Kelsey Grammer (Re-Release)

1h 8m
This week we’re revisiting Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson’s conversation with Kelsey Grammer, aka Dr. Frasier Crane. They reminisce about Kelsey’s partying days with Woody, on-set dynamics at “Cheers,” and more. Kelsey also talks to the guys about his late sister, the subject of his new memoir.

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Transcript

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I certainly used to love partying with you.

Oh, yeah.

We had some fun.

I was way too chicken.

Welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name.

As some of you know, we're going to be revisiting some of our favorite episodes from last year before coming back in a few weeks with all new interviews.

This week, we wanted to share our conversation with Kelsey Grammar, aka Dr.

Frazier Crane.

Kelsey is such a wise, deep soul who's seen both sides of life, and he's written a memoir about his late sister Karen who comes up in this conversation.

It's called Karen, A Brother Remembers, and it comes out on May 6th.

Without further ado, Kelsey Grammer.

It's so strange.

Here we are.

The three of us spent, what, at least eight years together.

Yeah, I was on a show for nine.

Woods came in the third year, right?

Right.

Yeah, I are, yeah.

So

every day making each other giggle, laugh, sharing our lives.

And I know

a lot about you, really.

Well, I mean, no, I mean, when

compared to the body of your work is just astounding.

Thank you.

Theater, films.

Yeah, all that.

Books.

Yeah, books.

Yeah.

Anyway,

we should reminisce first.

Yeah, we should.

I mean, I remember.

Well, you were a theater guy.

No, weren't you?

I tried to be a theater guy.

Yeah.

Wasn't didn't Kathy McGrath do Cheers once and weren't you in a production with her previously?

I remember that because I'd done some Shakespeare with her, so we were old pals when she came and did Cheers.

It was just so funny.

We had a, you know, we had a bit of a relationship on and off again.

Just recently, we watched the rerun and Kate said, you know, how do you know her?

Here we go again.

You know, indictment for

35 years before.

It just never goes away.

And my go-to is to immediately get embarrassed and lie.

Well, I just realized that wasn't going to do me any good.

You know, it just never does.

Oh, it's just, I'm just riffing now.

It's the same, it's a similar story.

You know, I used to have a sailboat.

I used to have it during Cheers and

definitely during Fraser and went sailing all the the time.

I'd go twice a week when we were in the beginning years of Fraser.

And

when I met Kate, I finally said, you got to come see the boat.

It's my pride and joy.

And so I took her down to the marina and stepped aboard.

And I said, come on, babe, you know, step on board.

And I helped her up.

I went and pulled the hatch open and slid it forward and went down the ladder and stepped into the cockpit

or down below in the galley.

And

from behind me, I hear a voice that says,

have you ever had sex on this boat?

I just froze.

And I thought,

what could I possibly say?

I had the boat for 25 years.

So

I just bit it and turned around and looked her in the eye and I said, yes.

And she said, well, then I'm not going out on it.

Hey.

So I sold the boat.

But, you know, more power to her.

It was the right thing.

You guys are together and many kids for a good reason.

Yes, exactly.

She's in boundaries.

She's the sacred relationship I was looking for.

No,

it is great.

I will say about Kate.

It's like finding the holy grail, just like Teddy, just like Jimmy.

Like you guys, you know, you had some

times as well.

And then you just hit the jackpots, you know, with Debbie and Mary.

Thanks, Pi.

Hey, let's throw Laura in there for that.

And Laura, too.

We watched Back to the Future 3 last night at home with the kids.

Yeah.

Saw Mary, of course.

Yeah.

You know, hanging off of a

steam engine.

She was so proud of that moment because

she did all of the stunt right up until the transfer.

Right.

Smart.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, you know, that would have been foolish.

Yeah.

That's good.

She's lovely in it.

She's so good in it.

They're wonderful in that movie.

You know, the two of them.

The love is really something.

It's really wonderful to see.

Yeah.

And just because you didn't say his name, I just totally blanked on his name.

Lloyd, Lloyd.

Christopher Lloyd.

Christopher Lloyd.

Yeah.

That's so funny.

We should just talk about co-stars and see.

If all three of us have worked with them.

Well, you know what?

Actually, that's not a bad idea.

I bet we crossed in quite a few places.

But Christopher Lloyd and I are actually related.

Oh, did you do Follow Your Roots?

You know, Find Your Roots.

