Kelsey Grammer: Emmy Winning Actor

Award-winning actor Kelsey Grammer, best known for his roles in Cheers and Frasier, tells Graham about the reboot of his popular character. Grammer talks family, the importance of his on-screen father-figure, coping with the murder and loss of his real-life father and sister, and his four marriages, including the abuse he suffered before finding happiness with his current wife.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This week on the in depth podcast Kelsey Grammar, the
audition ends. No one laughs.
What are you thinking? His Doctor Frazier Crane
character was one of the longestrunning on television, appearing
first on the hugely successful show Cheers and then starring in
the spin off series Frazier. Kind of come up with ways to

(00:20):
stay fresh or or unpredictable, spontaneous.
During our 2019 interview at hishome in the Catskill Mountains,
the five time Emmy Award winner reflects on the role his TV dad
played in his life. I got an understanding of what
it might be like to have had a father, and that was a great,

(00:42):
great thing. And opens up about the tragic
murder of his young sister. Certainly a Big Brother always
wants to protect his sister, so losing her in that way was
really damning to me. Grammar also shares what he's
learned from his relationship struggles.
I think some of it had to do with always picking people that
you could never satisfy. And relives the religious
experience he had while surfing.Just like I vanished into this

(01:06):
place that was beyond the sun. If this is what dying is, if
this is where heaven is, I'm good.
All that's coming up next on theIn Depth with Graham Bensinger
podcast. I wanted to start actually, as I
mentioned, by talking to you about sports and a lot of people

(01:32):
might not know that Once Upon a time you were a big surfer.
Surf, yeah, surfing was my life really, really when I was junior
high in high school. And I had an older buddy who's
kind of a pal. He had a, he had a car.
So we could in Florida, what youcall drive up coast, because if
you live in, if you live below Palm Beach, the the state does

(01:53):
this or well, it's for your viewing public.
It goes like that, right? So northern swells come this way
and they Peter out at the point where Palm Palm Beach is.
So you have to go, you have to drive a little north of there.
And that's why Coco and Fort Pierce and Sebastian Inlet are
are are good breaks and even Boynton Beach sometimes.

(02:16):
And we used to surf off a place called Red Rock and Boca Raton
even. It was pretty good.
And I, I even used to take my little boat there once in a
while with my surfboard in it. And I'd I'd just throw the hook
and paddle in from outside. How did you get into it?
A buddy just said, you know, we don't want to try this.
And I said, sure. So the that boy, the first month
of that is pretty hellish. Just, you know, just paddling

(02:38):
out really knocks you out basically.
And then, then you kind of get in shape.
And I, I say to everybody, if you can, if you can surf every
day for six months to begin, then you'd become a surfer.
That's all. It's just like playing the
piano. It's like any, anything else,
any other skill you acquire, youjust have to keep going and you
know, and, and slowly graduate up to bigger waves and stuff

(02:58):
like that. On, on the good days, Coco used
to have some great, great waves,great breaks.
And then I, I'd surfed up as high as matoonic Rhode Island.
They had great lefts there. And and that was that was the
coldest I've ever been in my life was Narragansett once I
didn't like wet suits. I clearly turned blue in in

(03:19):
Rhode Island in the spring. You made a big time commitment
though to it as well. I mean, you were surfing around.
Seven years on the day surfed. Yeah, yeah.
What did you enjoy about it? Oh, just that harmony, you know,
just that oneness with nature, God, all that stuff.
You feel it all in those momentsand when you're just when it's a

(03:40):
great day surfing and you drop into a a terrific wave, there's
really nothing quite like it. There were moments I thought I
sort of just disappeared, like sort of became one with nature
and, and whatever it is, you know, the oversoul, all the
corny talk you hear about, you know, kids that live in that
world. That's what it was like for me.

(04:02):
What would you think about when you were out there?
Where's the next wave coming from?
You know, pretty much it, it would help you to filter out
almost everything. And I guess it's sort of like
meditation in a strange way. You know, bit by bit the layers
of of your life drop off and youfinally become sort of in tune
with the moment. And that's that's what happens
in surfing. I mean, you are completely in

(04:23):
tune with the moment and I guessthat's kind of perfection.
And Speaking of meditation, there was a period in your life
where you used to meditate, I think a couple hours a day.
It was part of the surfing thing.
Got it. It was all part of the surfing
thing. I'd do some yoga at night before
I'd go to bed and and I'd sit and meditate.
And that's when I had, I had some extraordinary experiences
with that. There was this guy named Richard

(04:44):
Hittleman that wrote a book called Yoga Hatha Yoga, I think
it was called. And I just did the exercises in
there and read the book and started to do these meditative
things. And so one guy said, just
concentrate on the sound inside your ear, which is just sort of
like the same thing you do with a conch shell.
You know, like if you look, oh, you can hear the ocean.

(05:05):
There is a sound you can hear inside your ear that is
basically just a movement of, ofmolecules of air, you know,
moving around and banging off ofeach other.
And then you start to get into that.
And then then it would just sortof slip into a space where you
were floating. So it was a good thing.
And, and correct me if I'm wrong, you had what you called
your most religious experience out on a.

(05:27):
Surfboard. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The one where I sort of stepped off the planet.
I thought it was it was an amazing thing.
It was a particularly hot day. I was, I was serving in Palm
Springs. I mean, I'm in Palm Beach.
And it was a a big wind, wind break that day.
It was all kicked up by a littlestorm that was off the coast.
And they were it was choppy and kind of radical, but you could

(05:48):
drop into a wave once and a while and a suddenly I hit one.
It was fantastic. And I was going left and I was
going left and I looked up through the wave as it kind of
sort of peeked above my head andI caught the sun through through
the wave and I saw it. And then right that that moment
I just went like it, just like Ivanished into this place.
It was beyond the sun. And, you know, I thought I saw

(06:11):
the angels all around me and andand I thought, boy, if this is,
if this is what dying is, if this is where heaven is, I'm
good. You know, this is all an all
powerful sort of connected moment in my life as that was.
Yeah, that was the top of the line.
Emotional experience. Emotional to the point of just

(06:31):
peace, of sort of ecstatic. There was an an ecstasy about it
that was fully natural. Well, I can.
I mean, even you're talking about it now.
I can tell it's. It was really something.
What about the memory kind of still touches?
It's still with me. It's just it still sustains.
I guess, you know, you have all those more.

(06:52):
I'm I'm, I'm trying to think down how to relate it to other
sport moments. There's just that, that that
thing that happens I think whereyou know, it's perfect.
You know the perfect moment whenyou hit a golf swing.
It's you just happened to get itright that moment.
And, you know, the guys that do it professionally do it all the
time, but you know, there's a, there's a, a, a, there's a, a

(07:15):
point and, and sort of all physical expression, I guess,
where you align with what an ideal is and what the, the, the
work of that is. And when they connect, it feels
perfect. So speaking about being out on
the water, how do you get into sailing?
Stanley I learned to sail when Iwas nine years old in Atlantic

(07:36):
Islands, New Jersey at the Atlantic Islands Yacht Club.
They gave a summer course on boats they called Blue Jays.
And I and my good buddy Doug, we're still friends.
We see each other all the time. Took a sailing class with a
fellow named Skip Brennan and hejust instilled us.
Oh, this is this is what it is. You know, we learned basic knot

(07:59):
tying and, and, and how to trim sail and understand what the,
the dynamics of it were. You know, the physics of it, the
Bernoulli principle, all that stuff.
Because the sail is like a foil.And so that technically the lift
of what would be an airplane wing is the same power that
pulls a, a sailboat along, doesn't really push it along, it

(08:22):
pulls it along, which is kind offascinating.
But I fell in love with that then.
And one of my big dreams as a kid was to buy a sailboat one
day. That didn't happen until I was
29, but it wasn't so bad. It wasn't so bad.
I'd done my first year on Cheers.
And I knew this guy that had a boat called a Baltic, a 37 foot

(08:46):
Sloop, which I could single handif I had to.
And he said he had to get rid ofit because he was getting
divorced. So I I said, well, you know
what? I just finally saved a little
bit of money, enough to buy thisboat.
So I went to Bank of America andI took a dollar for dollar loan.
So the first time I paid off anything was this sailboat, and

(09:07):
that's how I established credit.Or a crash course.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. In finance.
So I, I bought this boat that way and then I had it until nine
years ago. So I had it for about 30 years.
And it's a great story. My, my wife, like Kate, I said,

(09:28):
you gotta go out on my boat 'cause I mean, I used to, I used
to sail twice a week. I used to go out and like, as
soon as rehearsal was over, I'd grab my buddy John, I'd say,
let's go, let's go out. You know, we'd sail for a few
hours and we'd buy some lamb chops, BBQ them on the, on the
little sort of marine Weber thatused to put up on a stanchion.
And it was ideal. It was a wonderful time.
And so Kate, I, I take her down on the boat and I slide open the

(09:53):
Hatch and I climb down the ladder.
I'm standing near by the galley and she says, have you ever had
sex on this boat? This was frozen.
I thought, oh hell. And I wasn't looking at her.
And I thought, so I, I raced through about 2020 like lies.
I could tell it's fast as my frank function.

