Kelsey Grammer opens up about decades-long feud with Cheers co-star Ted Danson
An actor of a hit sitcom has opened up about their decades-long feud with one of their co-stars.
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Kelsey Grammer has opened up about his messy decades-long feud with his Cheers co-star Ted Danson that saw the pair not speak for three decades.
The 69-year-old, who played Frasier Crane on the hit sitcom and later went on to have his own spin-off show of the same name, revealed that the entire situation got “blown out of proportion”.
Back in October, movie star Danson – who played Sam Malone on Cheers before starring in other hit sitcoms such as Becker and Curb Your Enthusiasm – hosted Grammer on his Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast alongside actor Woody Harrelson.
In the show, he apologised to the Frasier star for “getting angry” at him once during their Cheers years and ultimately “missing out on the last 30 years of Kelsey Grammer”.
“This isn’t self-deprecating, but it’s — I feel like I got stuck a little bit with you during the Cheers years,” Danson, 77, told Grammer.
“I have a memory of getting angry at you once... and it’s stuck in both of our memories.
“But I feel like... I don’t know. I missed out on the last 30 years of Kelsey Grammer and I feel like it’s my bad, my doing, and I almost feel like apologising to you.
“I apologise to you and me that I sat back, you know, and didn’t … and I really do apologise.”
On Friday last week, Grammer sat down with the New York Post to chat about the feud and said that despite the heartfelt exchange, there was never any serious bad blood between them.
“It got a little blown out of proportion,” the star, who is currently promoting his new film, Wish You Were Here, told the outlet.
“There really wasn’t an argument. It was at a time in my life when I was actually going through a lot of self-doubt, self-loathing, honestly
“It was when I was drinking a lot. Ted had just come up and said, ‘You know, I’m kind of mad at you that sometimes you don’t show up ready to go.’
“And I said, ‘Okay, I respect that.’ And that actually was sort of it.”
Grammer, who is also well known for being the voice of villain Sideshow Bob on The Simpsons, further explained that Danson might have had to “protect himself” after their falling out.
He also revealed that he and Harrelson, who played Woody Boyd on Cheers, have regularly stayed in touch after the show ended.
“Now maybe what happened for Ted was, he stepped away from what might have been a better friendship ... maybe he had to protect himself,” he said.
“I’ve always thought of him, it’s the most loving kind of remembrance and fondness.
“Same with Woody. Woods and I have actually stayed in touch a bit more than Ted and I have.
“That’s still an active sort of friendship — we were emailing just last week. We’re still around.”
In response to questions about whether a Cheers reboot might be on the cards, Grammer confirmed that it “will not come back”.
However, after patching things up with Danson, he said that pair “might actually visit something together.
“We’ve been talking about a couple of ideas, maybe on Frasier,” he said.
“There’s certainly still some fields to be mined there in terms of that relationship.
“As long as it’s still a relevant relationship, it would be relevant for the show.”
Cheers ran from September of 1982 to May of 1993 and featured a cast of characters who bonded in a local Boston bar, including Danson as bartender/bar owner Sam Malone and Grammer as psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane, a regular at the bar.
His character eventually moved to Seattle; there, the highly popular spinoff series Frasier was born, running from September of 1993 to May of 2004.
Originally published as Kelsey Grammer opens up about decades-long feud with Cheers co-star Ted Danson
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