Frasier Showrunners Explain Why Frasier Doesn't Go to Cheers and Why Niles Isn't in the Revival

Relaunching one of television's most beloved characters, who starred in not one but two of the most acclaimed and awarded sitcoms of all time, almost twenty years after his last on-screen appearance? No problem.

Okay, it wasn't really that simple for executive producers Chris Harris and Joe Cristalli to orchestrate the return of Dr. Frasier Crane, renowned for his lengthy turns as a supporting character on Cheers and as the lead of his own spinoff series Frasier, each of which enjoyed staggeringly popular eleven-season runs that enduringly reside atop the gold standard of television comedy. 

But working in concert with the character's longtime alter ego, actor and producer Kelsey Grammer, and drawing from their own admiration (and in Cristalli's case, unabashedly obsessive fandom) for Frasier in both his incarnations, Harris — a veteran TV scribe known for his extended tenures on How I Met Your Mother and Late Night with David Letterman — and Cristalli — whose credits include Life In Pieces and a long stint working on Conan O'Brien's two late night series — conceived a new path, an engaging cast of fresh characters, and a semi-familiar environment for the pompous but lovable psychiatrist, resulting in Paramount+'s Frasier, which launches with an array of laughs and charms that from the get-go stands promisingly alongside its vaunted predecessors.

And that's no easy feat, as the showrunners revealed to TVGuide.com.

TV Guide: Tell me why you guys wanted this. Why this was a dream job for you?

Joe Cristalli: I've been the biggest Frasier fan long before this started. I've seen all the episodes half a million times. You'd be hard pressed to stump me on something that isn't super trivial in the show. When the show went off the air, I think eight years later I started a Twitter feed that was, "I'm going to get a job writing on Frasier!" and I would just do Frasier jokes, to very little acclaim. Nobody was asking for it, nobody wanted it. 

But then a couple years into doing it, Kelsey came out in the press saying he wanted to bring the show back, so I had my agent send that Twitter feed — which I have since deleted because I don't want anybody to see those jokes, because they're awful. But it got me a meeting with his producers and I just sort of told them what I wanted do. And at the time, I think I was a staff writer or a story editor on Life In Pieces, and they were like, "Yeah, you're great. This seems great, but we can't give Frasier to YOU. What are you, like 30? We need an adult to help you with this." So I called Chris, who's been showrunnining a long time.

Chris Harris: A cynical old guy, yeah!

Cristalli: The old vet walked in, he thought he was done with it but he's got one more case [Laughs]. And we co-wrote the pitch together. We co-wrote the pilot. We've been working together on it for like five years and I think at this point, Chris, you've probably seen all the episodes of the old Frasier, right?

Harris: I've come very close, Joe — if you round up then I definitely have seen every single episode. I came to this as a fan and also an admirer just in terms of how the scripts were crafted and no other show could do farce and it's so delightful and it just felt sweaty and false in any other show. And then in Frasier, you could just sit back and admire the structure and the form that all came together so beautifully. So my knowledge didn't go as deep, but I also grew up with Cheers, and the idea of continuing with — as Kelsey has called it — Frasier's third chapter of his life was, like you said, it was a dream.

The clean slate that you get to start with is ideal for that third act. Tell me about figuring that out, landing on "What do we do with Frasier 20 years after we saw him last?" Tell me about figuring out the structure of the show, the location, and where Frasier would be in his life.

Harris: Some of it we had early on, some of it came from Kelsey even before we were anointed, and others sort of were happy circumstance. We always knew going in, this was going to be the same way the original was about Kelsey moving in with his father, this is going to be about now Kelsey, his father to the son. Now this is about his relationship with Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), which is the one big glaring hole in his life from the previous series. Frasier thought he was a good father, but it doesn't take a lot of squinting to decide, "Oh, actually he wasn't there for a lot of Freddy's formative moments." And so that was the easy part. Kelsey wanted a different city — for a while, we traded different cities around until Boston and that idea of coming back to a city just felt so imbued with… It felt weighty, in a good way. 

Because this was a long process to get this to where it is now, for a while we were making efforts to bring back all of the original cast, and I think it would've been crowded, and I think it would've been a little bit of one foot in the past and one foot trying to do new things. Plus getting everyone into a new city was always a little tricky — it just felt like a lot. Suddenly it was a little crowded and [a lot of] ground to cover. David Hyde Pierce is amazing, the entire original cast is incredible, and we hope we get to work with each of them if we get to go for several seasons, but I think it was a blessing in disguise that when David decided that he didn't want to come back as a series regular, it did free us up for a clean slate: let's build a new world. Frasier was a different world from Cheers, so let's bring him into an equally different world for this next phase of his life.