(10:17):
And I just turned around and said yes.
And she said, well, I'm not going out on it, so how could
you? But so I donated the boat.
You donated. To a sailing school and I
actually, I, the boat was actually worth more when I, when
I donated it than it was when I,when I bought it originally.

(10:40):
So that was actually a real success story.
But she says I can buy another sailboat.
We haven't gotten around to thatyet, as you.
Say you're you not lying in thatmoment.
Spoiled. Probably.
What could have otherwise been enjoyable?
Who knows? So will you buy another one?
Yeah, I think so. You know, someday it'll, it'll
depend on where we are. I, I think I'm a warmer waters

(11:02):
guy now. You know, California's
California is great, but the, the, the Ocean's cold.
You know, the Pacific's cold around that area, so.
Where all of you sailed? Around the world, the Virgin
Islands. I was born in the Virgin
Islands, so I've gone back theresome and sailed a little bit
there. Florida a lot, the Bahamas a

(11:23):
lot. We used to sail from the water
to the Bimini all the time. That was almost a monthly
experience. And that's some of my best sails
were that sail like night time moonless nights, fantastic.
That sense of darkness, like theink of the sea and the ink of
the night together and you just moving through it silently.

(11:44):
Fantastic. So semi religious as well.
Actually, yeah, motorcycles. How do you get into biking?
Motorcycles started when I was 13, I guess, maybe, maybe 12A
buddy of mine had a little Honda90 and we rode it around my
neighborhood, you know, but we had a, there was a field across

(12:05):
the street from my neighborhood that's from our house that we
would make a little trails through and, you know, run into
a tree once in. A.
While so that's how we learned, we got scuffed up and I always
said to all my friends and said,you know, you don't, you don't
get into anything without getting scuffed up a little bit.
So try to put yourself in a position where you you're in the

(12:26):
least amount of danger, but likely to have to have a few
falls. And because motorcycles are
dangerous and people would tell you they aren't lying to you.
And so then it graduated to street bikes.
And that was actually sort of the birth of the big super bikes
that started right around then in the early 70s.

(12:47):
There was the Kawasaki 500, which was all of a sudden nobody
thought anything to be that fast.
And it just, I mean, you'd get on it and you'd start sliding
off the back of the bike. And then the Honda 750 came out,
which was like the first real beautiful, loud, fantastic
sounding bike that was not a Harley.
You know, Harleys were always kind of big and cool, but they

(13:07):
weren't designed to go super fast like the the Japanese bikes
were. And that Honda 750, boy, you
could hear it coming from like 10 miles away.
People would say, well, there's one.
And so I had one of those. And you biked cross country on
many occasions. Have a best memory 3.
Times I crossed the country on amotorcycle.

(13:29):
There are varied experiences on on each on each of the
crossings, but the most sort of pivotal 1 was the first one
which was to go get a job. When my first acting job was in
San Diego, CA. I got the job in New York.
My motorcycle was in Florida. So I called my grandmother and
said I have good news and she said what you finally got a job?

(13:52):
I said yes, and I said I have todrive my motorcycle there.
I don't have the money to get ona plane.
I think it was $29.00. Then to get on AI, think it was
run by Eastern. What they called the Yellow Bird
was a 727 and it was a cheap flight one way to Lauderdale.
So I went over to LaGuardia, goton the plane that my grandmother

(14:14):
said OK, I'll buy you the ticket.
So I got there, I had 50 bucks in my pocket.
I got a new change for my motorcycle and tuned it up and
got on it the next day. Drove to Tallahassee, FL and met
with a buddy of mine in Tallahassee, which is a big
drive from Lauderdale. It's like, you know, 3 and 300,
maybe 400 miles. And we had dinner that night.
We hung out. I've started my journey across

(14:37):
country. I made Houston the next day.
That was a pretty big drive. Got hit by lightning.
And halfway there. This is the lightning story.
Yeah. So, you know, if you if you're
driving long distance on a motorcycle, you know, you're
going to get wet and that's justsort of what happens.
And you know, I'm just a bit of an idiot Yahoo, you know, Semi

(15:03):
still almost a teenager. And so I just knew, you know,
I'm driving into a thunderstorm and I said I got to make Houston
anyway, so I got to keep going. And I don't really have a set
of, you know, wet gear and all that stuff that some of the guys
have now. So it gets pretty intense.
I'm getting beat up a little bit.
I'm doing still 80 miles an hour, you know, in a pouring

(15:24):
thunderstorms you're getting you're really getting pummelled.
And then I felt a jolt through my system and thought, holy,
that must have been like lightning had to be.
And I thought, well, but I'm grounded, you know, because I
got my rubber, the the rubber, the tires grounded me.
So I'm safe. I realized that if I probably
just conducted a, a lightning bolt, so but I I took it as a

(15:49):
good sign, as if it was an omen that I was starting a new life
like that. Something was sort of a
purifying moment of like that part of you is gone now.
Oh, and and Sir, this happens aswell.
It was the furthest W I'd ever been at that time in my life.
I'd never been off the East Coast.
And so I was in Alabama and so, and that was that's where it

(16:13):
happened. So I.
Want to wrap up the the sports section with with with this.
I hear you had quite the little moment as a 6th grade football
player. Oh, yeah, I told this story.
What's his name? Hell, I'm forgetting her right
now. Big sports.
Rich Eisen. Yeah.
Rich. Yeah.
So I was on Rich's show. Yeah.

(16:33):
This was the only time my granddad who raised me and I
loved him. I'd adored him.
And he did die when I was 12. So there, there wasn't much time
with him. Gordon came to Rumson Country
Day School, the Rumson football team.
And you know, we're tiny. My Doug, my buddy Doug was there

(16:56):
too. He went to school together
there. It's a goal line stance.
I was playing, I was playing left tackle, both sides, you
know, offense and defence. And one of the kids turns to me
just as it's just their last play, basically, it's toward the
end of the game. And my grandfather's over there
watching and he he, I think his name was Chris.

(17:17):
He says to me, look out for the draw play.
And I thought, what the Hell's the draw play?
But I took it to me and I shouldjust look up and not bite right
away. So I did a little pop thing and
then looked and here comes this kid with a football.
And that's what I said. I got him.

(17:38):
So I, I tackled him, dropped himthere and they didn't score a
touchdown. And so I did my goal line stance
and, and then that was my, my granddad.
I was very pleased with it. Oh, that had to be so.
Cool. It was actually really cool.
Did he say anything to you? They said nice tackle.

(17:58):
So no, you know, I mean, I was abig kid then, you know, as, as,
as I got older, I, the, the, the, the swings changed.
I was the biggest kid on my block until I was 12 years old.
And then it started to shift a little bit.
Of course, my sister was always bigger than I was until I was
14. But that's that's how it is for
boys. What do you remember from
reading your first Shakespeare play in 7th grade?

(18:21):
Right. Well, that was after Gordon
died. And so I was pretty emotional
about what was going on in my life.
Then it was right after and thenin this, this play called Julius
Caesar was the first one we readin 7th grade.
And there was this character Brutus, who was philosophically
unmoved by emotion, who thought Stoicism was the right way to

(18:44):
go. You know, you, you make
decisions based upon facts and you don't get, let your emotions
carry away. I, I thought that was a great
philosophy and it, it crafted what I, I started to do after
that because I, I could have kind of fallen apart because I
really relied on my granddad. And then I thought I, I'm the
only guy left for the family. I have to be strong for the, the

(19:06):
women in the, in the household, my grandmother, mother and
sister. And so I tried to just be a
strong man and it, it changed myfocus on a lot of things about
how to take things in stride andhow not to take too much focus

(19:26):
on or put too much focus on the things that blow us about, you
know, the, the bad things that happen.
Try to keep them in perspective a little bit and not allow them
to change you or turn you into an idiot, you know, And so I, I
tried, I've been a bit of an idiot sometimes in my life.
But anyway. Well, I, I mean, I think we all
have it as well, but I, I told you this off camera.

