Kelsey Grammer loves playing ‘Frasier’: ‘I want to do 100 episodes’

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Kelsey Grammer has been playing Dr. Frasier Crane, the uppity psychiatrist he originated on Cheers, since 1984 and has no plans to say goodbye anytime soon.

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Following Cheers’ end in 1993, Grammer continued playing Frasier on an NBC spinoff for an 11-season run that ended in 2004. Last year, he returned to the role in the Paramount+ revival. With Season 2’s 10-episode run now well underway, Grammer says he’s envisioning another 10 seasons playing Frasier.

“I want to do another 100 episodes at least,” Grammer, 69, says in an interview with Postmedia in a downtown Toronto hotel. “Whether we get there sooner rather than later, I don’t know. We could get there in four years if they wanted to, but we don’t need to. If they want to spread it out a little longer, that’s fine with me. I think he’s going to be relevant and interesting because I intend to stay that way.”

In 1984, Frasier first popped into the Cheers bar as a love interest for Shelley Long’s waitress character, Diane Chambers.

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Grammer suggests audiences embraced him and turned him into a fan favourite because they were able to see themselves in Frasier.

“I think he reminds people of themselves a lot — that feeling of, ‘I’m out of my depth,’” the Emmy winner says laughing. 

After the first spinoff saw the snobby psychiatrist moving to Seattle, where he reconnected with his father (John Mahoney), the sequel series picks up with Frasier returning to his old stomping grounds in Boston in hopes of mending his relationship with his grown-up son Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott).

While Frasier’s brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) is absent, there are still nods to that beloved personality. Anders Keith plays David Crane, Frasier’s nephew, who was born during the original run’s series finale.

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An old pal from his school days, Alan (Nicholas Lyndhurst), convinces him to try his hand at teaching, and Frasier soon embarks on his third act.

Grammer says the relationship Frasier has with Freddy is a bookend to the one he explored alongside the late Mahoney on the initial series.

“The father coming to terms with his son in the original is parroted again in this relationship,” he says.

It should come as no surprise that slipping back into the part of Frasier has been easy for Grammer.

“Getting into Frasier is always easy. He was created by writers, but I gave him what I like call, breath, blood and bones. That’s what I brought to it and I still got it all,” he says smiling.

Legendary director James Burrows (one of the creators of Cheers) was on hand to help give the sequel a push, directing the first two episodes of the reboot. Burrows returned to helm the first two episodes of Season 2. The series is a “natural progression” for the character as he enters the latter stages of his life, Grammer says.

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Grammer says that the decision by Pierce not to return (Bebe Neuwirth’s Lilith Sternin and Peri Gilpin’s Roz Doyle are back as guest stars) doesn’t mean Niles won’t eventually show up.

“We may see Niles, but it will depend on him, honestly, and whether we come up with a story that makes sense,” Grammer says. “Of course we have his son on the show, and he keeps us connected to Niles and Daphne (Jane Leeves). But it would be really fun if they put in an appearance.”

That all incarnations of the show still endure doesn’t surprise Grammer. He says both the first iteration of Frasier (created by David Angell, Peter Casey, David Lee) and this new reimagining (from Chris Harris and Joe Cristalli) aim to stay away from events that would date the episodes.

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“If you watch Murphy Brown, no one cares about the Dan Quayle (jokes) anymore,” he says. “It stays relevant because it’s about relationships. It’s about the way you care about your family. That kind of thing remains universal no matter what the manias of the day are.”

Although he’s still looking for love, this version of Frasier finds him a seemingly more confident man when we meet him in the Boston-set update.

“He’s less mannered and he’s more comfortable in his own skin,” Grammer says of his on-screen alter ego. “He’s financially successful so he doesn’t have that burden of worrying about survival anymore.”

But revisiting Frasier for Paramount+ has given Grammer a deeper appreciation for the character that’s helped shape his life.

“He’s still looking for a peak experience of a deeper love, of a more gratifying experience … and he still devotes his energy to it in a way that is magnetic,” Grammer smiles. “That’s what’s fun about it.”

The first five episodes of Frasier Season 2 are streaming now on Paramount+, with new episodes airing Thursdays.

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