Reviving “Frasier” was a no-brainer. But it took a lot of thinking to bring back the much-vaunted comedy, which in 11 seasons on NBC won 37 Emmy Awards, more than any other in its genre, when it premiered in 2004, nearly two decades later.
“The idea was to put him in a new world and discover that he still had some of the same problems but that he had matured in some of them,” Kelsey Grammer, who earned four of 10 Emmy nominations for playing the highly cultured and easily agitated psychiatrist Frasier Crane. . , he says of the Paramount+ sequel that started last year and is now filming its second season old-school style: with three cameras in front of a live audience. “He was a little wiser, a little gentler, successful in some ways that Frasier hadn't been before.”
In the new version, Frasier returns to Boston, where the character had been introduced in the previous hit comedy “Cheers,” to teach at Harvard after a lucrative, if ultimately ridiculous, career as a radio and television host. No other characters from the first Seattle-set “Frasier” were regulars in Season 1 of the reboot, although ex-wife Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth) and radio producer Roz (Peri Gilpin) made guest appearances. (Entertainment Weekly recently reported that Gilpin's role is expanding in season two, and while there are no plans to have drinks on Cheers, Grammer told The Envelope that he'd like to see Frasier close things with Shelley Long's Diane ).
The new cast includes British actors Nicholas Lyndhurst as Frasier's college friend turned Harvard colleague Alan Cornwall and Jack Cutmore-Scott as Frasier's firefighter son and semi-reluctant roommate, Freddy Crane. They partially fill some of the positions that Brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) and Father Martin (the late John Mahoney) filled in the previous incarnation. An effort was made to make “Frasier” 2.0 fresh but still informed by the character's rich backstory.
“We never really wanted to do the same show,” notes Grammer, a 69-year-old actor and producer, looking fit in jeans, a black polo shirt and bright red sneakers in his cozy office suite on the Melrose Avenue lot. from Paramount. “I felt like that would be frozen in time and no longer relevant. Boston opened up in my mind; Frasier didn't end up in Boston, he left. So coming back was important to heal some old wounds and maybe redefine yourself a little.”
Chris Harris (“How I Met Your Mother”) and Joe Cristalli (“Life in Pieces”) were chosen to lead the creative team for the new series.
“They were kind of adolescent in their thinking,” Grammer says of the showrunners. “I thought that might give a fresher note to this manifestation of 'Frasier.' They brought a little more silliness to it. I still have to calm them down from time to time! But in the old days we took ourselves very seriously, and maybe some of that was too much.”
“He's a very smart guy, but he misses the point on some things because he's too invested in his intellect,” Kelsey Grammer says of his longtime Frasier Crane character.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Which is not to say that the new “Frasier” shies away from what Grammer calls “at least college-level” discourse. He presented the original sitcom to critics as something that pleased audiences, not degraded them, a rarity at the time and something still. As if to ensure a link to that, “Cheers” co-creator James Burrows (“Best TV director, hands down,” says Grammer) directed the first two episodes of the two new seasons of “Frasier.” Grammer, who started making decisions later in the first series, directs around half of the new episodes. (No season 2 premiere date has been announced.)
“Frasier is a kind character, sometimes a buffoon, but also an intellectual,” says Grammer. “He's a very smart guy, but he misses the point on some things because he's too invested in his intellect. Do we honor the intellectual? Yes, we tried because, honestly, there is thin air up there. “When you understand the nuances of what it means to have this conductor perform a piece of music by this composer, as Frasier does, it really makes for interesting television.”
Plus, Grammer, a Juilliard-trained theater veteran, reveals the secret to delivering esoteric, reference-laden dialogue in a fun, natural way.
“You have to be careful when overwriting,” he explains. “The nice thing about Frasier's scholarship is that he's actually pretty specific about what he means, so the confusion of words isn't really disconnected from what he's trying to make clear. Specificity makes it easy to remember; It's really like doing Shakespeare. If there is too much chatter in the language, I will suggest reducing it to be more concise.”
Jack Cutmore-Scott, from left, Kelsey Grammer, Nicholas Lyndhurst and Toks Olagundoye star in the new “Frasier.”
(Chris Haston / Paramount+)
Clinical psychology plays a smaller role in this show about a psychiatrist than you might think. Grammer notes that there were a couple of psychology specialists on the writing staff of the original series, but their experience didn't come into play much.
“When an actor goes to acting school, he basically goes through psychoanalysis,” he acknowledges. “It's about discovering, discarding and then using what is known about the human condition.”
The four-times-married father of seven has had bouts of substance abuse and trouble with the law, which led him more directly into the spotlight than anything else related to his television work.
“I did some therapy when I was struggling with a lot of grief issues,” Grammer says. “This derailed my personal life (in my professional life I was always quite rational), but I needed a little help, mainly in relationships. After that, really? Playing Frasier and being an actor, these kinds of things are therapeutic.”
The actor, who played Pastor Chuck Smith in the recent faith-based film “Jesus Revolution,” also finds solace in Christianity.
“I'm not proselytizing, but I'm not going to deny it either: I'm a Jesus guy,” Grammer says. “I like him, he has helped me a lot. My comfort with it has grown exponentially as I've realized that it completes me. I am a better man because of it. I make better decisions. “I'm better at home, I'm a better dad.”
As for his status as one of Hollywood's most notable political conservatives, Grammer again notes that he doesn't get too involved but is firm in his beliefs.
“It's been shown time and time again that every time we increase the size of government, people get worse,” he says. “I'm pretty willing to do my part, I've always paid my fair share, although I'm in that rare category where, including property taxes, I'm over 70%. That's a challenge. People complain about living paycheck to paycheck; It's weird when it's me and I'm doing it!
Another reason to revive “Frasier.” The main one, however, was to see if the show could still be performed as well as before.
“You have to make sure the quality stays at a certain level,” Grammer says of the biggest challenge. “The temptation to settle for an easy joke that works is something to resist. And we resist it, with some who escape [laughs]. We try to design it so that we have one good laugh every three pages instead of three bad laughs on every page. Be sparing, choose your moments because, really, the story is the most important thing. What the audience will identify is not necessarily how much they laugh, but why they laugh.”