(19:47):
I mean, your book that you wrotemany years back, so far, it was
great. And and you were so open and you
talked about being there for your mom, sister and grandma,
which just seemed like a Herculean undertaking.
And you know, you mentioned likereading Shakespeare for the
first time, 7th grade. What was it about getting kicked
out of Juilliard? And what your teacher said to

(20:10):
you that really reinforced reading those works is something
of importance. When I was thrown out of
Juilliard, which was I was 20, yeah, I don't think I was 20
years old. And he said, is there anything
you'd like me like me? Is there anything you want to

(20:30):
ask me? I said, well, yeah, what what do
we, what do I do from here? You know, what's the best thing?
He said, well, you know, and this was John Hausman at the
time who was kind of a a famous professor at that time.
He said, read the great novels. Because if you, if you do that
and you dedicate yourself to that, you get information that

(20:50):
becomes part of you. You know, if you, if you dive
into a novel, you know, like oneof the great novels, you
actually kind of live through those moments with those people.
So it's suddenly you're living through like in War and Peace,
the, the war with Napoleon. And suddenly you're one of those
guys and you have all this information about what it's
like. And you'd never have that

(21:12):
anywhere else, not in your own life experience.
And the best equipment you have to be a good actor is, is that
you have human experience at your fingertips.
And so the more you can gather, the more you can harvest from
great storytelling, the more youcan filter into what your career
hopefully will be. You once produced and hosted a

(21:35):
Jack Benny tribute. What was it about what the
legendary actor said on Johnny Carson that really stuck with
you? I was 17 and I, I was acting,
but at that time I finally was, had become an actor, you know, I
was at least interested in it. And Johnny Carson asked Jack
Benny what his key to success was.

(21:56):
And Jack said, I always play up to the audience.
I always play up to my audience.And boy, that is that's exactly
right. Never assume an audience is
Dumber than you are or that they're stupider.
They won't get it. Always play up to them.
Always think that they will know.
And if you trust that they always do.

(22:16):
I mean, the audiences are alwaysmiles ahead of us.
You know, they, they always kneweverything.
People are much smarter than we can credit for.
I, I love people and I love their brains and I think they're
all smart and I think everybody gets it.
And so that's, that became sort of the, the rallying point for
me in terms of the way I wanted to do work.
I always thought, never wait forthe audience, never play down to
the audience, never think they're not going to be with

(22:38):
you, always assume they'll be ahead of you.
And that changed everything I did.
Well, it's interesting you say that too, because you're
Frasier, executive producer. One of the skills of yours that
he commended was along those lines.
How do you get to the point where you can walk into a room
performing, not say anything, not move, be staring at the

(23:00):
audience, and for the audience to be laughing with you because
they know exactly what you're thinking?
I think that that comes from actually understanding that we
all have an intellect that connects us, you know, and that
and once they recognize the character went so and say no,
the situation enough, they'll they'll respond to a look or a
raised eyebrow or anything like that.

(23:20):
Yeah, I mean, that's a, that's one of the heady moments when
you realize, you know, you're inthe pocket, that things are
going well. What does that feel like?
It just feels it's, well, it's alittle bit like heaven really.
I mean, you know, 'cause you just, you just connected to it,
to other human beings. And I think that a great deal of
what we're here for is to make that connection.

(23:43):
You know, it's to it's to live with other human beings to, to
elevate your experience based upon the connection you make
with other people. And that is one of the greatest.
You said before quote acting gives you a great opportunity to
express yourself honestly without being accountable for
it. Well, that's, that's the mask of

(24:05):
acting. You know, it's like you don't
have to get blamed for everything you say.
I mean, you get to tell truth, but you don't have to actually
take the hit for it because everybody goes, Oh, well, he's,
you know, that's acting. That's that's all that means.
You you learn your line, so apparently only moments before
that's where you go in. Certain in certain circumstances
I do in television, for instance, if you have been

(24:28):
playing a part for a long time, which arguably Frazier was a,
you know, a a good distance, a good amount of time.
Not just a good amount. Of time, yeah, but 20s?
Amount of time. It was pretty good.
I'm I think I'm just thinking about that.
I think the guy on NCIS now probably has it has it beat.
I think they've been on forever.It's like since before The
Simpsons practically. But if you have that, then do

(24:52):
you have to kind of come up withways to stay fresh or, or
unpredictable? I'm trying to think spontaneous.
And so it, it, for me, it was like an exercise.
I don't want to learn my lines. I sort of know what I'm going to
do and I'll, I'll learn them just before I go on so that it
looks like I'm looking for the words, which is what we really

(25:13):
do anyway. And so it was a, it was an
affectation really. It was like a it was like a, a
trick that helped me to stay fresh, to look real.
So you went to Juilliard on scholarship, yet you still had
to take two jobs to daily I, I think to make ends meet, yeah.

(25:33):
Yeah, there's. Well, what I did was the summer
before I took two jobs, so I didn't have enough cash to kind
of get through the year. And that was the when I was a
nightmare at a hotel and I did work on a construction site in
the daytime and I actually used to run from one or the other
after, after the job would closeat 6:00 AM at the hotel, I would
run over and and start working on the construction site.

(25:56):
What were the hours? That was 7 to 3 basically.
And then it was 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM on the and I would do the
laundry a lot of the time on the, on the H1 and rake the
beach, brushed the tennis courts, cleaned the tile and
swimming pool, just stuff like that.

(26:19):
I was I, I liked work. How much money?
I ended up by 700 bucks by the end of the summer and it got me
through. It got me through till the
spring the next year. Well, I mean, yes, but you had
to be creative where it led you to sleeping in the park.
Well, that was because it was still warm enough I could
actually sleep there for for only a few weeks really.
But I could sneak behind a certain Bush and cover myself in

(26:40):
the newspaper and I was fine. I and I showered over at
Juilliard. What do you remember from that?
I mean, you were, you were sleeping in the park though.
It's. Completely safe, right?
I'm I I couldn't camping when I was a kid.
I mean, it's a little. Different than that, I mean.
I really was, you know, I'm camping the.
Nobody was really around here, didn't see anybody.
So it was all right. You know, I, I never had any

(27:00):
real experiences there. I had to, you know, one, one
time we got, I took the train too far on the independent line,
ended up in Harlem. And some guy looked at me.
It's like 3:00 AM, I'm standing there on one side of the track
and he looks over like this. He goes, hope you make it home.
Oh, hell. But you know what?

(27:22):
Whatever it was, there was always something that kept me
safe. What do you think going through
that period though taught you about money and savings?
Well, it, it taught me to be pretty frugal, you know, and I,
I'm a, I'm a bit of a spendthrift if in, in my, in my
heart, I think that, you know, should, you should live beyond

(27:44):
your means a little bit. You should take risks like, you
know, build a brewery. You know, money's made to be
spent a little bit. You're supposed to actually be
in the game, you know, put it togood work, to good use.
But you also should be smart about how, how far you
overextend. You know, I mean, everybody
overextends a little bit. But yeah, I try to keep it

(28:08):
within reason. How did you figure out that
balance early on though, when you know when it?
Was simpler because you just didn't, you know, you just knew
you couldn't, couldn't do that, you know, and I was always
wanted to sacrifice my body for the sake of survival, which
meant, you know, I'll, I'll sleep in the elements.
I'll, I won't get an apartment. I'll drive a motorcycle instead
of get a car, you know, and stuff like that.

(28:28):
There was always a, a low a way of shaving the, the budget to a
point where you could survive and, and still feel like you
were, you know, thriving becauseI always felt rich.
I always felt like I was doing great.
I mean, if I could buy buy a quarter pound of salami and and
a hard role, I was, I was a happy guy.
So there was a period in which during your early acting days
where you auditioned something like 100 * / 4 months. 100

(28:51):
auditions and. What What made you realize that
if you really wanted to be an actor, you had to give up the
waiting job? Oh, that, that was interesting.
No, I'd, I'd had some success inacting.
By that, I mean, at least I'd had a couple of jobs.
I, I worked in San Diego for almost 2 1/2 years, three
seasons, 3 summer seasons. And I'd stayed through the

(29:14):
winter and did some shows. Then I ended up doing maybe 13
plays during that amount of time, which was, you know, just
great. And I went back to New York and
did a job in, oh, did the job off Broadway for, you know, the,
but it was subway fare that was one of the big things we'd get,

(29:34):
which was $0.75 at the time. And did a couple of other plays
like readings and stuff like that.
But, and then I've, I one day walked into work where I was
working at O'Neill's and 57th St. and 6th Ave. and which is
now the rude is something or other.
It's still there. The restaurant's still there.