Kate punches in him once in a while, you know, people who are related to other people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And because I did do

that show,

Who Do You Think You Are?

Right, Lisa.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They got my 23, you know, they got them.

So it.

It keeps coming up.

It goes all the way back.

Christopher Lloyd's in there.

Megan Markle's in there.

Henry VIII is in there.

It's pretty funny.

It goes way back.

Yeah.

You and I, once you connect into either church or royalty, the paper trail goes forward.

Yeah, it's huge.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's our latest.

If you're like Mary, who's,

she did find your roots.

And her big thing wasn't, God, I hope we don't have slavery in our family, which was at that time was a, people were ducking that like crazy.

But hers was, oh dear god don't let me be boring

and the first thing that's pretty first thing came out was did you know what your great-grandfather did no no and you're on camera so you have to get excited

and no what he was a wood chopper ah that's about it she's going shoot me now

it got better it got better

that's funny

yeah there's a slavery has been a very popular thing for a long time time.

You know, it's pretty hard to avoid some of it in the past, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years of it.

And we're still working at it, obviously.

Clearly.

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

As we take a pause, wondering how deep to go.

Yeah.

Woody, what are you eating, buddy?

You're on camera, you know, we can see you all.

Just close you that I'll stop right now.

Stopping right now, Daddy.

So do you enjoy paprikash over there?

You enjoying the paprika?

I mean, the Hungarians are really good at it.

The paprika?

Yeah.

You know, Hungarian paprikash is, you know, it's

mostly on meat.

Red pepper.

Yeah, mostly on meat.

Oh, that's right.

He's doing the raw.

Well, you should still use the spice, buddy.

You know, it's local spice.

No, I can't wait to get some of that.

Yeah, no, straight away.

Straight away.

There we go.

All right, just for fun.

We're sitting there together.

I wish I was there.

I wish you were too.

Hey, can I go back to, because, you know,

i didn't know uh until i was researching that you went to this uh

this preparatory school in fort lauderdown that's where you started singing and dancing that's right pinecrest yeah pinecrest preparatory school at age at age what 14 yeah so tell me about it what what was it how was it and i mean was it like hard to get in and Well, I don't, I don't actually, you know, I was used to, I was a smart kid when I was little, you know, when I was younger.

I, you know, put that to rest after I reached adulthood.

But

my grades were always good.

I was always in the honor role when I was a boy, so it was easy for me to get into those kind of places.

And I had a pretty good record.

In fact, when I came from New Jersey, I went to sixth grade in New Jersey to a place called Rumson Country Day School.

And

that was a year ahead of Pinecrest.

So when I got to seventh grade, I basically coasted for a year.

And that may have been a mistake.

But in eighth grade, a guy came to school uh named richard mitten was his name fabulous guy he's no longer with us but he walked into the every classroom and he said i want every boy in here to come and audition for uh for a choir

so we all thought well what the hell okay and uh went in and most of the boys sang uh yesterday all my troubles seem so far away and uh we'd come out and he said what's your voice and he said oh you're a lyric tenor or you're a this and i was a bass paritoon so uh that was when i started singing and um we started a thing.

There was a thing called the Singing Pines because of Pinecrest.

So we wore tuxedos and roughly, you know, frilly little shirts and stuff.

And

at one point, they

we rescinded the hair code because I was on the 10th grade student council and we got rid of the hair code.

So we all grew our hair out.

But then the next year, a new guy came in and said the hair code was reinstated.

So

I asked if they would mind if I wore a wig and they said, well, no, as long as the collar, you know, the hair doesn't go over the collar.

So I bought,

I went down and bought a Jane Fonda wig, which was basically the haircut from Barbarella.

And I took it home and I cut off the back of it.

And I wore it over my hair.

I put it in a ponytail and put it on top of my head, stick the wig on top of that.

And

they weren't embarrassed to have me walking around looking like that, so I wasn't embarrassed either.

It was pretty awful.

You came from music, right?

I mean, your mom was...

My mom and dad were musicians, yeah.

And your father is a musician.

So was that not foreign to you?

Were you around that?

Did you?

Well,

you know, my mom had us play, do some piano lessons when we were pretty young, took us to tennis lessons, swimming.

We used to swim a lot.

Pinecrest was a big swimming school, and I started swimming there, and I did the diving team for a while.

But it was a huge school.

It was a school where

the coach of the women's Olympic team was the coach there.

And

he was a big deal, Jack Nelson.

