Role was to be temporary

Press, 9 December 1988, Page 11

Role was to be temporary

When, in 1984, Dr Frasier Crane entered the bar of "Cheers” as Diane’s psychiatrist and future love interest, he was supposed to last just seven episodes — long enough to come between Diane and Sam for a while.

But the man who plays Dr Crane, Kelsey Grammer, made the role so convincing and threedimensional, that he stayed on even after Diane (Shelley Long) had left.

“He made an unlikeable character likeable,” said co-executive producer, James Burrows. Dr Crane is now such an integral part of the bar scene that stories are written around him, and he himself has introduced a new regular to the cast — Dr Lilith Sternin (Bebe Neuwirth). Many might expect so convincing a character to mirror the man who plays him, but outside the studios, Grammer would be quite unrecognisable as the stuffy, intellectual Crane. From a young age, Grammer was something of a longer who took refuge in surfing, medita-

tion and music. It was a role in a school play that led him into acting. “I was taking my bow after the first performance,” he recalls, “and I thought, ‘Now this I can do for the rest of my life.’ It was exciting, engaging, and it has a kind of freedom — adolescent in a way, like surfing. You just go with the wave of a play and you ride it.”

He rode the wave in and out of acting school, where he studied for two years, but left without a diploma. “Well, they threw me out, really. We weren’t getting along. They kept

asking me if I really wanted to be an actor. I knew I did, but I didn’t want to go on trying to prove it to them by their recognised formula.”

He drifted around the east coast of America for a while, unloading fishing boats, painting roofs and waiting on tables.

Professionally, his luck changed when a casting director whose office he was painting, set him up with a job at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego — on the other side of America.

Grammer turned up an old motorcycle and rode across the country in just four days. He stayed in San Diego for two years, but New York drew him back.

“I had to defeat New York,” he explains. “I felt a bit overwhelmed by it before.”

He may not have defeated it,' but he at least got even, getting regular work in both theatre and television. Eventually, he moved back west and, in 1984, was asked to read for the part of Dr Crane in “Cheers.”

“I was asked to read for

this new character, but they were very secretive about it — no-one could see the script. It was like industrial espionage. I had not seen the show at all, so I didn’t even know what I was auditioning for.”

Despite his fondness for the role, he felt uneasy about Hollywood television work.

“I was very nervous, you know, doing television when you’re an actor,” he says. “I thought, ‘O God, I’ll get trapped, I’ll never do anything again but this character of Frasier Crane’.”

There is little danger of Grammer becoming Crane for good. Crane is a man of books and fine furniture, whereas Grammer is the sort of man who rides motorbikes across continents, keeps a collection of old cars in his back yard and turns up for rehearsals in T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, while the other cast members are slowly moving into their roles. "I like to keep them guessing,” he says.

“Cheers” screens on Monday evenings at 8.30 on Two.