(29:55):
And I suddenly thought, you knowwhat?
You're not going to be an actor and as long as you're a waiter.
And that's when I said the guy said, you know, I got to quit.
I don't know why. It's just time.
And his name is Michael. I remember he's a nice, nice
guy. And he said, OK, you know,
sounds crazy to me, but OK. And I got a job the next day and

(30:18):
I was an actor ever since. The rest is history.
Christopher Plummer, the Wednesday matinee.
Challenging. Very challenging.
What did you say and what did you do?
Well, this. Is it's a good story?
It's a fun story. I, it's I really like Chris.
So it's like it took us a lot offootball acting because Chris

(30:40):
would just throw you around if you'd if, if you couldn't keep
up with me, he'd throw you around.
And you know, I mean, more powerto him.
I, I, I celebrate him now because he actually, I was at a
point in my life when I thought,boy, maybe I did.
Maybe this isn't for me. And, and maybe that was
partially working with Chris, I don't know.
But I'd, I'd finally gotten fed up.
I'd realized that I broke my foot several months previous

(31:01):
because I had ended up too far stage left.
I didn't get to my light. Chris had pulled me around
really hard and I broke my foot and I thought, and I heard a
crack, you know, I thought, whatthe hell is that?
So the same set of circumstancesoccurred on this particular
matinee day. And I suddenly like all this
rage came up in me and I grabbeda hold of him and I threw him as

(31:21):
hard as I could sort of, you know, sort of ended up off
stage. And I, I did whisper something
in his ear that wasn't particularly.
Pleasant. We can believe it.
Well, yeah, but I just and tossed him.
And like, really tossed. Him.
Oh, I really tossed him. Yeah.
And then he came storming back out on the stage and, you know,

(31:43):
and just started to just gave methat look and I thought, well,
this is it. I'm fired now.
This is fine. And but what was weird was from
that time on, we had the best time.
It was just, he just needed to know he wasn't going to, you
know, get away with the stuff heused to get away with anymore.
And it, it turned out to be a great experience.
So in the end, I I credit him with a lot.

(32:06):
He he prepared me for, you know,other actors can be challenging
and others other actors will, you know, run you right over and
some of them are some of them are that some of them don't.
Some of them don't really deserved him.
You know, we give him the creditfor it, but he's he's talented
enough to he actually had earnedit.
Just you just had to stand up toit.

(32:27):
Christian Slater's mom's responsible for getting you one
of your earliest. Soap opera gigs.
Mary Jo Slater was became a pal.I arrived from San Diego with my
girlfriend, then Ellen, who was doing.
She was, she had an audition forOne Life to Live.
And I just came along with her and drove her nuts because So

(32:53):
Slater's sitting there and I walk in with Ellen.
She checks in, said Ellen, Toby,blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I said, oh, oh, I remember. Yeah.
Mary Jo just looked up and looked at me and said, who are
you? I guess it's Sienna going like,
And she said you're, you're cute, which was nice.

(33:14):
I was cute then. I'm not sure that's the case
anymore. But so she said, why don't you
sit down? Give me a minute, I'm going to
take. So she took a couple of girls in
and did, did their auditions andand I, I was sat there for about
maybe 45 minutes and she said, come on in.
So she she walked me and she said you're an actor.
And I said yeah, yeah. And she said you do you have an

(33:36):
agent? So no, I just got to town.
She said, do you want one? Sure.
So she got on the phone and called Jeff Hunter, who was a
big agent. And I'm sending over a kid.
We're going to test him for thisrole, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah. And you should.
You should sign him. And that's a big.
Deal. That's just, it was just

(33:57):
extraordinary. No, I did not end up getting
that part, but but I did test for it and that was that was
pretty. Cool, and you got a babysitting
gig of the young Christian I. Used to babysit for Christian.
Yeah. Yeah.
But Slater and I became friends.I called her Slater.
Always. I've, I've been, we still, you
know, connect once in a while. Great gal.
And so Christian. Yeah.

(34:18):
Was, you know, I don't know, 456, whatever.
I I know I helped out at his birthday parties.
You know, stuff like that. So take me through the meeting
you had with George Lucas. The George Lucas thing was
pretty funny because there's a great back story to it.
This was the dead. The day I got kicked out of
Juilliard. There was one of the teachers
there. Edith Skinner was her name.
She basically created the speechfor the American theatre, an

(34:41):
extraordinary person. And she walked up to me and she
said, Kelsey, I know we've had trouble.
And she said, you have Caruso equipment and I think you'll
have a great future. So I thought, oh, wow, that's
great. She said, I think you need, you
should meet this man, this agentMort Schwartz was his name.
And so she gave me the number. I called and said he said, yeah,

(35:03):
come on over. So I, I walk over to this, this
place, this is got a couple daysafter I've been kicked out.
And he this is, This is why I hehad a Dutch door.
There was a secretary here who sort of was, you know, fighting
and and Mort was in the back in his office and the the top part
was open and he's going, listen,Greg, I'll, I'll get back to

(35:25):
you. I'll get back to you and blah,
blah, blah. And he calls and he goes and,
and he looks at me and goes likeGregory Peck.
He says, you, who are you? And I said Kelsey Grammar, Edith
Skinner told me to come over. I said, oh, yeah, OK, come on
it, come on. She says, sorry, Looks to me.
He goes like, yeah, OK, what happened at school?
He said, you know, I said, well,I got kicked out, so why do you

(35:47):
think that happened? I wasn't going to acting class,
so which was the case? So he looked at me for a second
and he said, you know what? He takes out a pencil and a
piece of paper on a pad, writes out this thing, go to this
address. There's a guy there casting a
movie about space. And he hands me the thing.

(36:11):
It's about 3 blocks away. I walk around and knock on the
door and sure enough, they call me in and I I sit down and
there's, I didn't know at the time, George Lucas.
And he says, well, we're making this thing about it's a fairy
tale in space, you know, two guys rescue a Princess.
Great, sounds like fun. So he said, you know, you're

(36:34):
right for there's these two parts.
Well, maybe the older guy, you look a little older than, you
know, he's kind of a, you know, gunslinging kind of guy, you
know, an adventurer. Cool.
You know, Great. Yeah.
Sounds good to me. Well, I never heard back from
him or anything. But about a year and a half
later, I was doing a job in San Diego.

(36:54):
I got my first job. I was in San Diego.
Then I went and saw this movie where the, the, you know, the
then that's the ship goes over, over your head.
And then, then you see the, the,the jet or the engines.
And I I'm watching it a little bit longer.
I think it holy, this is that movie.

(37:19):
This is that thing the guy told me about.
It's it's them, it's, it's Oh myGod.
I said, well, you know, I eitherdodged a bullet or a missed a
really big opportunity, so. But you know what?
Harrison Ford did really well inthat and I'm a big fan, so.
And the big opportunity was coming up.
You audition for cheers. The audition ends.

(37:42):
No one laughs. What are you thinking?
Yeah, that was that was a strange experience, 'cause I
ended up at the end of the audition in California.
There's a room full of people, not one laugh.
And so I put the the script downand I said, you know what?
I'm going to go out on the street, see if I can get some

(38:04):
laughs out there. And I turned around and I left
and I called my old pal Lois andsaid, let's, let's go take a
drive. Let's go down to San Diego
because I'd known her from San Diego.
We went and spent the weekend and I got back on Monday to, you
know, collect my things and thenhead off to the airport.

(38:24):
And as I walked into the old Holiday Inn, there it was at
Hollywood and fine, where I think the the big theater is
now, the Kodak Theater, whateverthe whatever it's called now,
they said there's some messages for you and people have been
trying to get a hold of you all this time.
And I walked into my little hotel room.

(38:45):
There was a bottle of Dom Perignon sitting on the table.
I went no, but it happened. It said welcome to Cheers.
So. It was.
Really cool. Describe the emotion of driving
up to the paramount lot for the the.
First time I drove into Paramount was great.
I mean, this is AI Said it's Kelsey Grammar.
Oh, yeah. Hey, hey, good to see you.
Yeah, come on. Here's your parking space, blah,

(39:06):
blah, blah, blah. That was very cool because the
gates, you know, I mean, you know, Hollywood still, it has a
sort of, you know, mythology about it.
It's kind of a size about it that makes it really cool to
kind of, you know, finally walk through one of those gates and
and be welcomed. That was a nice thing.
And cheers, obviously, one of the most successful shows in TV
history. Frazier, the spinoff, one of the

(39:29):
most successful spinoffs in television history.
You actually end up directing more than 30 episodes of Frazier
yourself, but the show centered around, you know, an older
father and kind of a misunderstood relationship with
his grown son. Correct me if I'm wrong.

(39:50):
You said the greatest gift you got from Frazier was
understanding what it was like to have a father.
A. Brother, a relationship with a
father. How so?
Well, my granddad had really sort of taken the place of my
father. I didn't know my dad very well.
My dad died when I was 14, just a couple years after Gordon.
But I didn't even didn't really even know him.

(40:10):
After Gordon died, my dad sent anote and said, you know, listen,
why don't you come and visit me?Come and say hi.
So I got to know him a little bit, spent about 3 weeks in
Saint Thomas with my sister and we got to know my dad a little
bit and then saw him one more time after that and he was dead.
So that was a strange experience.