We had a kid there, Andy Something, who was the first swimmer to prove that the butterfly was actually faster than the crawl,

which was amazing.

And he set like state and world records for a while.

So it was a school of overachievers.

It was a great place to go to school, honestly.

And then I got, you know, I went to Juilliard out of there, and they were all very impressed at that.

And of course, I got thrown out, and they were all very sad about that.

Yeah,

you got thrown out for a reason, though.

Can we back up just a little bit?

I know you're writing a book about some of the tragedy

in your life, in your family,

which we can talk about or not later.

But

you had a lot going on as a kid in your family.

Do you think there's any sense of finding finding harbor in creativity because of having to deal with

divorce and death and all of that?

What's great is, I mean, I did finish the book on my sister.

It's just called Karen, and it'll be published pretty soon.

We're working on a final draft and some pictures now.

Well, mention it.

Do you want to talk about it now?

Yes.

Is that all right?

Sure, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So

I stepped away from that right now.

I just have to do some notes that they're going to try to give me.

But I mean, I'm pretty, you know, recalcitrant.

I'm not going to really change the book a lot at this point but uh it does cover most of the stuff that you're asking about and so uh in the early days my yeah my mom and dad divorced when I was two and a half basically I moved in with my grandfather Gordon he was my light I also in the book I actually discover as I've never really quite um enumerated it I've never really said that I actually came here I think for my grandfather to be his son and uh I was and that was great but then of course he died when I was 12 and that was a that was a big, big hit

that took the air right out of us.

And then

a couple of years later,

that was the year we actually started at Pinecrest.

And then a couple of years later, my dad got shot.

And I didn't really know him very well.

I'd gotten to know him a little bit.

As a young adult or when you were

12.

When I was 12, just after Gordon died.

Gordon's my granddad.

My dad got.

Was that political?

That was a political.

I always thought

name forgetting government.

Yeah,

he was a bit of a

loudmouth, I guess you could say.

He had a radio show down in the Virgin Islands, and he taught a lot of fairly famous red gay guys and Calypso music guys

gave him music lessons.

But

he was killed by a taxicab driver who

it was a couple of days after Martin Luther King was shot.

And so there was a political overtone to it.

It was kind of like, you know, get the white guy, you know, it was just one of those things.

And

he was

St.

Thomas, U.S.

Virgin Islands.

And but I heard years later that they actually drew straws who was going to kill him.

So it was that sort of a strange, you know,

grouping there.

There's a, there's a,

they,

I don't know the full story of it.

There's the Arawaks and the Caribs down in, down in the Virgin Islands and in

that Caribbean area.

One side apparently was always very violent and the other side was always very peaceful.

But so once in a while, every few years, there's kind of like a surge in whatever it is.

I mean, maybe it's bigger than us.

Maybe it's some sort of rhythmic tide that comes into people's beings and then they go on a bit of a rampage.

And maybe he got swept on some of that.

My buddy John Miller's dad was shot in St.

Croix.

one year on a golf course.

It was a famous incident, but they took a machine gun and killed like three golfers.

It was just, you know,

it's just odd stuff.

Right.

Wow.

So you were with your mom at that point.

Mom and Gam and Karen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My three, the three women.

And even though you had just kind of reunited with your dad?

Yeah.

It was really only the one meeting.

We saw him for one dinner just about six months before he was killed.

Can you think back to that 12-year-old, 13-year-old?

I mean,

I put my adult brain and go, oh my God, what a hit to my life, who I am, or what does this mean about life?

Was there,

did you put weight other than the tragedy of losing your father?

Did it start to inform you in some way?

No, no.

You know what?

What did happen was I was a math student.

I was really good at math.

And then the death of Gordon and the subsequent loss of my dad and stuff like that, it just seemed like those were the turning points for me to start moving toward art.

I do think that happened as a result of, let me turn that off.

Is that another job?

Yeah.

No, it's just bad news.

More bad news.

Never thought.

But

it was

that

turned me toward art.

Shakespeare turned me toward art.

The first time I read Julius Caesar turned me toward the idea that there's a way to sort of endure the whips and scorns of time, you know, and do it with dignity.

And that was, you know, whatever dignity, whatever dignity I've been able to muster.

Tons, my friends.

Thank you.

Woods knows.

No, I mean, it just seemed like an unnatural amount of calamity, you know,

between

your half-brothers.

Yeah, early death.

