Frasier Revival Creators Reveal Original Idea for Series’ Return

The post Frasier Revival Creators Reveal Original Idea for Series’ Return appeared first on Consequence.

Kelsey Grammer is back as Frasier, and this time around, he’s left his Seattle radio show (and San Francisco television show) to teach at a university in his native Boston. That wasn’t always Chris Harris and Joe Cristalli’s original idea for the revival, however. The showrunners revealed how, exactly, they came up with the new season’s storyline in a new interview with Vulture, and, spoiler alert, it really hinged on who from the series’ original cast they could convince to return.

Grammer is the only original Frasier actor returning to the revival. Most notably, Harris and Cristalli hoped to secure David Hyde Pierce, who portrayed the psychiatrist’s uptight brother, Niles. But when Pierce declined to return for more episodes last year, the showrunners had to come up with a new plan.

“We talked to David Hyde Pierce a couple of times,” Cristalli revealed. “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.”

Cristalli 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.”

Harris explained that the duo went through “many incarnations” of the Frasier revival before deciding to place the psychiatrist in his hometown. “The university was in some versions and not in other versions, and there was a theater in one of them,” he said. “It felt like, what’s giving meaning in this next stage of life?”

Cristalli added, “For a long time, the idea was that Frasier and Niles were going to run a black-box theater, like how they bought that restaurant and brought it back to life. But it’s hard for Frasier and Niles to run the theater when you don’t have Niles, so we had to step back from that.”

Now streaming on Paramount+, this edition of Frasier co-stars Jack Cutmore-Scott as Grammer’s son Freddy, who the psychiatrist hopes to reconnect with by moving back to Boston. Anders Keith portrays David, Niles and Daphne’s 19-year-old son, who attempts to fill the hole Pierce and Jane Leeves leave in their absence. Over at Harvard, where Frasier is now working, he’s joined by a professor named Alan (Nicholas Lyndhurs) and Psychology Department Head Olivia (Toks Olagundoye). Only time will tell if this new cast of characters will anchor a show as successful as Frasier did after Cheers, but in her Consequence review, Liz Shannon Miller declared the ensemble capable of growth — and Grammer as enthralling as ever.

Frasier Revival Creators Reveal Original Idea for Series’ Return
Carys Anderson

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