(40:31):
So I never really had a dad, youknow, and I had no real sort of
understanding of how to be a dadmyself either, which has come
into play in my life since then.But what I got with John and,
and with David Hyde Pierce, the John Mahoney playing my dad was

(40:51):
by virtue of the time we spent together, the 11 years we spent
together, I got an understandingof what it might be like to have
had a a father. And that was a great, great
thing. And I've had a brother, you
know, that went through the things we, we go through, you
know, in life together. And, you know, the rivalries and
the, and the love and the commitment and the, and the

(41:13):
loyalty. I mean, things that were, you
know, we were, we were playing characters in a world where they
were virtuous people. They were, you know, they had
pitfalls and flaws, but they were basically virtuous.
And that that was. So it's, it's a slightly
idealized version of what a father and a son and a brother
might experience together. But I think it's actually pretty

(41:34):
good slice of it of what would be right in life.
How true is it that at times it would take you days to get
through family scenes without breaking down?
Oh, it still happens to me. I've.
I cry all the time, cry at the drop of a hat.
I've I don't know why. About what?
In that situation, it just says something that reminds me of the
beauty of being a human being. You know, the the beauty of
experience, the beauty of love, the beauty of family, things

(41:57):
that are poignant and, and wouldbring a tear to your eye anyway,
Just I'm always there, you know,I'm I take, I take the ride
along with the character. And so I'll I'll bubble up and
say, Oh my God, in. In what ways did you feel like
you said this? That your TV father on Frasier
was almost like a father figure to you.
Yeah, my TV dad was just a remarkable guy, you know, a guy

(42:18):
of sacrifice and and service andand loyalty.
Again, like that. You know, the virtues, the basic
virtues of what you'd look for in a man, you know, in the, in
the traditional sense of a good man, you know, one that's
honest, true, loyal, noble keepshis word, stuff like that.
And, and the caring between the three, the three men on that

(42:41):
show was, you know, there was anhonest sort of uncovered
connection that is possible between men that we don't talk
about a lot, you know, a lot of villainizing about being, you
know what toxic masculinity. I, I don't know, I don't know if
that's even a thing. I mean, because the men I know
are good people and, and the women I know are good people.
So, you know, and you know, we're always bound to have some

(43:03):
difficulties, but this blaming each other for toxicity, it's
just a little bit weird. What do you think you learned
from your grandpa growing up? Gordon was a good man.
He was a good man. He was a man of service, the
same kind of thing. He, you know, he was a military
guy, reluctantly a military guy.I mean, he was a retired
Colonel, but I mean, he served in World War Two.

(43:25):
He was in Guadalcanal for, you know, more than a couple of
years and he he put his money where his mouth was and he was
fair and honest with people and believes that you should be.
He thought that lying was not, you know, a good a good path.
But I think I think in some wayshe thought you didn't always
have to tell people the bold faced truth about things or what

(43:48):
you felt about them personally. It wasn't necessary.
You know, you you do as little damage as you can.
And Gordon told me one great expression that it took me years
to decipher. When I was at 11, we were taking
a walk. I was going through some hard
times at this 5th grade school that I was in.
And he said, Kels, if you see a bug, step on it or walk around

(44:11):
it. Oh, boy.
What the hell does that mean? Yeah.
And then through the years, I started to understand it.
You will run into situations that bug you or a person that
bugs you that they can get on your nerves and dealing with it
rarely means needing to step on it, you know, or you know, cut

(44:34):
it somehow, you know, or really,really confronted.
Most of the time you can just walk around it.
So very few bugs really rate your attention, and the ones
that do you just get over with quick.
As you mentioned, he passed awaywhen you were 12 years old of
cancer. I I think unbeknownst to you,

(44:56):
it'd. Yeah, no idea.
Yeah. Body and even if it's untrue,
you had the realization at the time that you would always be
alone why did you feel. That was the boy, Kelsey.
You know, talking about myself in the third person, I hadn't

(45:20):
really let the impact of losing him touch me for about 6 weeks.
And then that one night I just sensed that I was always going
to be alone, that people would always leave that there.
It wasn't going to be an easy thing, life, you know, and that

(45:41):
was a that was a remarkably desolate moment in my life.
Sad, sort of abandoned. And it, it energized me in a
strange way to think that at theend of that particular
realization that I I would be OKanyway, that I was going to

(46:01):
survive. But yeah, that was a that was a
hard night. That's the first time I cried
over my granddad. What do you remember from the
three weeks you spent with your dad in Saint Thomas after?
All playing the drums. You know, I played the I played
the drums with this band. He had a my dad was a music
teacher who had he'd been in thehe'd been in the he played the

(46:23):
bugle in the in the Army, I'm told he played taps at at
Arlington, but he had this band with four or five other guys and
the, the night that I went to listen to band practice, the
drummer was not there. So he asked me to do the drums
from 12 bells at midnight. So I, I, I was counting and I,

(46:46):
you know, I knew enough about measures and music so I could, I
could count it out. And he, after I hit the 12th 1,
he said, you're the first guy ever did that right.
So that was a big thing. We woke up one night in the
middle of the night and he threwtogether some tacos out of the
fridge. And that was a, that was a great
moment. We just sat and ate together.
He asked me to edit his magazine.
He he also published a magazine.He asked me to a proofread a few

(47:09):
of the articles when I was thereand just.
Controversial magazine too. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, he was a he was a
controversial guy. He called things as as he saw
them. My grandmother used to tell the
story of the day I was born. She flew down and she said from
the airport to the hospital, he got in three fist fights.

(47:30):
He was a sort of a bigger than life guy.
We flew into Puerto Rico and thestewardess took us, you know, to
a like a little holding room near the near the luggage place.
And they said, who's picking youup?
You know, you're kids, you can'tjust be released into San Juan.
So I said, well, he looks like Blackbeard the pirate.

(47:54):
That's all. I really knew it'd.
Have been years since. I had no recollection of him and
my mom said he looks like Blackbeard the pirate.
So I've I quoted that and they sort of laughed.
And then down at the end of thishanger, I mean, with the end of
the airport, which looked like an old hanger, I don't know what
it is now, there's this giant guy standing there and with a

(48:19):
big Blackbeard. And he weighed about 3:50 at the
time. And I thought, holy crap, that's
my dad. He's right there.
And I said, I think it's him. And they all turned and sort of
giggled. He looked just like Blackbeard,
the pirates. So he used to play it in the
carnival every year on the island so.

(48:41):
And you've been very open about this.
He was murdered. Why was it not till you turn the
age that he passed that it really something?
For you, I had some. I had a pretty tempestuous
relationship at the time, and onone particular night things got
pretty dramatic. And so I'm not going to say

(49:01):
anything else about it except that a certain event took place
on that particular night with this particular woman in my life
that made me think, Holy crap, my dad was so young when he died
because I was 38. And it was the first time it it
hit me how young he was to have died at that age.
Because to me, you know, it was such a sort of a distant memory.

(49:24):
I was 14 and 38 seemed like a lot then to me, you know, at
that time. But in, in getting to that
space, I suddenly thought, you know, what a loss for him.
You know, I mean, the, the people that have died in my
life. And, you know, there have been a
few. It always seems to me like it's
their tragedy, you know, and it's not really mine.

(49:45):
It's that loss of what he might have done with his own life, of
what possibly the relationship we could have had.
But that really wasn't what it was about.
It's about this poor young man that was taken before his time.
Your sister similarly murdered, you said.
It took kind of 20 years for youto get to a place so it wouldn't

(50:09):
hurt you. How so?
What happens in, you know, when you're grieving and, and you
don't really have any place to put it as you tend to take it
out on yourself. And so I, I did that a bit, you
know, I mean, I, I drank excessively and I, I got sort of
wrapped up in cocaine for a while and didn't forgive myself.

(50:37):
Wonder what it came down to. And finally, I, I had a sort of
an epiphany of, of thinking, youknow, that's just, you're
carrying this as though you, youhad something to do with it and
you got to let that go. And I think it's a natural
inclination. I think it's certainly a Big
Brother always wants to protect his sister, you know, and that's
just what we're trained to do, you know, that's what we're

(50:57):
supposed to do. That's what I always did for her
when we were kids. So losing her in that way was
really damning to me and I responded in any number of ways
for a while. And I used to walk the streets
of Manhattan just hoping somebody would like try to do
something. Dangerous.
Parts of the, of the town and what was weird was, you know,

(51:21):
I'd, I'd, I'd be approaching a situation to grab a few guys
standing around in a corner somewhere or something in the
middle of the night and thinking, here's, here's a
chance, you know, and they all usually just steered clear.
And here's a chance for what? You know, maybe just I was going
to get to be able to take something out on somebody or let
some of these guys jump me or something.

