aspect of it?
I did a cover of a magazine with Phil Hartman years ago [with the headline "More Than Friends: How Sitcoms Became the New Gay Art Form"] with the implication being that most of the writers in Hollywood at that time were gay, apparently. I don't know exactly what it was, but they were picking up on the sensibility, of course, that what was going on with Frasier was a sort of unspoken gay element. And we sort of relished in it. It was fine. It was fun.
One of my favorite moments was when Frasier says, "Is it perfect? No, but I've always wanted to be part of a power couple." He was going out with Patrick Stewart and they were sort of dating. The thing about Frasier, it was always just a celebration of people and different kinds of people in different lives and the way they related to one another. And it was so tongue-in-cheek about how their cultured sensibility sort of screamed of a gay sensibility. And of course, we had some very colorful people writing on the show at the time, so it seemed like a natural outcropping.
Do you have any ideas for Frasier storylines in the future that you would love to do?
You know what? We have not done any storylines yet. We have not had a chance to even sit down and talk. The very first conversation I had was just last week where I said, "Let's start thinking about what we want to do next time, next year." And so we don't know what the next year is exactly because no one's told us. So we're just waiting. In my mind, we're going to do another 100, another 150 shows in the next seven or eight years. That's my hope, and that we have a real library of the newer Frasier as well to turn to.
(l-r) Nicholas Lyndhurst, director James Burrows, Anders Keith, Jess Salgueiro, Kelsey Grammer, Jack Cutmore-Scott and Toks Olagundoye on the set of 'Frasier'.
Chris Haston/Paramount+
Since you're back in Boston, obviously the question is, is anyone from Cheers going to pop up?
I don't think it would be right for us to go back to the bar. I think we made reference to the bar, and it is not what it once was, and most of those characters would've moved on. It might be a very interesting idea to try to find some connection to one of them or somehow see them on the show. I don't know. It could be Rhea [Pearlman], it could be Ted [Danson] if there was a willingness and if there's a story worth telling, but it would have to be worth it. I imagine that Frasier might be interested in sorting out or visiting the past a little bit. Maybe the next Christmas show we could do A Christmas Carol, and he goes back to the ghost of Cheers past so he sees the mistakes he made at Cheers. That might be kind of interesting, and then use clips. I just thought of that now. It might be a fun idea.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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