Tell me what aspects of Frasier's personality in your mind had to remain sort of ironclad, like "This is essential Frasier," and how did you want to evolve him now that we hadn't seen him for two decades?

Cristalli: I think Frasier's always going to be the smartest guy in the room he walks into. He's always going to be the most evolved guy in the room he walks into. As you've probably seen from the new set, it's very forward, design-wise. He's probably a couple years ahead of a lot of people, which Glenda Rovello, the production designer, did an immaculate job with. That place is beautiful. 

I think he's evolved in a way that he's more comfortable. He used to be so tightly wound and nervous and making sure he has his best foot forward all the time, and he's a little bit more relaxed, a little bit more comfortable in his skin now. But that's not to say that he still can't get very uppity at the very smallest thing. He's still got a hair-trigger for that. So in that way, I think we had to keep him the smartest guy in the room. We had to keep him the most involved. We had to keep him somehow the richest guy in town. And he keeps sliding into those old neuroses that are so delightful and wonderful, but he's also got new ones that are also delightful.

Harris: It was really fun to think about, "Okay, this is someone who has had success in the last 20 years." And so he is, like Joe said, he's a little more relaxed; he's unwound just a little bit. But we've also had fun sort of really digging into, "What was Frasier's issue, always?"

In a later episode, Freddy, his son, and David, his nephew, talk about the "Crane Curse" and basically this idea that Frasier and Niles were always people if they had one thing, but they saw this other thing, they needed that other thing. And I think that this dissatisfaction with where you are or wanting to be a little bit higher or a little bit more with the in-crowd or a little bit more respected is great. That's how you get ambitious, but it's also a curse. It can also be a huge problem. And so we've had fun injecting that into Frasier's new phase and also having the next generation talk about it openly: "This is a problem with our family. What's wrong with us?"

Cristalli: Frasier will kind of always embody that episode from the original run where he and Niles would find a very exclusive spot and they can barely get in. And then once they're in, they see a silver door: "Well, we have to go through the silver door. We have to see what's behind that." And then there's a gold door, and then there's a platinum door, and they end up in an alley. So even though he's a little bit more comfortable, that will always be in the back of his mind. "Well, I've got to go to the best thing. I have to go there."

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Nobody has spent more time with Frasier than Kelsey Grammer. Tell me how integral his input was to where you ended up.

Cristalli: Beyond! I mean, beyond. You can give him something and he can very, very confidently say, "Frasier won't say that. Frasier would say this." Anything he does, he's that guy. And it is funny because when you talk to him off the set, "Hey man, what's going on?" "Wait, hold on — that's not how Frasier talks! 'Man?' Who's that guy?" Everything he does, he gives you a look, he gives you a smile, he's checking his hair in the mirror — it's like that's the guy. 

So everything we write, especially with the pitch, especially with the pilot, especially as the episodes go on, his fingerprints are all over it. We run everything by him and he's like, "Yeah, I love that. Here's what Frasier would do." But also in the same way that he's so hands-on, he's also very hands off. And he trusts us a lot to not do wrong by that character, which is incredibly wonderful that he trusts us with Frasier because he's done such an incredible job as a gatekeeper with that character. And he loves it. He loves that character and he's very protective of it — rightfully so! I don't think he's had a misstep. I don't know what you think, Chris. I think he's been pretty good.

Harris: It's just not bad. Yeah, very few notes. [Laughs]

You also had the advantage of one of Frasier's figurative "parents," [director] Jimmy Burrows, in crafting those first two new episodes, which are just ideal bookends for the first two episodes of the first Frasier series. Tell me how that helped get you where you needed to be in terms of what people expect from a show with Frasier at the center.

Harris: It was such a great comfort because as you can tell from our answers, we want to do everything we can to honor what came before, but we're also trying to continue Frasier's story, which will involve some new things. And so having that consistency from the past, which obviously goes back to Cheers, was a huge comfort to us and to Kelsey too. And when Jimmy came in and read, especially when he read the first episode, but after the second episode too, he said, "This is good." You can't help but feel, "OK, a little bit of the pressure's off, a little bit of the burden is lifted," because like you said, along with Kelsey, no one knows his character better.