(51:41):
You know, I was, I was not in a good way at that time.
But I think in a weird way everybody kind of sensed it,
thought he's not worth it. So, you know, so maybe I was
just being protected, you know, but then that turned into
suddenly I had like great success, things like that.
And it, it just was an irony forme that, that, you know, that

(52:03):
she was gone and taken in such ahorrible way and that, that I
was alive. And so I blamed myself for a
long time. And then finally somebody said
to me that the, you know, the, usually the, the, the reason for
addiction and, and then things of that nature is in a profound
way is a, is a unresolved grief.I think there's a lot of truth
to that statement. And if you can just forgive

(52:25):
yourself for whatever it is you're in, you don't actually
need to carry all that crap anymore.
And so for me, it really helped me.
Out. How did you get to the place
where you were able to do it? You know, when it turned off, it
just turned off. It was just and you know, it
doesn't mean now that I don't recollect Karen and even my dad

(52:45):
and not still, you know, have a profound sense of grief and even
cry still. But that part of it has been the
charge has been removed from it.And you were there when your
grandma told your mom what happened.
How did you help your mom in getting?
Through it was hard. I don't, you know, helping my
mom was tough. I think she's, I'd never seen

(53:08):
anybody move around a room that way when she heard her daughter
was gone. And I think my mom was truly
brave, you know, wonderful persevering example, you know,
she, she just, she kept it together and got through it.
But always, you know, always mourn the loss of her daughter,

(53:31):
her little girl, you know. The the boys that did it were
1617. 19/18/1920 They were in the army honestly.
But you know, one guy was prettycreepy.
He just died, actually. I was going to say 1's dead,
another's up for parole 2020. The last of them is alive, yeah.
How do you view them? That's people who should stay in

(53:54):
jail. You know, they were given the
death penalty actually. But then in the, in the, in the
80s was it, or maybe it was in the late 70's, the, the Supreme
Court overturned all death sentences in America and

(54:15):
commuted them basically to to reexam to have all the states re
examine their, their death penalty policy, right.
I mean, I don't know exactly what, what the, the legal
language is the best describes it.
But so they were commuted to life sentences, all, all of
them. And then because they fell into

(54:39):
that little niche, it gave them the right to go for parole all
the time. So they've been since Colorado
has altered its lauded by say, when life means life.
If you're in in jail for life, you're in jail for life.
There's no parole. And that that certainly would
have been easier on me. But you know, the last decade
has been spent going back to Colorado Springs to ask the

(55:02):
parole board to keep them in jail.
What do you have to do? Basically, write a statement,
show up, you know, speak to themabout them.
The last of them is the guy thatwas pretty instrumental in
killing my sister. And I just, you know, there's a
part of me that wants to be as kind to every human being as I

(55:24):
possibly can. And but the notion of his ever
going freeze just seems absurd. You know, they didn't kill this
one person. They did it to several.
And we don't have that right. I mean, except in wartime maybe.
But you know, that's still, you know, that's, that's still
usually haunts people with conscience anyway.

(55:45):
If they had accepted responsibility and admitted
wrongdoing, to what extent do you think that would have
changed your view? I think now they probably have,
but it's just. I mean for the longest time.
They Yeah, I didn't really. Yeah.
That's it's to to their credit, but still, you know, I, I, I

(56:11):
didn't get a chance to meet my nieces and nephews, did I, I
didn't get to see her grow up. So.
How do you view therapy? Through a jaundiced eye.
It's the best I can say. I think therapy's fine to a
point. I think it's good therapy should
you should get over it. You know, you should get through

(56:32):
it and say somebody should finally say, yeah, I think we've
done enough here. You're welcome to go out back
into the world and move on, you know, get on with your life.
The you know, the old days, you know, you talk to an English
person, They said Jetifi therapist.
Isn't that what friends are for?You know, you think, yeah,
you're probably right. Yeah, you, you got to have
people you can touch stones in your life where you can talk

(56:54):
things through. I certainly did do some therapy
in time and I I think it was helpful to a point, but.
How's it helpful? And, you know, you just sit and
talk with a neutral party. You know you don't.
You're not going to get in trouble for what you say.
Hopefully, you know, But I thinkit's nice to have that outlet

(57:15):
for ideas, but once they once you learn through a certain
series of coping mechanisms or whatever, how to how to reflect
on things and then not take it all always so personally.
That's certainly a skill you should be able to like, master
yourself, you know? So just talking about like,
personality, for a long time yousaid you felt like you were

(57:36):
always letting people down. Why?
From time to time, what happens in a relationship with people
is, is they start to have expectations of you that maybe
are unrealistic. And I know that I've, I've spent
time in relationships where I thought, why am I not good
enough? Why, why is this not working out

(57:57):
so well? Why, why am I suddenly being
told I didn't do my job today? That sort of thing has happened
to me in the past and when I realized that I probably was OK
and maybe maybe the issue was that they didn't want me to be
OK. I'm not really sure.
And even dating back to when youwere growing up.

(58:19):
When I was growing up, I actually thought that I was
letting people down, though I thought I just wasn't quite good
enough. It didn't quite hit the mark a
lot of the time. And maybe that was just out of
a, a, a feeling that I had to beperfect, that, you know, that
maybe, maybe we all have that a little bit.
I was letting myself down sometimes.
I started to develop certain sort of small goals.

(58:42):
I used to tell some of my friends, I said say, well, you
know, set a set a goal for yourself that's realistic that
day and, and do it, you know, make sure you get that one done,
because then you then you won't have a sort of a tradition of,
of feeling like, Oh, I didn't, you know, I didn't do this
today. I didn't do that today.
But, you know, make them small. Make them, I'm going to, I'm
going to play in a window box today, you know, so make sure

(59:04):
you do it, you know, simple things.
And I think that helps you kind of get a sense of self respect.
And if something wasn't your fault, you said you had a way of
making it. Making it my fault.
Yeah. I'm making of sort of
engineering of, of, of, of some sort of a bizarre way into
thinking, oh, somehow I'm responsible for that.

(59:24):
Yeah. No, I, I Those are the, those
are the problems of a man that Iam no longer that man.
Every driving took a while though, to.
Maybe to filter that out? It, it doesn't, it doesn't feel
particularly significant anymore.
I think, I think maybe that thatwas coming out of a place where

(59:45):
maybe the the period that I've expressed that was more the rich
with that particular emotion because of what was going on
around me and that's over now. You you said you were attracted
to threshold experiences. Insanity.
I'm still I'm. Still attracted to that man.
I mean, you know, I think I findpeople fascinating who are in

(01:00:06):
that, you know, state because that state says, you know, an
ecstatic state and the one that's, you know, even if it's
if it's perilous or bad for somebody, it's still it's still
attractive in a weird way. So, yeah, sometimes I found
people who were in sort of crisis more attractive than I
would someone who was, you know,doing OK tell.
Them about the I'm shocked that you were open about this, the

(01:00:28):
tattoo that you got. For for Kate.
Oh, oh, oh, no, that's just that.
That's just, she said this was this is something we actually
have kind of we both joke about she just one time we were
sitting there and she said, would you ever, you know, put my
name on your body like this tattoo?
And I said, yeah, sure, why not?So we both said it should be out

(01:00:50):
of sight. So it's somewhere near, you
know, like, you know, it's crossed our minds.
It'd be funny to sort of say if I if I happened to be cheating,
someone said, you know, oh, you know, property of but also, or
it could be, you know, with compliments, you know, your
Hostess this evening, courtesy of Kate.

(01:01:14):
All right, so married four times.
What do you think you learned from past relationships that's
helped you as you've grown as a person?
In terms of the the I like to think of that married three
times basically was once becausethat was the same person in
different bodies. There was a pattern that I fell
into where people that somehow Ithought I, I could, I could help

(01:01:38):
them, their life be better, you know, help them, them come to
another place somehow. And then I realized it wasn't my
business. And when I finally stopped doing
that, I and, and realized that, you know, people had to just
love me for who I was and, and maybe be a partner and maybe,
you know, even like me, you know, this was that's, that's

(01:01:59):
where some of that other stuff. What?
Was that person that you were? I think, I think some of it had
to do with always picking peoplethat you could never satisfy.
Maybe that was, maybe that's some of what I was talking about
before in terms of Kate's the most mature person I've ever
been with. She happens to be younger than

(01:02:22):
anybody else I've ever been within terms of a fully committed
relationship. But the others were, they were
part of the step. But there were three women that
were very similar and the, the issue was the same issue and,
and, and abuse. I like to two, right?
Well, one certainly very abusive, but I, I like to think

(01:02:43):
of the, the lesson being I finally realized that wasn't
what I wanted. You know, it just took me 3
times to figure it out. Why, when you were in the abuse,
did you tolerate it? That's an interesting question.
And and this is. Those those people who are

(01:03:04):
abused, I was physically abused in in my second age.
Yeah, life. Threatening.
Crazy stuff there once it happens.
This is what this is apparently some sort of a this is a kind of
a syndrome, I guess, or something.
It's identifiable with people who've been abused.
You just kind of assume it's your fault and that you accept

(01:03:27):
it and that you'll be able to fix it next time, and you just
can't, you know? But it takes a while to figure
that out, though. Takes a while to say, this is
not my fault, I'm not responsible for this behavior,
that person's responsible for it, and I got to get out of
here. That takes a while.
And not speaking to any relationships specifically, but
one was a point for you that it just clicked that you know this.

