Dr. Crane’s clarifying.
Kelsey Grammer and Ted Danson recently reflected on their days at the Bull & Finch Pub — revealing that they had a falling out for nearly 30 years. Now, Grammer is clarifying what actually went down between the two.
“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 some, a lot of sort of self-doubt, self-loathing, honestly,” the “Frasier” alum, 69, explained exclusively to the Post, while promoting his new film “Wish You Were Here.”
“It was when I was drinking a lot and 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, you know?’ And I said, ‘Okay, I respect that.’ And that actually was sort of it,” he explained.
“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.”
In Oct. 2024, the former co-stars reunited on Danson and Woody Harrelson’s “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” podcast. The “Three Men and a Little Lady” star brought up his past gripe, but didn’t reveal what caused their strained friendship.
“This isn’t self-deprecating, but it’s — I feel like I got stuck a little bit with you during the ‘Cheers’ years. I have a memory of getting angry at you once,” Danson said at the time.
“Yeah, you came and told me that one day,” Grammer replied.
“And it’s stuck in both of our memories,” continued Danson. “But I feel like, f–k, 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 apologizing to you.”
“No — I don’t feel like — I apologize to you and me that I sat back, you know, and didn’t, and I really do apologize,” Danson went on.
“You said something wonderful to me though, too, that I’ve always, I quote to other people,” Grammer revealed. “When I turned 40, you came up and you said, ‘You know what it means, don’t you? Now that you’re 40, it means you’re finally worth having a conversation with.’”
“Cheers” aired for 11 seasons and ran 270 episodes from 1982 to 1993.
Danson, 77, played bar owner Sam Malone, while Grammer played Dr. Frasier Crane and Harrelson, 63, portrayed Woody Boyd.
Some of the cast — which also included Rhea Perlman, John Ratzenberger, George Wendt, Shelley Long and the late Kirstie Alley — reunited at the 2024 Emmys. But Grammer insists a revival will never happen.
“Not a revival, certainly, because there’s just too many disparate elements that have to kind of come dancing together. And it reflects a time in our sort of culture that doesn’t really exist anymore. I mean, maybe there is a bar scene still. I’m just not aware of it anymore,” he told the Post, laughing. “I sort of left that scene behind me some time ago.”
“‘Cheers’ will not come back,” he doubled down. “I mean, Jimmy Burrows has always said, ‘No, that bar doesn’t exist anymore.’ So, okay, it’s not there. It would still be relevant for the show.”
Despite not returning to “where everybody knows” his name, Grammer reprised his role of Dr. Crane in the Paramount+ series “Frasier” — and has nothing but love for Danson and the gang.
“I’ve always thought of him with the most loving kind of remembrance and fondness. Same with Woody. I mean, you know, Woods and I have actually stayed in touch a bit more than Ted and I have. That’s still an active sort of friendship. And we were emailing just last week,” he noted. “I don’t see the other boys very much.”
He quipped: “I bumped into George Wendt the other, a few months ago at some signing thing, and I thought, ‘Oh, I’m never doing this again.’”