Yeah, my half-brothers in a shark attack.

That was strange.

Yeah.

That was in the Virgin Islands, too.

And they, they,

of course,

the city, they went and caught a bunch of sharks after that.

And there was one of them they caught that actually fit the bite marks fit the scarring on their on their on their diving equipment.

And uh, they didn't want to know about it, so they covered it up.

You know, they didn't, because it was tourism, right?

You know,

but I've got a letter about that.

And were you close with them?

No, no, no, I hardly knew them.

I got to know them a little bit when

Gordon died afterward during that visit, and then they came up and visited once after dad was gone, right?

And

I was the oldest child, so I sort of sort of filled in a little bit of a male

presence thing for them a little bit, but not really.

And your sister was alive when you're

with us.

Yeah, yeah.

She died just before she turned 19.

And you were how old?

I was 20.

So you were Juilliard or

I've been at Juilliard.

I just got thrown out.

No, but all right, before we get to Karen, if that's okay.

Yeah, that's fine.

Let's let's you say that with a good laugh.

So why did you get thrown out?

Well, I'm still trying to figure it out.

I think it was because I wasn't going to acting class

being in acting school.

Maybe that's

why.

Why were

I really like the guy that was teaching the class because it seemed to me he was a lot more interested in the girls of the class than the boys?

And I thought, well, you know what?

Okay.

I'm not going to cast dispersions past that.

I've actually talked about this in the book some.

He taught me a couple of things quite by chance that stayed with me, which is kind of fascinating.

And I've written about that in the book.

So the book about Karen is basically about me as well.

Our time, sort of our corresponding time together and in the same lane and in our different lanes.

Right.

Until, of course, she was taken.

And how I've carried her ever since.

And that's really what the book is about.

And I discovered a lot of things I didn't know.

I'd love to say more about carried her.

Carried her with me.

She's been with me in my heart ever since then.

You know, always.

All things were about Karen in a lot of ways.

My ability to move on in life was hindered by the loss of her, but also

my sense of

sticking with things was also colored by the fact that Karen had been taken and that I wasn't going to quit.

It was due in large part to some of her.

Some of our story together.

We were really close.

We were a close brother and sister.

Maybe made closer by the fact that that Gordon died so young.

Half the things I got to discover in writing the book was, and it was a great, it's been two and a half years I wrote, I worked on it,

was how connected she was to other people in the family.

And I had actually had the arrogance of my own story.

You know, it was always like, oh, I lost Gordon.

And then I realized for the first time, well, so did she.

And that was a great discovery for me because they were closer than any two people I've ever seen in my life.

And that was

a beautiful thing to see.

And then

it was also beautiful to understand that it must have really, really broken her, too.

And that was a, that was a hard time for both of us.

What's the name of the book?

Do you have one yet?

Just Karen, yeah.

And that's, I don't know, months before.

It's ready to publish, honestly.

I don't know what they're waiting for.

Good for you, sorry.

It's like

it's really cool that you've taken this journey because I know for myself, I tend to anything that's, you know, too hot an issue, I just try to avoid it at all costs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I admire you for

just doing this, dude.

It's

amazing.

Thanks, man.

Thanks.

It was

a great experience for me.

It was really wonderful.

And

my wife was really supportive of it.

You know, I'd walk in and, I mean, for a while, I was like not available.

I mean, through some of it.

And she'd say, say, what are you doing?

I said, you know, and she'd say, okay,

you do what you got to do.

Yeah.

And,

but I could always pull myself out a couple hours a day was what I was doing.

And then I'd be with the kids and

working some.

Right.

Well,

you amaze me because not everybody gets hit in life with as many

really earth-shattering stuff that you have.

And I know you went through a period where we all knew you, where I guess it was

you could say, or is it trite to say self-medicating?

Yeah, I think that's probably right.

I think it's just a self,

it was, it was engineering escape is really what it was.

I mean, medicating.

Yeah, it was more, it was more radical than medicating.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was radical.

And listen,

some of the stories are great stories.

I mean, I had a wonderful time in the midst of it, which is kind of

extraordinary because that sort of lust for life thing is part of what drove it as well.

But, you know, then you realize, well, there's only so many of these you can keep doing without, you know, without just finally just collapsing.

And yeah, I got pretty close on it.

That's how we

grew to know and love you

partly during that period, which when you say it wasn't all bad or whatever, it was magnificent

from my vantage point.