(01:03:51):
This is not for me. I've had some good days on this,
my previous marriage. And, you know, honestly, I don't
really talk about her very much because, you know, so much of
her life is spent talking about me.
And I just think it's, it's it'ssort of pathetic.
And but I, I will, I will acknowledge one day after I'd

(01:04:15):
had my heart attack, a month after I had a heart attack, my
mother, my mother died. And it's 12 years ago now.
And the day of my mother's funeral, my previous, my third
wife basically had an explosion about something and, and started

(01:04:39):
to tell me, oh, you know, I'm out of this.
I'm out of here again. You know, I wanted, I wanted a
divorce, blah, blah, blah, blah,blah, which we'd had the same
conversation for, you know, eight years.
And it was tiresome. And that I realized on that at
that moment that I was done withher, but that was not, I was not
going to end up in this relationship for much longer.
And so somewhere under a year I was done so.

(01:05:02):
The Kate who you love dearly, your current life, 25 years your
junior. Junior.
Yes, 26 actually. 26 what what'sI mean just from an age
perspective, the the biggest difference you've noticed in.
The only thing that I would notice actually, just maybe a
little bit more perspective, butKate's a wise girl, she's a

(01:05:25):
knowledgeable person and she's self aware.
She's a she's a a whole human who was willing to like one of
my favorite expressions about marriage to lay her solitude
beside my own. And so we are two individuals
who have become a third identity.
You know, we've assumed another identity together, which is us

(01:05:48):
together. And that's a very cool thing.
And she's a, a complete human being and, and beautiful and,
and all the, you know, classic ways, but also humorous, funny,
challenging. She's, she's got a really good
brain and, and, and, and just quite comfortable using it and

(01:06:12):
can, she just has a great way oflooking at the world And she's
so entertaining and so, so fun with the children as well.
I mean, she loves, loves kids and loves our, our family.
And I mean, when we were together, you know, when we
first got together, she said to me, there was a suddenly your
Mama where she thought, Oh my God, I want to have kids with

(01:06:34):
you. And that she said it sort of
surprised her, But she said her grandmother had told her years
before that she said, you'll know the man you want to marry
when you realize you want to have children with him.
And I thought, oh, wow, So that's, that was really cool.
And I'd had visions of another of more children in my life
anyway. And other than that, other than

(01:06:57):
the fact that I, I don't run as fast as I used to, I don't feel
any age difference between us. There's, you know, there's the,
there's the sort of empirical, Oh yeah, this number is this
number, that number is that number that you just can't

(01:07:17):
ignore sometimes. And there's a certain kind of
inevitability about the fact that there while this one means
this and this and there are certain circumstances or
consequences of, of us being together that we'll have to face
at some point. But as it stands now, I feel
like we are equals and and really well matched.

(01:07:40):
How many kids do you have? We have three, I have 7, but
we're talking about a couple more.
Really. Yeah, yeah.
And I love. That is a whole lot of kids.
That's a good that's a good chunk of kids.
Why more? Because it's, it's, it's, it's,

(01:08:01):
it's, it's an uplifting experience.
It's, it's a joyous experience for me.
These new human beings that comeinto your life, these, these
children that are your charge, you know, in many ways, but
they're also your, your tutors, You know, they, they teach you
so much about life, remind you so much about life.
The simple, the simple beauty oflife all the time is evident in

(01:08:22):
watching your children grow up. And so the closer I entered
that, the happier I am. How would you describe what you
think you're like as a father? I think I'm a good father.
I think I'm fair and sometimes alittle scary.
And how how are you? Well, I think, I think you need
to be able to have the voice that stops a child and it's

(01:08:43):
tracked, you know, like if you have a kid that's running out
into the street, you hope that you've established in them
something that says, oh, that's the voice.
I better just stop there. It is.
There are consequences to that that might be not good.
So somebody has to, you know, administer justice in the

(01:09:05):
household. There has to be a hierarchy and
an understanding. And you try to be good to your
kids and explain things. And but there are some things
that you just need to point to and say, look, this is this is a
bad idea. And and, you know, and to take
my word for it, that goes prettywell.
How do you think your upbringingimpacted you as a father?

(01:09:27):
Well, I like I said, I had no examples of fatherhood except I
had I did have Gordon to a point, you know, and so up up to
there, I was pretty good, you know, telling the truth.
Try to be decent to all people. Those are those are good things
to be respectful of all people and to and to be a gentleman,
you know, I mean, as as a man and be a young lady, you know, I
mean, I think those are still terms that can be applied in our

(01:09:52):
society and and expectation of good behavior.
Whether, you know, it's like howto be decent to people, just,
you know, allow everybody their space and to end of and to as,
as Emerson said, you know, say their name with his with all the
honors any king or queen would ever be given.
You know, just to be respectful of people and then to find them.
I find all people fascinating and interesting and deserving of

(01:10:13):
that kind of attention. And then you know there are
certain corners you shouldn't stop on.
There are certain people that will prove to you that you know
you've gotten as much from them as you can in a in a short span
of time and you do not need to stay there.
You mentioned your your first child now in her 30s.

(01:10:35):
How do you think you've evolved as a a dad from when you?
First had a kid. I think that was a pretty good
dad to her. I was just said, you know, that
she was the first that Spencer, my daughter Spencer, she was the
first one, right. So I guess I cut my teeth on her
a little bit, but I was always Iwas I was with her all the time

(01:10:56):
when she was younger, when I hadmy second wife, we spent a
little more time apart and I'm not sure that that was helpful.
You know, you come back around, you have enough time, you know,
you get to restore all the senseof love and and the intimacy

(01:11:17):
that can be there between a father and a daughter
especially. And I think that's all there
now. You know, we had some tough
times. May 31st, 2008 The heart attack,
right? Take me through what happened
from the moment you first started feeling bad.
Well, this is this is a kind of an athletic story.

(01:11:39):
I was to stand up paddling that day.
We did a couple of miles. I went down to a little beach
South of where there was a home that I owned and they did this
thing as well. You know, you go pick up a big
Brock off the bottom of the sea floor and walk with it for a

(01:12:00):
while underwater, hold your breath.
So I did that about 5 or 6 timesand then we got back on the
boards and paddled back up and that's when I felt a little
dizzy and, and I just stepped onto the beach and, and, and
thought I would better just sit down.
Then I threw up and oh that's a little funny.
And I said well let's go and getsome food.
So I that's when I stood up and that's when I felt the crushing

(01:12:25):
pressure in my chest and, and. What are you thinking at the
time? Well, I, I started thinking, I
guess maybe that's a heart attack.
And so I sat down and tried to breathe deeply and it felt
really, really painful. And at that point, that's when
I, I started to shout apologies to my ex-wife about how sorry I

(01:12:45):
was that I'd, you know, sort of just been this awful husband.
But that's kind of what she, youknow, made me believe.
And I waited for an hour and a half before the emergency guys
got there. It was too bad because it's,
it's Hawaii, a Big Island of Hawaii.
And getting an ambulance there is tough.

(01:13:06):
I think maybe they've got in a helicopter by now for such such
situations. But so a lot of not, not some
damage was done to my heart during that that time.
Finally they gave me what when Ifinally got to the emergency
room, they gave me what they call the clot Buster.
And that was one of the interesting experiences.
They said, well, you've, you've got some sort of clot,

(01:13:28):
something's, you know, obstructing the flow of blood
through your heart. And they said there are side
effects. And I said, what are those?
And she said, well, death, that's OK, thank you.
Go do it. And so they, they did it.
And then, and then they pop you and then they bring you back.

(01:13:48):
And so I I was breathing on my own after the second pop and,
and, and when we were sort of back on track.
When was the point in which you weren't present any anymore?
It was very brief. You know, there was a brief
moment of when I said just before the the shot, I said, you
know, sort of said to the, the, the gods that be or whatever,
you know, there's or the, the the lesser angels, whatever.

(01:14:13):
I said, don't show me anything. I don't want to see a thing.
I'm not interested in any tunnels or any light.
I have things I have to do here still, and I'll dig rice for a
second. I'd got to the point in my
marriage at that time, the unhappiness was so profound that
I actually started to think the only way I can solve this for
them is to not be here. Really.
Yeah. And so I started to believe that

(01:14:33):
the best course of for my life was to not be alive and that
they'd be happier. Why would you feel that?
Just, you know, look, some people get used to a certain
place. That's all I'll say about it.
So that in that moment when I said, OK, I take it all back, is
what I was basically saying to the to the little angels.
I was saying I didn't really mean it.

