Ted Danson has revealed why he turned down further appearances on Frasier, after co-star Kelsey Grammer asked him to return ‘several times’.
The pair famously shared the screen in iconic 80s sitcom Cheers, in which Ted starred as bar owner Sam Malone opposite his former colleague’s efforts as stuffy psychiatrist Frasier Crane.
After Kelsey landed Frasier, his own Cheers spin-off, Ted reprised his role for a one-off episode, which aired in 1995.
However, popping up on the Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast, the 77-year-old opened up about why his brief stint in season two didn’t lead to something more regular.
‘He asked me several times, over the years, to be part of it, and I didn’t,’ he told the host. ‘Not because I was angry at Kelsey or anything, mostly because I didn’t know how to…
‘How the f**k do you play Sam Malone in his 60s or now 70s?
‘It’s amusing to be an ageing adolescent when you’re in your 30s, 40s, but not when you’re in your 70s. So I thought, I don’t know how to do that.
‘It wouldn’t be the Cheers writers … I would have felt at sea. I wouldn’t know how to do it. That’s why I said no.’
Host Howie then questioned Ted on his tumultuous friendship with Kelsey over the years, and the latter’s recent remarks that they had been ‘talking about a couple of ideas’ — including the recently cancelled Frasier reboot.
‘That was over the years,’ the Good Place star clarified. ‘Recently, in the last year, I did say, “Absolutely. Ask me and I will come do it”.
‘Because I felt like I not only owed it to him, but I wanted to.
‘If it came back and he asked me to do an episode or something? Yeah, I would.’
Frasier writer finally addresses one of the sitcom’s biggest mysteries
Metro spoke to writer and executive producer Joe Keenan about one particular event in season six that sparked a huge debate among fans.
Brothers Frasier and Niles received a voicemail from an invitee to one of their parties, who could be overheard mocking the brothers’ bond to their partner, telling them: ‘You get the one, you get that other one.’
This sent the pair spiralling, as they debated who exactly ‘that other one’ was – a dispute that still lives on today.
Keenan touched on what made the episode so special, sharing that the plot stemmed from something that actually happened to co-creator David Lee.
‘That’s one of my favorite episodes, one of the few real time episodes we did,’ he told us. ‘It’s stuff like that that makes a show last. It is so character-based, it’s so simple, it’s so funny, it’s such a relatable mishap.’
However, he refused to wade into the debate surrounding which sibling the message was referring to, laughing: ‘Who is the other one? You’re asking me? Ask the friend, we don’t know!’
Ted’s comments come after Kelsey made headlines for teasing that the Frasier reboot can return for a third season, after it was cancelled at the beginning of the year.
The original series aired for 11 seasons between 1993 and 2004, and won a whopping 37 Emmys in that time.
Three decades later, the actor led the way in a 2023 reboot, joined by a mostly new cast, including Nicholas Lyndhurst and Jack Cutmore-Scott.
Unfortunately, the episodes failed to impress and the project was shelved, but Kelsey teased that it could find a different home on another network, with Ted possibly getting involved.
‘We’ll end up somewhere where people are passionate about it,’ he told the New York Post. ‘Ted [Danson] and I might actually visit something together.
‘We’ve been talking about a couple of ideas. Maybe on Frasier. We don’t know.’
‘As long as it’s still a relevant relationship, it will still be relevant for the show,’ he added. ‘[Sam] and Frasier got along pretty well, discovered some things together about life. They could still do that.’
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