The Cheers Cast Once Got Kirstie Alley a Shotgun as a Welcome Present

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• At a recent TV festival, the cast of Cheers reunited to tell stories.

• One anecdote involved buying a welcome gift for actress Kirstie Alley, who joined the series midway through its run.

• Actors George Wendt and John Ratzenberger thought outside the box and purchased a shotgun for the actress.

Cheers may have been known as the bar where "everybody knows your name," but on the set of Cheers, not everybody knows what to get you as a gift.

During a Cheers cast reunion recently held at ATX TV Festival in Austin, when the topic turned to the late Kirstie Alley, who joined the show in season 6, George Wendt relayed an anecdote that explains why he and John Ratzenberger were never tasked with gifting again.

Taking over as the female lead of arguably the greatest sitcom of the 1980s was no easy task for Alley in 1987, especially given the audience's strong investment in the dynamic between Ted Danson's Sam and Shelley Long's Diane (the latter of whom left the show to pursue a movie career, creating the vacuum Alley filled). And while Alley had shown some comedy chops earlier that same year with the Mark Harmon vehicle Summer School, she was still better known for material like the espionage series Masquerade and her role as the stoic Vulcan Lieutenant Saavik in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

According to People, out of the kindness of their hearts, the then-current cast thought to get Kirstie a welcome gift to make her more comfortable. However, the task fell to two castmates who maybe didn't grasp what makes a good welcome gift for a young actress.

"We were having dinner right before the show, and we said, 'Oh jeez, we should have got her something, right?' And 'Yeah, like some flowers or something…'" Wendt said. "So, [Ted Danson] says, 'I can't, I got a thing I got to do.' And [Rhea Perlman], 'no.'"

So the task fell to Wendt and Ratzenberger, who memorably played bar buddies Norm and Cliff on Cheers. And the way things unfolded are precisely what you'd expect from an adventure Norm and Cliff would have on the streets of Boston.

Fun Fact: Wendt and Ratzenberger's other big adventure was when they were once involved in a lawsuit involving robots made to replicate the characters they played placed at airport bars. Creepy robots. Look it up, folks. They're haunting!

They ventured to "a very 'trendy area' in Melrose in Hollywood," but nothing caught their eye.

"Going past all these places and we go past Big 5 Sporting Goods, and John goes, 'You wanna buy her a shotgun?'" George said, garnering laughs from the crowd. "And, like you, I laughed for about five minutes and then immediately pulled into the parking lot, and we bought her a freakin' shotgun."

That's when Ratzenberger chimed in to put a little bow on the story, saying to Wendt, "I think you even wrote on the card, 'You're gonna have to shoot your way out,'"

Alley would have great success on Cheers, receiving five Primetime Emmy nominations for her work as Rebecca Howe, including one win in 1991. Alley would even appear as Rebecca beyond the main series, in both a crossover episode of the sitcom Wings and a genuinely bizarre Disney special called Mickey's 60th Birthday, wherein Mickey Mouse visits the Boston Bar, and Rebecca takes him on a date.

So remember: though Rebecca never visited Frasier in Seattle on Frasier, she did take Mickey Mouse on a date and owned a shotgun behind the scenes. There's your TV trivia for the day.

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