You know, I speaking,

I certainly used to love partying with you.

Oh, yeah.

We had some fun.

I was way too chicken.

You know, I remember, do you remember that time we went to Idaho?

Actually, I was just thinking about it now because I was in, I was in, I went to, I relieved myself just before I came in.

And honestly, as I was sitting there, I thought to myself, I remember that time in the men's room in McCall, Idaho, with Woody.

And I was talking about how beautiful America is and how wonderful Americans are and how they embrace

the extraordinary.

We are a group of people that love exceptional behavior.

And that's who we are.

I mean,

I remember talking about Olga Corbett, this little kid from Romania, wherever she was from, comes in and blows people away.

I guess the first 10 in the history of the Olympics in gymnastics, and America loves her.

What was her name?

Nadia Kamenich.

Oh, Komenic.

Oh, was it Komenich was first?

Yeah.

Okay.

But

anyway,

but it was just amazing.

And I realized this sort of monologue that I delivered from the throne on this day with Woods.

We were in some club somewhere, and

it was just a magnificent memory for me.

And then, you know, you, I mean, just the greatest time.

So

it was so fun.

Yeah, you, we were actually gone, Teddy.

I don't know if you remember because

there was someone connected to cheers and

the sound gun.

Cheers, yeah.

And he was doing a radio station, and he said, We come do an interview, and blah, blah, blah.

Of course, we come

guns blazing,

we were going hard, and uh, and they know how to go hard in Idaho,

but but I do remember that in the bathroom so well because I remember at the time I was so upset about America and all the, I mean, you gotta, you gotta separate America, the people from America, the government, which the government's properties, they never cease to amaze me.

But then, you know, when we were there,

you know, I was conflating everything, and you were like, no, America, Americans, you know, and that speech had a huge impact on me.

I still believe that about us, you know, I really do.

Me too.

I just, I follow the goodness.

I've been doing this sort of,

he's called an angel healer, this guy.

And just recently in one one of our sessions,

he said, Well, I asked the angels one time, I asked him, You know, what's the ratio

of really, really crappy people to really good people?

And he said, Honestly, it's about 70-30, which is, you know, 70 is good.

And I thought, yeah, that sounds about right.

And we both sort of laughed a little bit and said, I've spent a lot of time with the 30s.

It's just

because

30s are drawn to people of great passion and success.

And, you know, know, and we arguably have all sustained that, you know, or achieve that.

And the 30s are around

in these areas.

And

they're often used to hang out.

Yeah, no,

very questionable.

I had a good bachelor.

Yeah, I had a good, good bachelor, just about two steps ahead of the law.

And, you know,

I'm listening to you, and I feel like people can see that I'm actually wearing a nun's habit because

I am

I am so safe in my world.

I go, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

Thanks.

I'll catch up with you later.

I'll meet you in Idaho, but I won't actually get on the plane.

Yeah.

I always thought you should have been on the plane once in the world.

No, I should have.

I've heard some good things in the world, you know, good

stuff.

Yeah.

And met great people too.

But that's, I always believed in the 70.

I always thought the 70s were

and you know what?

Because who you are is

a flood comes through, and

you're having an argument about whether there's climate change or not.

And then a flood comes through, and everybody drops their point of view and rescues each other and has so human their bounty of love and caring and nurturing.

And they pull people out of the water.

Don't ask each other what your politics are or what your belief system is.

But, you know, I mean, maybe we're getting there.

Maybe we're getting to where, like, excuse me, before I pull you out of there,

who'd you vote for?

for?

Oh, sorry.

Let him go.

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Quince.com slash Ted and Woody.

You know, one of my first, going back a little bit to reminisce about Shears,

you showed up full-blown as, you know, Fraser Crane, and you were just magnificent, always were.

But you walked in kind of like Woody.

You both walked in and hit a home run the first time we saw you.

You know, first time the audience.

But my personal memory of that time, those first, we were, we were basketball players or so, we thought.

Oh, yeah.

No, right, perhaps Woody was, but,

but we all, you know, thought of ourselves.

And we would play vicious basketball with each other right before we were supposed to run and start performing.

Right.

But you on this asphalt plain basketball court were barefoot.

Yeah.

You played barefoot.

I grew up in Florida.

With the flattest shoes feet I've ever seen in my life.

I still have them.

Yeah.

Dead flat.

Dead flat.

Suction on wet floors.

Yeah.