Cristalli: And I don't know, I'm sure you've talked to Jimmy at some point, Scott, but he's not shy about his opinions. [Laughs] So I don't think he would've just been nice for the sake of being nice. So the fact that he believed in it, and he had really good notes and he was just pitching jokes on the fly that we're putting in on set, and he's still in it, and he's still just so good. And Chris is right, it was just a confidence booster and a comfort that he was on board. He was like, "Yeah, you guys didn't screw this thing up. Good job."

Harris: And when he laughs, you know that laugh is genuine. That laugh is real. So when we're shooting something and you look over and he's just watching it and enjoying it, then there's no better feeling. I mean, it's really the best.

Cristalli: That's how everybody got cast. I mean, he's in the room and we're casting people, and if he's laughing at the auditions, "OK, you're in the show." "Good job, you're in the show." "Good job, you're in the show." He's stone-faced for a lot of it, but then it's like he gets tickled. Then it's like, "OK, we've found something. This is what's good."

On that note, I instantly fell in love with the character of Alan. I thought he was a fantastic character and a fantastic actor playing him, and he's that necessary sort of foil-slash-compadre that Frasier needs. Every version of Frasier has had somebody like that that's on his side half the time and against him half the time. Tell me about where that notion for the character came from, and then how Nicholas Lyndhurst really gives it life.

Cristalli: It's all Kelsey. I mean, Kelsey, from the beginning of this, he said, and it's a crazy thing to say out loud, but Kelsey said "Frasier never really had a great friend." In Cheers, he felt like he was always kind of on the outside looking in to those guys. Niles was his brother, and yes, they're friends, but they were brothers first, which is a very different relationship. And aside from that relationship with his son, which was going to be poor, he wanted a best friend. He wanted an old friend that could go toe-to-toe with him and knock him down when he needed to. 

And Kelsey had done… I forget what year it was, but he'd done Man of La Mancha in the UK with Nicholas, and all we heard for three years was, "Alan is going to be played by Nicholas." And Chris and I were like, "OK" — we're not as up to date on British television, so we looked him up and yes, he's very good, but we weren't as familiar with his work, and [Kelsey] just kept saying, "It's going to be Nicholas. It has to be Nicholas." And Nick flew over and read and it was a revelation. He's brilliant. Everything you give him is rock-solid gold. It's incredible to watch. I mean, it's not shocking. He's a legend in England. He's shockingly good. He's very, very good.

Harris: Yeah, even a lot of the studio didn't know him either, so that was why he had to fly him in. They told Kelsey, like, "OK, but we have to fly him in. We have to just make sure that he can say lines — we don't know him. He flew in, he was probably not in the US for more than eight hours. He came into the room, did a couple scenes with Kelsey. Jimmy's sitting there laughing like he's always laughing when the person's right. He just knocked it out of the park, left, and it was like, "Oh my God, we've been hearing about this guy for three years and he's even better than Kelsey promised." And it was amazing.

Cristalli: I kind of love that Nick is a fresh face. It's kind of wonderful. "And introducing Nicholas Lindhurst in…"

Harris: And for the character, we knew we didn't want to exactly replicate Niles. No one can match David Hyde Pierce, but we wanted to have that feel. And so much of it is just what Nick is amazing at, but we felt like maybe going in the other direction of maybe this is someone who also does enjoy the fine things, but is as carefree as can be and enjoys popping people's balloons and is there to sort of puncture Frasier's plans or ego or whatever it is that needs puncturing in the moment. And yeah, we can't wait to write more episodes with the two of them, for sure.

The other central relationship is obviously Freddy, and you certainly found another rock-solid actor in Jack. So tell me how you wanted to reconceive Freddy from the Freddy that we'd seen as a kid and a young teen on Frasier and how you wanted to grow him up, and then again, finding that actor who really filled him out in a great way.

Cristalli: It was kind of a new blueprint because the Freddy we saw, you're right, was much more bookish and he is obviously younger, so the fact that he grew up to become a firefighter was just a new role that we were creating from scratch. He has that brainy side of him. He went to an Ivy League school, but he's also got that blue-collar work ethic like Martin. So he was always going to be cut from the same cloth from Martin and Frasier, and Jack walks that line in an incredible way. 