(01:14:55):
You know what? I know there's something else to
live for and I want to get to that.
But it wasn't until that moment that you really had that
revelation. A profound plea for another shot
at this. Yeah, right.
And I guess they heard me. How much OK, how much damage
ended up getting done to your heart?
Well, you know what, I, I think I've, I've reversed a lot of it

(01:15:16):
by now because I've been workingout pretty hard ever since then
and, and I've done some, some things that enhance your blood
flow and I feel pretty strong. Post Frazier, We were taping an
episode with Jon Hamm not too long ago of Mad Men fame, and I
asked him, you know, how do you recapture the high of being T VS

(01:15:38):
leading man? And he laughed.
And he's like, you don't. How similar an experience Was
that transition for you? Yeah.
Well, Frazier was a giant accomplishment.
You know, honestly, actors get wary about, you know, successful

(01:15:59):
characters because then they kind of like, take away your
right to play other ones. But that hasn't been the case
with me. I mean, there's a bit of a, you
know, he's still sort of there in my life.
Always Frazier, I mean, because he's a great character.
So I'm remembered for him, but recently I've been playing a lot

(01:16:20):
of different roles and I'm having a really great time at
it. And so, and that's what I always
wanted to be was just an actor that played different
characters. So that's happened and I'm, I
got a couple of indelible 1. You know, another indelible
character was Boss, basically Tom Kane.
That went really well. And although it didn't, you
know, have the full life that I'd hoped it would, it was a

(01:16:43):
very successful performance for me.
And there's some other ones coming up.
I've done a couple of films lately that I think we're going
to be pretty good experiences for people in the theater and
you know, so I'm happy. How did the level of
satisfaction that you got from the roles and in parts post
Frazier compared to maybe what you would have been expecting?

(01:17:05):
Right, Frazier was so good, you know, it was just, it was a
great performance and, and, and,and great writing and all, all
the things you needed to have itbecome great.
I've, I've experienced that since.
And so I haven't been cursed by it.
You know, in a in a weird way, I'm trying to get to the heart

(01:17:27):
of your. Question and yeah, and I was
going to say that's I wasn't implying or asking that in a
negative way by any means. I, I guess I just wonder, you
know, you go from playing for one part, one part for so long,
My guess is there's some level of preconceived notion of what
it's like to then all of a sudden have the flexibility to

(01:17:50):
play all of these. Different roles, that's true.
Does the satisfaction kind of comparative?
What you would have the. Satisfaction going into it.
Yeah, the satisfaction is great.It's it's been great.
It's just like when the first time you do it, you know, the
very first time I did a role where I, I went, wow, that that
felt like truth because you know, and that's, that's what we

(01:18:11):
get off on. I think it's like you get to
sort of touch human truth through a performance.
You know, I mean, somebody say describes great art as a true
lie. That's it.
It's, it's a very simple set of words.
You know, a true lie. That's exactly what it is.
I mean, we are, we're not telling the truth, but we are
conveying truth, you know, with a mask.

(01:18:34):
And it's, it's, it's a great wayto make a living.
The Simpsons voice of Well. There, there's a great truth in
the inside. Show Bob.
What does that entail? Inside show Bob is a is a is a
character based upon a person. I knew his name was Ellis Rab.
And I've, I've said this before and you know, many, many
instances, but Ellis was a colorful, flamboyant man that I

(01:18:58):
knew that I did some work for years before and he would say
the most wonderful things. Oh, Kelsey, you know, things
like that. Today I am, you know, and I, I
thought, God, this guy, I got touse him somewhere.
And the occasion arose with the Sideshow Bob.
So that Sideshow Bob is Ellis Rabb, my version of Ellis Rabb

(01:19:19):
and, and an honorific version. I mean, I, I loved him.
I thought he was a wonderful guyand he the most famous thing he
ever said to me. And I've said that I've told
this story before. It was said Kelsey, that baby
should have been mine. And I've always thought, wow,
that is the greatest thing. So years later I was auditioning

(01:19:40):
girls or young women for for thedaughter and boss and a girl
came and sat and and was readingfor us and she looked up and
said I am that baby. And that was wonderful, so.
How? How did The Simpsons come of
that? Sam Simon had been a writer on

(01:20:03):
Cheers. And then he, he took off and
started doing the Tracey Ullman show.
And then within that they came up with, with Matt granting the,
the little itchy and scratchy thing.
And then it turned into the sortof The Simpsons character, the
part and everything. And he called me like in the
second season of The Simpsons and said, I used to sing a lot

(01:20:26):
on the on the set of Cheers. I used to always sing Oh, the
good life. And he asked me if I was still
doing that. And I said, yeah, yeah.
He says, can you sing a Cole Porter song?
And I said, of course I can. And so I said, well, we've got
this character sides with Bob, loves Cole Porter, has never

(01:20:47):
spoken a word. And we finally thought he should
speak. He's crusted the crown sidekick.
And we want you to do it. So I said, yeah, alchemy.
And that's when I thought, oh, it's it's Ellis.
And did my Ellis Rav impression.And then then saying, what is

(01:21:07):
it? Every time we say goodbye, I cry
a little. Every time we say goodbye, I
wonder why A little A wonderful song and sideshow was born.
You have a best memory from there over the years.
Well, you know what, they alwayscome up with really quirky,
wonderful stuff to get to do. I mean, I just did another one

(01:21:28):
in, in London when I was doing Man of La Mancha on an afternoon
when in for a Christmas show. I don't know if it'd be this
Christmas or next Christmas. You never know.
They used to be, used to be almost a year ahead in terms of
what you'd record and what you'dfinally see on the air.
I, I, I, I'm guessing that that window is, you know, closed
considerably or, you know, reduced considerably, but so the

(01:21:53):
time in turning it over is maybereduced to it might be this
Christmas. But and it was funny.
They think of funny things. The last one he was working for
Monsanto. I thought that was really funny.
This is ready for doing like GMO.
You know, it's they're, they're a funny punch.

(01:22:13):
The Fraser. Reboot The new Fraser.
The new Fraser. What's the plan for that?
Well, we're, we're in the midst of talking about, we've got it
hatched, we've hatched the plan,what we think is the right way
to go. We're sort of on standby a
little bit working out on a couple of possible network deals
that we're circling. And Frazier is sort of in a

(01:22:38):
second position to that at this point.
So, you know, there's still stuff going on.
But a, a revisit to Frazier at Frazier's World is, is, I think
definitely going to come. We'll see, you know, how people
respond to it. Because it's not going to be the
same place, not going to be Seattle.
It's not going to be, it's not going to be the same Frazier.

(01:22:59):
It's going to be, you know, the man in his next iteration.
And hopefully that'll be, it's something people like watching,
but I think it'll be funny. Without revealing too many
details, what will it be about? Well, you know, it's, it's still
his search for love, for one thing.
You know, I think that'll alwaysgo on with Frazier.
But a connection with his son? When do you think it starts?

(01:23:25):
Spring. OK, Yeah.
When When do you think? Airtime people can probably late
late summer next year. Late summer next year I.
Would guess that's quick. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's ready
to go. We just got to sort of staff it
and find somebody wants to give us money for it.
I mean, that's probably not that.
Who knows? You know, you never know.
I mean, the, the business is funny.

(01:23:46):
It's a funny world. But I think there's a couple of
outlets that would actually be interested in in in revisiting
it. You initially said you could not
see yourself playing Frasier again.
What changed? Part of it was the Roseanne
revival, the things that's kind of kind of like kicked again.
And then then when they were doing things like when Murphy

(01:24:07):
Brown came back and I don't knowhow, and then when Will and
Grace came back, I thought, well, it'd be worth it.
I, I've, I've always wanted to be honest, you know, like I
didn't think that Fraser should be in exactly the same place as
he was 12 years ago, you know, So we've, we've changed that.

(01:24:30):
What was appealing to you about?It just the idea that there
might be another act in his lifebecause certainly his life is.
People used to ask, could you have done it for more time?
And they said, well, yeah, I mean, you know, because life is
always, always surprising, you know, people go on, you know?
Yeah, you get up the next day and it's a different life, isn't
it? And so I thought you could

(01:24:51):
always tell stories about that. We just ended it because that's
where all contracts were up and 11 seasons seemed like the right
kind of amount of time for it tobe on the air.
And so we ended it on a high andwhat we thought was a, you know,
a good a good story point to endon and, and, and a hopeful
stepping off place, all those things that were, were enough to

(01:25:12):
propel him into a new kind of life.
And so this new idea would be based upon the fact that he was
still, you know, alive and stilltrying things and still embarked
on an adventure. I mean, I think that ideally
that would be how it would work out.
On that note, I really appreciate you having us here.
This has been a treat. Sorry for all the questions, but

(01:25:33):
thank you for being so pleased with your story.
This has been great. Thanks man.
Thanks. Thanks for listening to my chat
with Kelsey Grammar. To catch more of our interview,
including a tour of his 500 acreproperty and his brewing
facility, visit youtube.com/graham Bensinger.
And as always, we appreciate when you rate and review the

(01:25:54):
show. Thanks again for listening.