Kelsey Grammer on Hollywood, Redemption, and Real Life

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Speaker 2 Since rising to fame in the beloved series Cheers and its hit spin-off Frasier, Kelsey Grammer has continued to take on big roles at a frenetic pace.

Speaker 2 Along with racking up awards over the years, the actor has set himself apart as a Hollywood star who's fearless about sharing his Christian faith.

Speaker 3 In this episode, we sit down with the decorated actor to discuss his new film, The Christmas Ring, the role military veterans played in its making, and the way his faith in Christ has shaped his career.

Speaker 3 I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. This is a weekend edition of Morningwire.

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Speaker 3 Joining us now to discuss his new film, The Christmas Ring, written by Christian author Karen Kingsbury, is Kelsey Grammar Kelsey. First of all, we're all big fans of you.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 1 Sure, man.

Speaker 3 It's a pleasure. So we wanted to talk to you about, well, a number of things, but first, your new film, which is a very relevant wrinkle to it.

Speaker 3 We just celebrated Veterans Day this week, and the Christmas Ring actually involved at one point about 100 actual veterans and service members. Can you tell us about that?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 they inhabited the film with at least in one of the big scenes with

Speaker 1 some veterans and some

Speaker 1 active duty members as well and retired and you know and

Speaker 1 reservists. But

Speaker 1 it was just an opportunity to salute the troops.

Speaker 1 The whole story is sort of based upon a World War II D-Day

Speaker 1 dropping behind enemy lines.

Speaker 1 It commemorates

Speaker 1 their sacrifice a little bit and the continuing sacrifice of service members. And so that being

Speaker 1 around on Veterans Day was important to the filmmakers. I know that.

Speaker 3 And I I understand that Gary Sinise and his foundation played a role in finding some of those veterans to populate the film. Oh,

Speaker 1 I didn't really know about that because Gary and I are pretty good friends.

Speaker 1 And he actually checked in with me, what do you think of this movie? And I said, well, it's a nice story.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I hope I helped facilitate some of that. But yeah, I think it went pretty well.
And

Speaker 1 we didn't reinvent the wheel or anything, but it's a nice story about redemption and love and forgiveness and

Speaker 1 about Jesus. So

Speaker 1 it's a nice movie.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I wanted to ask you exactly about that. In fact, the role of faith in this film.
The author of the book that it's based on is Karen Kingsbury. She's a Christian author.

Speaker 3 You recently starred in Jesus Revolution, a powerful film. You played the role of Chuck Smith, the founder of Calvary Chapel, where I actually used to go to church.
In fact,

Speaker 3 how important is it to you to play roles that you feel align with or at least sort of have some sort of relationship to your religious perspective?

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I don't actually go about trying to play them too much. Actually, the night before I read the script for

Speaker 1 Jesus Revolution, I was sitting there in a kind of a quiet reverie and

Speaker 1 a little bit lonely and, you know, wondering what was next for me. And I said, you know, I just want to do something that means something, that has some meaning.

Speaker 1 And the next morning, that script came.

Speaker 1 I thought, okay, I guess this is it. And I called my agent, and in about two hours, I said, yeah, I'm going to do this movie.

Speaker 1 important to me, but what was funny was it didn't really kind of resonate for my life until I was doing an interview.

Speaker 1 I think it was Kelly or, you know, on the East Coast, and somebody talked about, you know, well, what's your feeling about Jesus and all that? And I said, well, you know what?

Speaker 1 The truth is I'm a believer. And

Speaker 1 I don't go around proselytizing or speaking the born-again lingo very well, but

Speaker 1 I would never deny Christ. I would never deny him.
And so

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 brought me into the fold, I guess, of the sort of faith-based film production world.

Speaker 1 I don't do just those movies, but I'm quite happy that this role came up. And I thought, well, yeah, I like this guy.

Speaker 1 He seems like an interesting fella and has a nice turnaround in the movie and opens up his heart again.

Speaker 1 That's always a good lesson.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and your portrayal of Chuck Smith was, first of all, really terrific. It clearly grounded the film.
It's the heart of the film. This is a very complicated story.
It's not straightforward.

Speaker 3 The lives of the real people that it's based on were messy. They lived messy lives.

Speaker 1 Well, that's what Jesus is for. You know, that's

Speaker 1 how he came along.

Speaker 1 There's a good,

Speaker 1 I work with these guys, Operation Restored Warrior. They talk about

Speaker 1 the world Jesus was born into.

Speaker 1 The world was a mess,

Speaker 1 filled with, you know,

Speaker 1 infanticide, killing babies, all kinds of just horrific stuff. Roman rule was not the greatest thing in the world,

Speaker 1 a lot of violence. And

Speaker 1 God chose to send a baby to save the world.

Speaker 1 A baby that would need other people to save him.

Speaker 1 It's pretty fascinating. And

Speaker 1 I always love that idea that

Speaker 1 into this mayhem, the beauty of a new life, of a redemptive life is such a gift. And we get to watch it every year year at Christmas.
We get to see the same story told again and again.

Speaker 1 And it's our story.

Speaker 3 And it's a story that never gets old, does it? You've talked openly in the past about the role faith in general has played for you and how important it is.