How did you do that?

I don't know.

You know what?

I was just saying.

That's a beach comer day.

That beach comer thing.

Yeah.

I mean, my feet were really tough back then.

I mean, I'm still, I'm talking to a guy like on Monday about getting my feet fixed finally.

Here's another example of you two renegades, renegades, is your motorcycles.

Oh, yeah.

Both of you.

Woody, who I saved his life the other day, came in wounded from a

very serious what the hell.

But you

the last

vestige

so did you land on your hand?

Is that what happened?

I landed on this hand, yeah.

Shit, sorry, man.

That's tough.

It would have been much.

No, no,

I tell you, I ended up very, very lucky.

I got it.

But speaking of luck, you used to jump on your motorcycle, if I remember correctly, in shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops.

Absolutely.

No hurry.

And roar off to work where we were always about 15 minutes late about 15 yeah yeah but didn't you get run off the road once by somebody who was pissed off oh god yeah in new york city that happened oh it's happened a couple times around the country i mean across country a couple times there was one one trucker i was drafting off of him he didn't like me doing that so he would he would he'd drive off into the into the shoulder a little bit and spray pebbles on my face you know 100 miles an hour i thought oh this is fun

i actually i actually saw him pull into a truck stop i followed him.

I walked up to him

at the counter where he was having breakfast.

I said, excuse me, I understand that you have an issue about this.

I said, honestly, I'm trying to make the next couple hundred miles in as little stress as possible.

Drafting off of you was really helping me.

Would you mind if maybe we arranged this so we're both happy about it?

And he said, no, okay, I'd be glad to help you.

Damn.

That's that good part about Americans.

That's what's in there.

But by the way, yeah, that's the good part about Americans.

You as an American, like, you know, me, I just would have walked up and

shot at the guy, you know, our old works.

You know, like, I love how you can.

It's amazing how you can do that.

Well, I love people.

And I love Americans.

You know, this is the thing I really do love.

That's the right way.

I don't think maybe Woody's is the right way.

And mine certainly isn't.

I would have gone up and apologized for getting in the way of his gravel

or something.

One time, what do you know?

Woody and I were in London.

We went to some club.

What was it called?

Was it called the Palladium?

No, it was the Hippodrome.

Hippodrome.

Okay, so the Hippodrome.

So Woods and I are kind of trying to get in, and this girl says something about,

I don't know what happened to sort of lit her off a little bit, but you know, English people and Americans, we're still having trouble with that.

But

she looked at Woody and said, well, that's rude.

And he said, oh, yeah.

How's this for rude?

And he grabs a handful of candies right in front of of her and sort of throws them.

I said, oh, shit.

And I saw these two huge like Cockney guys start moving toward Woods.

And I said, we're out of here.

Let's go.

We got to get there.

So they just

decked him.

What you didn't know.

No,

I was there and I came in after you guys and picked up all the candy and

bought him some more.

Made him apologize for me.

It was lovely.

I'm so fucked.

But we had fun there too.

I mean,

all right.

And here's another.

This is all things, Kelsey.

Okay, here's one of the things about you that I hope is

not as incredible as it used to be because it would still piss me off.

Your photographic memory of you would walk through rehearsals at Cheers

with a script in your hand because you genuinely didn't know the lines.

Right.

Up until then you would go have dinner and you'd come back and we'd start performing and it would be word comma perfect.

And we all kind of marveled, how the fuck did you do that?

And you would do it also when, if I might say, under the influence

during that period, and you're

you

look like you couldn't possibly get through a performance, you'd turn around and come back and be astoundingly brilliant.

Thank you.

But what is that brain thing?

Are you photographic memory?

It's probably just a muscle that approximates photographic, but it's not.

If I have to, I can get it in there.

I still do it.

I do it at Fraser now because,

you know, you play the same character for so long, like I have.

And

I just find it kind of more exciting to not be on book, to not know it, to sort of have a general idea.

And because I played the role for so long now, I mean, I pick better words than most of the guys can.

And

I trust that the process is going to actually spill out the best, the best result.

If it's a really good joke and it's written really well, I'll remember it.

If it's if it's one that is,

I can trust to approximation and then sort of wait for

the creative spirit to strike in the midst of it, I do that.

So it's a kind of improvisational memorization, but it does unnerve people.

My definition of a well-written joke is one that I can totally fuck up and it's still funny.

It's still funny, but that's actually good.