In one episode he can speak French and in another episode he's chugging beer. He can speak Latin; he just doesn't want to. So him doing that stuff is just very fun to watch. It's a new energy from the banter that Frasier and Martin had, where Frasier would throw a jape at Martin, but Freddy can come back in a way that Martin couldn't, because Freddy's Ivy League educated so he can stand toe-to-toe.

And the whole auditioning process was really seeing people on tape that were really, really good, but then getting them in a room with Kelsey, and then actually standing up to Kelsey, which is not an easy thing to do, and just going toe-to-toe in that dialogue — Jack just knocks it out of the park. I forget which episodes he's got — he's great in all of them — but he's got some real big powerful emotional scenes and he's got some really big funny scenes, and he's just very, very adept at walking that line, which is super fun to watch.

Especially by the second episode, you really see where he can push Frasier's buttons in a way that's similar to Martin, but in a way all his own as well.

Cristalli: Yeah, and as soon as we saw that Jack was able to do that, we just kept writing to it, him getting under Frasier's skin. There's nothing more delightful than him irking his dad. It's just so funny

Harris: That Harvard run in the third episode where he's just pushing and saying all these things that Frasier said to him over the years…

Cristalli: We wrote that script and we gave him one or two, and Jack made it this tour de force of just punching it, and we just kept adding to it. After runthrough, we added three more lines, and after we kept adding to it, making this giant monologue of things that Jack just created out of nothing. And he's very, very good. We're very lucky with this cast.

The Frasier and Cheers Episodes to Watch Before You Watch the Frasier Revival

David captures some of the quirkiness of Niles and the quirkiness of Daphne in one character, which is remarkable. Let's go through how he came to be in your heads and finding Anders Keith.

Harris: That was one where, in my memory at least, we didn't know exactly what we were looking for, but we knew that we'd know it when we saw it. We knew that it would just be someone with their own unique energy, someone who was a little bit awkward but could also be empathetic, had some of the Niles, had some of the Daphne, but was going to portray it in this crazy mixed-up way where I think at one point we described it as not quite fully formed yet. He's not quite all the way baked. And Anders was very much one of those people that where the moment he walked in, just bumbling around, it wasn't clear if he was acting yet or if it was himself, and Jimmy just instantly fell in love with him.

And Anders is from Juilliard. I just saw him in The Sound Inside at the Pasadena Playhouse and he's tremendous in a dramatic role. So he's got an incredible amount of range, but he's also, like you said, what we loved was that quirkiness that we hadn't seen before and wouldn't even be able to describe, and would never find if that's exactly what we were looking for. But once we saw him, we knew.

Cristalli: And that character could easily be described as from another planet, and Anders browns him in a way with vulnerability that's just… he feels real! And when Anders is just bounded into the audition room and knocked over a plant, it really was unclear: Is he doing this as David, or is this Anders? It's very good. And correct me if I'm wrong, Chris, this is, I'm pretty sure, his first job out of Juilliard. 

Harris: This is! Oh yeah, he's super green. And he has an episode later on that focuses on him and the pressure of being the son of a Crane, and it's one of my favorite performances in the whole season. It's where you just really feel that "tightly woundness." We know where it comes from, we know his father, but you really feel what it has done to him over the years. And we think it's funny, but there's also a bit of, you feel for him, too.

Eve and Olivia kind of split the Roz role, in different ways. Tell me what the thinking was behind those two characters.

Cristalli: We just needed more people that can give it to Frasier, can stand toe-to-toe with them and not back down. And they're two very strong women, just like Roz was, in that they're not intimidated by him. When Jess [Salgueiro] and Toks [Olagundoye] walked into the room, they blew us away. And those roles just keep getting bigger and bigger because they've carved out this very specific piece of their character that's just so funny to write for. 

We wouldn't have described Olivia as hands-on-the-hip as the administrator, but she started as more of… not an enemy of Frasier–

Harris: A little bit more of a foil for Alan and Frasier, but–

Cristalli: She becomes buddies with them because it's much funnier to watch her get on Alan's side of just poke fun at Frasier, and poke fun at Alan, and that was all Toks. We were writing a different character and she came in and just changed it completely. 

And Jess, I think she's so good in that pilot. She's just so funny and different and weird. And I knew her from Letterkenny and I was already a fan, but [casting director] Jeff Greenberg brought her in and it just blew us away. And that role just keeps getting bigger and bigger too. I think we added a big part to the pilot, just giving her more runs because we're just enjoying it so much. They just fill out the world in such a nice way that feels organic and real and not just like, "Here's some more people, here's some more people." It's just like they all are just so integral to just that Frasier orbit, I feel like.