Speaker 3 And I think you touched on it there: this hope for the beauty of a new life in redemption, and that ultimately that brings people together.

Speaker 3 Do you look for at least an element of that in terms of the projects you get involved with?

Speaker 1 Well, you know what?

Speaker 1 I'm about to go play a role where the guy's a kind of a shyster,

Speaker 1 sort of

Speaker 1 not evangelist, but

Speaker 1 what you would call a fanatic

Speaker 1 who turns out to be kind of a very negative kind of guy. But that's what they say, you know.
I mean, the devil can quote chapter and verse, you know, I mean, it's like these elements exist.

Speaker 1 And so I just believe I'm supposed to, as an actor,

Speaker 1 play everything that comes to at me that you know is part of the human experience. And I mean, like I played Macbeth years ago,

Speaker 1 Macbeth is a very dark character to play.

Speaker 1 I'm used to walk around going like, maybe I better say prayer every time before I play him or something else.

Speaker 1 But we are designed to play these roles because we have a kind of an understanding that makes us,

Speaker 1 people can believe we inhabit those roles.

Speaker 1 They accept us in different roles. And so

Speaker 1 we loan what I like to call, we loan the truth of what we know about experience to the characters so that they sound authentic, that they seem real, that they seem like, oh, I believe that's possible.

Speaker 1 And that's, that's what I do, I do everything. I mean, I'm doing, we just did another Avengers.
I play Beast again in the Avengers movie. And

Speaker 1 that's about faith, too, in a lot of ways. I mean, let's face it, you know, we're saving each other.
We're fighting the good fight. It's against impossible odds.
And triumph. comes to them, you know,

Speaker 1 that's the Jesus story, isn't it?

Speaker 3 indeed, and like you said, as long as a character and a story are grounded in reality, to me, the truth always leads to the higher truth to Christ.

Speaker 3 So, a film can be dark but still have a moral grounding. And, like you're saying, you're playing a role which maybe points people toward the consequences of sin.

Speaker 3 That in itself is a faith message, right?

Speaker 1 And it's not

Speaker 1 necessarily the victory. You know, the victory doesn't live necessarily in that evil.
So, I mean, it's uh,

Speaker 1 you know, it's a funny world out there. It's uh,

Speaker 1 we We navigate the best we can.

Speaker 3 Right. Well, it's messy.
Now, obviously, you've played a lot of roles. The landscape has changed for Hollywood in so many ways in recent decades.

Speaker 3 How have you seen that dynamic playing out in terms of your career?

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, listen, there's some diehards here. They're sticklers for, you know, they just don't like religion.
They're not going to go for it. They're not going to be part of it.

Speaker 1 But there are others who are. And that's great.
I just think Hollywood finally realized that, you know, there's money out there for

Speaker 1 these kind of movies as well.

Speaker 1 Most of the people in America actually still really like God and Jesus and all that sort of stuff and like one another and they want their kids to ride in a neighborhood, ride their bikes in neighborhoods where they're safe.

Speaker 1 These are corny values, but still there they are. And that's part of America and a place where you can aspire to do something and nobody says you can't do it.

Speaker 1 Or the only way you're going to be able to do it is if the government gives you some money for it.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 we do this. People do this.
I always believed that social programs were society's business and not the government's anyway. So

Speaker 1 that's

Speaker 1 just who I am. But we have an obligation to one another, and our government can't actually fulfill it for us.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. We've been documenting on this show what looks to be a trend in entertainment.
Like there's more of a space for faith-focused films lately.

Speaker 3 And I do think, like you're saying, actually, capitalism can end up promoting for its own purposes, you know, a lot of good things. People really do want to see this stuff.

Speaker 3 There's a real hunger for it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So, what's coming next for you? You've got this shyster roll coming. What else is on the horizon for you?

Speaker 1 Well, I'm planning that next. I'm going to go shoot that next week.

Speaker 1 We've got one in the can that's coming out pretty soon called Turbulence, which is really, really fun. A day trip on a hot air balloon over the Alps is

Speaker 1 short-circuited by a nutty woman. That's okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it happens.

Speaker 1 And I don't do so well.

Speaker 1 Somewhere around the middle of the film, we

Speaker 1 pitch my guy off the basket

Speaker 1 there's there's another one coming up when i'm gonna fight i'm gonna be fighting some sharks and uh

Speaker 1 it's just there's just fun stuff i get a chance to do i haven't fought a shark before so i'm gonna do that one just don't jump a shark whatever you do yeah exactly and i oh i've got another one coming up in malibu where i'm gonna i'm gonna shoot for a week uh

Speaker 1 It's called Claws, where a mountain lion's gone a little crazy and killing some people.

Speaker 1 I end up fighting.

Speaker 3 All right, so you fight gravity, sharks, and a mountain lion.

Speaker 1 Everything you can. Yeah, everything together, everything they throw at me, I'm going to take it on.

Speaker 3 Sounds like a lot of fun. So things not slowing down for you at all, even with the holidays here coming up.
Kelsey, thank you so much for talking with us.

Speaker 3 Just a total joy and great luck with the upcoming projects.

Speaker 1 Thanks, man. Good to see you.
It's a pleasure.

Speaker 3 That was Kelsey Grammer talking about his new film, The Christmas Ring, and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.

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