Before Kelsey Grammer starred as Dr. Frasier Crane on the aptly-titled Frasier for 11 seasons, he shined as the character for eight seasons on Cheers, with both those shows, as well as the Frasier revival, being available to stream with a Paramount+ subscription. While Cheers was one of the most popular TV shows of its day and still ranks as one of the best sitcoms of all time, that doesn’t mean everything was hunky dory behind the scenes. It turns out that Grammer had a feud going with Cheers co-star Ted Danson for 30 years that was specifically tied to the show.
Grammer and Danson had previously addressed how they hadn’t spoken to each other in 30 years due an argument, but the former elaborated on what specifically happened between them while being interviewed by The New York Post. Per the Frasier actor, it wasn’t so much an argument as Danson getting annoyed with how Grammer was conducting himself on set:
It got a little blown out of proportion. 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, ‘OK, I respect that.’ And that actually was sort of it.
Ted Danson starred for the entirety of Cheers as lead character Sam Malone, a former baseball player who ran the same-named bar in Boston, Massachusetts. Frasier Crane, a psychiatrist, was a recurring character in Seasons 3 and 4, and then Kelsey Grammer was upgraded to the main cast in Season 5, a position he held until the show concluded in 1993. So he and Danson spent a lot of time together, but it got to a point where Grammer’s drinking became too much for Danson because of how it was affecting the shooting of Cheers week to week. Grammer continued:
Now, maybe what happened for Ted was he stepped away from what might have been a better friendship. Maybe he just had to protect himself. I don’t really know. But, I said, ‘Thanks.’ We were fine with that.
Following Cheers’ conclusion, Ted Danson reprised Sam Malone in a 1995 episode of Frasier, but it wasn’t until last October that the two men had a proper reunion. At that time, Danson lamented missing out on “the last 30 years of Kelsey Grammer” and decided to “apologize” for how he “got stuck a little bit” with his co-star and recalled “a memory of getting angry” at him. Grammer took everything Danson had to say in stride and fondly remembered a moment when the fellow Cheers actor approached him when he turned 40 and said that meant he was “finally worth having a conversation with.”
It’s good to hear Kelsey Grammer and Ted Danson are on much better terms with one another these days. Unfortunately, because the Frasier revival was cancelled after two seasons, Sam and Frasier won’t be reuniting on our small screens unless CBS Studios finds the show another home.