As somebody who was able to "interview" Moose and Enzo back in the day and has turned out to have a dog very much like Eddie, I have to ask: Did you go back and forth about keeping a dog in Frasier's life or not? Was that a tough call?

Harris: Eddie was so funny, and boy, we sure miss him when we're trying to think up silent tags at the end of every episode, but we're trying to walk the line of drawing from the past and honoring it, but also forging our own show, and I think we just weren't sure: Is it too much to have a dog just drop in? Eddie, on the other hand, I love Eddie, and I think maybe that's something we explore in the future because it was wonderful to have.

Obviously the smart move is to let this show get its legs, stand on its own feet for at least the first season, maybe two, before you start deep-diving into the unbelievable wealth of great characters from both Frasier and Cheers that you could bring back for one-offs. I'm rooting for Bebe Glazer myself.

Cristalli: Try and stop us from seeing Bebe Glazer again! Just try and stop us! I don't even want to see her face at first, I just want to hear a "Fraaaaz-ier" from somewhere off-camera. As soon as we've earned the right, Gil will show up, Bulldog — whoever we can get! There's so many great people to bring back.

What's the mindset about how you dip into that? Do you have sort of a roadmap?

Cristalli: I think you said it best. I mean, we just had to stand on our own two feet first. We'd love to have all those people in Season 1 and just keep spreading 'em out, but it feels like it's just too much, and we have to make sure the show feels good and solid on its own. I mean, Peri Gilpin (Roz) and Bebe Neuwirth (Lilith) are a different story. They're fantastic. But we've talked about how you bring those people back. I don't think anybody from the original Cheers showed up in Frasier until at least Season 2 or 3. It's one of those things that it's going to be wonderful when it happens, we just have to earn it. And that goes for any of them. Daphne, Niles, anybody that wants to come back, we'll welcome them with open arms.

Harris: And anyone from Cheers. We have two incredible long-running shows to draw from. So yeah, we can't wait.

Cheers is kind of an elephant in the room because he's back in Boston. Do you sort of know why we're not seeing Frasier walking right back into Cheers?

Cristalli: Cheers is a Sunglass Hut now, so he can't! No, I think it's very telling and by design that he does not visit Cheers in that first season because as Frasier, the character will say he's got some unfinished business in Boston, and he might not have been his best self here in Boston, and I think he feels a little bit of a shame, and he's not ready to walk into Cheers yet. And when he is, I hope we can see that because I think it'll be powerful. But right now, he's not ready yet. He's got too many hopes and dreams and all these unfinished things that he has to get to first before he starts tackling that, I think.

I imagine his "lost years" in Chicago are also fairly fertile ground for fresh new ideas.

Harris: We love the idea of having that almost 20 years that we can sort of fill in. And as you know, we do a little bit in one episode of seeing glimpses of his TV show, but we can start filling in the gaps. We really don't know much about his romantic life in Chicago, still. And obviously that's a huge part of it.

Cristalli: Well, well, I mean, we know that Charlotte moved to the Ozarks, but we don't really know why.

Nice grace note, by the way.

Cristalli: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Are there other little fun Easter eggs like that that we should look for? I noticed the name of the new regular bar seemed quite familiar. Are there things like that that you peppered in that you think that the longtime and sharp-eyed viewer will pick up on?

Cristalli: Yeah, and I think for the most part they're subtle. I mean, it'd be so easy just to throw a green recliner into a scene, but I think the ones that are sort of subtle and you really have to squint to see are the ones that are going to be the most enjoyable. At least for me, as someone who, if I wasn't behind the show, I'd want to see that stuff. 

Harris: I like to think of referencing moments, especially from Frasier — like, little incidents that happened and things. So we want to keep all that history alive.

Cristalli: I mean, one of the biggest laughs in the pilot is Frasier just looking off instantly saying, "I'm no stranger to an underperforming dinner party." So I think things like that can be very funny, and they stand on their own as jokes in the new one, but if you know the old one, it's like that's really, really, really, that's fun. That's fun for him to say.

The Frasier revival airs new episodes on Thursdays Paramount+. Cheers and the original run of Frasier are streaming on Hulu and Paramount+.