Creators of the ‘Frasier’ reboot reveal initial ideas for series
Nearly 20 years after it aired its last episode, ‘Goodnight, Seattle: Part 2’, in 2004, the seminal comedy series Frasier has been revived for a new season. Debuting on Paramount+, the show sees Kelsey Grammer reprise his role as the loveably pretentious Dr Frasier Crane.
Leaving the series’ previous iconic setting of Seattle behind, the new Frasier sees the titular character returning once more to his hometown of Boston, where he first debuted as a supporting character in the 1980s sitcom Cheers. Having departed from his Seattle radio show and the San Franciso TV show, which the end of the original Frasier alluded to, this new season has Frasier taking up a professorship at Harvard University and moving in with his son Freddy, now a Boston firefighter.
According to the creators, however, this wasn’t originally the idea they had in mind. Speaking to Vulture, showrunners Chris Harris and Joe Cristalli revealed that the show’s current premise was entirely shaped by who from the series’ original cast they could convince to return.
Grammer is the only notable member of the cast to return, and the lack of the other iconic characters is most notably felt with the absence of Frasier’s brother, Niles, portrayed by David Hyde Pierce. Both Harris and Cristalli shared how they had planned on Pierce returning, but when he declined, they had to think of something new.
“We talked to David Hyde Pierce a couple of times,” Cristalli explained. “He was in a tough position. Everybody wants to see him as Niles, but he doesn’t want to step back into those shoes. He felt like he didn’t have anything new to bring to the character. He read versions and gave us notes and thoughts, and he acknowledged it was funny, and we found the tone the original did so well. It just wasn’t for him.”
He continued, “Once that happened, it freed us up a little bit. By allowing us to take Frasier and put him with a whole new cast and location, it gives us the ability to stand on our own two feet. Yes, we have to live up to the incredibly high standards of Frasier, but with a little more leniency. This can live in the same universe as Frasier and Cheers without being Frasier or Cheers.”
Referring to a Boston University theatre sometimes referenced by the characters in Frasier, Cristalli added, “For a long time, the idea was that Frasier and Niles were going to run a black-box theatre, like how they bought that restaurant and brought it back to life. But it’s hard for Frasier and Niles to run the theatre when you don’t have Niles, so we had to step back from that.”
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