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Kelsey Grammer is revealing the surprising twist that turned “Frasier” into one of television’s most successful sitcoms.
The actor recently appeared on “Planet Tyrus,” where he revealed he nearly starred in a different show after “Cheers” before one conversation changed everything.
Grammer spent nine seasons portraying the Boston psychiatrist on “Cheers,” where the character evolved from Diane Chambers’ love interest to one of the bar’s most memorable regulars.
KELSEY GRAMMER SUSPECTS HE ‘MAY HAVE’ LOST HOLLYWOOD ROLES DUE TO CONSERVATIVE VIEWS
“It’s funny, I had visions,” the star explained. “I’d been offered another show. They said, ‘We want to do a show with you when “Cheers” is over.’ They said, ‘We think you could actually carry a show on your own.’ I said, ‘Great.’ So we actually started doing it with the same writers that ended up on ‘Frasier.’ We wrote a completely different story, and they wrote a script. I thought it was kind of funny.”
“I went out for dinner with John Pike, who was the president of Paramount at the time,” the 71-year-old shared. “… I said, ‘Have you read the script?’ He said, ‘Yeah. And I think a sitcom should be funny. … This is what you guys have come up with? I don’t like it. I think you should play Frasier.'”
“It was John Pike who said, ‘Play Frasier.’”
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Grammer was listening.
“I said, ‘OK, I see what you’re saying. Build an audience. I am kind of funny in the character. He can’t be married anymore, and he can’t have kids,’” Grammer said.
“He did have a son. … My thing about sitcoms is if there’s a child in it, the child growing up every year becomes the most interesting thing about the show. … Becoming a young woman or becoming a young man is the only really interesting thing that’s going on in front of you. So I got rid of that, had him come in once in a while.”
Grammer said moving Frasier from Boston to Seattle helped separate the spinoff from “Cheers.” It also gave a believable reason why his young son, Frederick, wasn’t part of the show full-time instead of making the psychiatrist seem like a “deadbeat dad.”
“[I] just had to be a man trying to find his way,” said Grammer.
“Whose support payments were on time,” Tyrus joked.
“Frasier” premiered on Sept. 16, 1993, and ran for 11 seasons before ending on May 13, 2004. The sitcom won 37 Primetime Emmy Awards and drew 25.2 million viewers for its series finale, becoming one of television’s most acclaimed comedies.
In 2023, Grammer reprised his iconic role in the “Frasier” revival on Paramount+, which followed the psychiatrist’s return to Boston. The series ran for two seasons before Paramount+ canceled it in 2025.
Noticeably absent from the reboot was John Mahoney, who played Grammer’s on-screen father, Martin Crane. Mahoney died in 2018 at 77.
“John was a remarkably fun guy,” Grammer told Fox News Digital in 2021. “He was always kind and sweet and lovely. But the ironic thing about him — when I was directing him once on the show, I said, ‘John, let’s put the dog Eddie in your lap.’ And he says, ‘No, no.’ I said, ‘What’s going on?’ ‘He always bites me. He always growls at me. He scares me, and I don’t like it.’ So I thought, ‘Oh, this is weird. I had no idea.’”
“So they had to put a little sardine oil on his hands, so the dog would lick something instead of trying to growl at him or bite him. This love for Eddie that existed on the show really wasn’t real. It was just an on-camera love. They fought each other, and he was really funny about his relationship with the dog.”
“… Every time I spoke to him, we just had a great time,” Grammer continued. “We spent time in New York together off-screen, and I saw him in Chicago, and I saw him in Ireland once. He was just a wonderful guy.”
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At the time, Grammer said he was eager for what the future held, both personally and professionally.
“You know what? Life always inspired me,” he said. “Life and the variety of experience is what inspires me. People inspire me; I love people. I mean, it’s odd that I ended up on a show that was based in a bar. My favorite places on Earth are bars. I’ve had the best experiences, met the most interesting people in bars around the world. And so, what keeps me going personally is that there is always another experience I haven’t known.”
“… I’ll go right up to the edge before it starts to get dangerous,” he joked. “But I love it. I love riding horses, I love shooting guns, I love just exploring all the things that people can do and all the things that a character can do and show you. By virtue of the fact that you’ve played it, you’ve actually kind of lived it.”
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