How ‘Cheers’ saved Woody Harrelson from vengeful Croatian martial artists: “I’d have died right there”
At the peak of its popularity, Cheers was one of the biggest TV shows in the world. It launched countless careers and continued airing long after its final episode aired in May 1993, which came in handy for Woody Harrelson when it saved him from getting his head kicked in by a rogue batch of European martial artists.
One of the many beneficiaries of the classic sitcom, it transformed Harrelson from a jobbing actor into a household name, providing the perfect springboard from which to launch his movie career. Admittedly, the actor was concerned that being so famous for playing one character would run the risk of typecasting, and his desire to go against type led him directly into Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, which helped establish him as a performer who can play virtually every type of character.
Even during its lowest-rated season, Cheers averaged at least 10 million viewers weekly in the United States, peaking at over 34 million per episode in the eighth run. Internationally, it was broadcast in hundreds of countries and developed a massive following, ironically making it very hard for any of the principal cast members to go anywhere where nobody knew their name.
That said, it came in very handy for Harrelson on a jaunt to Croatia, where he was fully expecting to be beaten to a pulp by a group of highly-trained locals after the company he decided to keep placed him directly in their crosshairs. They may not have been familiar with Money Train, Wag the Dog, or EDTv, but they sure as shit recognised Woody Boyd.
Befriending some of Dubrovnik’s local women almost backfired horrendously after Harrelson explained to Playboy that not only was he unaware all of his companions had boyfriends, but they were all trained in judo. It sounds like something ripped right out of a Karate Kid flick, but it actually happened.
“These guys were coming down the hillside,” he said. “They were the toughest-looking motherfuckers you ever saw, some kind of Croatian judo gang or something, and they were coming down basically to kill me for being with these red-hot girls. They were ready to tear me apart, and it got mind-blowingly tense. But then one of these fucking guys recognises me from American TV, so we end up going out for drinks with them.”
One of the many times when being a celebrity can extricate a star from a sticky situation, Harrelson breathed a major sigh of relief when tending bar on the small screen saved him from an ass-kicking: “I swear if I had not been on Cheers, I’d have died right there on that beach in Croatia.” If the vengeful judo crew hadn’t been fans of the sitcom, then things could have gotten really ugly really fast.