That's about it.

That's a a good definition

it was wild how i mean i guess it's okay we broach the subject but like you used to be under the influence of all these things and still

and and you know

you know how it would kind of get you in a high state of

yeah and and energize you just nail it yeah energize yeah let's say energize and then seeing you nail it was like that's what he just did was actually impossible like i don't yeah i don't understand how he could do that you know because you didn't have the smart one huh daddy we woody and i had the slow dumb joke we were the slow dumb funny joke oh yeah that's true no frazier had to have the yeah you were you were saying paragraphs of complicated shit and nailing it you really were amazing well i like language you know that was always a strong point for me so yeah i guess uh i mean honestly

I did cocaine and booze.

Those are two things I did.

I never did anything else, really.

I mean, I was never into marijuana or, you know, some of that other stuff.

So, cocaine would jack you up, booze would slow you down.

Somewhere in the middle is where I'd end up.

But I always would go to bed.

There were a couple of times when I stayed up a couple of nights.

But mostly, I had, there was some sort of a governor that was saying, you got to go to bed now.

You got to go to sleep.

You got to catch up.

You got to see these people.

I was still working out most of the time.

So I stayed fairly

robust, even during a time of great sort of, you know,

self-destruction.

I have to.

In fairness, in fairness, when you say you had this governor inside, you saying, go to bed.

You'd go to bed at 6.30 in the morning.

Get a couple hours and go.

Get a couple hours in.

Yeah, it's funny.

A lot of people who can get away with what you did have the constitution of an ox.

I mean, your body, I know you had a moment where your body went, yo,

go.

No more.

Yeah, right, right, yeah.

But by and large,

how old are you now?

Strong, 69.

I mean, you're a magnificent beast.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

You really are.

Do you think it also had to do with, because I've always credited the way you would eat, like, you would, it would take you,

you know.

You'd still be on your first

morsel when we were done with our food yeah that's

i do i do i always savored food you used to eat so slow no rush and i just felt like that kind of helped your it probably did constitution as well it's a very good uh very very observant that's uh i think that may actually be something you may be on to something there yeah i mean i've i've gone up and down with weight a little bit uh but i think i think mostly that was probably booze actually i think that was probably you know when my weight would balloon a little bit, it was like during a, I was on a traveling kind of spree.

I was going to New York City a lot or whatever, I was in Manhattan, a little bit of debauchery, a little bit of food, maybe a little overindulgence in that kind of stuff as well.

And then I picked up some weight.

And then I finally thought, no, I'm going to, so I'm way around 210 most of the time now.

That's about where I like to be.

So,

whatever it is, it's working.

Thanks, buddy.

Yeah.

I wish, you know,

I make jokes and I swore to myself that I would not be the self-deprecating guy, which is a problem I have and I notice it on podcasts.

It's like they spend hours trying to cut it out.

But

this isn't self-deprecating, but it's,

I wish, I feel like I got stuck a little bit with you during the cheers years.

I have a memory of getting angry at you once.

You came and told me that one day.

And it's stuck in both of our memories.

But I feel like,

i fuck i don't know i feel like a i i missed out on the last 30 years of kelsey grammar and i i i feel like i want it's my bad my doing and i i almost feel like apologizing to you i know i don't feel like i apologize thank you to you and me i wish we did that i sat back you know and didn't and i i really do apologize thanks yeah You said something wonderful to me, though, too, that I've always, I quote to other people.

When I turned 40 he came up and he said you know what it means don't you now that you're 40 means you're finally worth having a conversation with I thought that was fucking brilliant

I always loved that and I thought and I've repeated it and and my love for you has always been as easy as the day you know as easy as mine to you you know so yeah you know what whatever what an amazing thing that we that that time we all spent together You can go off in different directions.

You can have different lives.

But that bond, that love of making something really funny and really good and cracking each other up and

going through life and still showing up.

Yeah.

You know, like Jimmy said, I don't care what you crazy people do during the week.

Just show up on shoot night and be funny.

Yeah.

You know, just once.

That's all I need.

He recently said, you know, we were doing an interview together and he said, I always had the, you got to have an oar in the water.

I'd never heard him express this before.

But he said, yeah,

as long as everybody's got their oar in the water and they're pulling,

then I'm happy.

I thought, yeah,

makes a lot of sense.

And that's, we're still working together.

I mean, we, he's done, you know, he does

four shows of the last bunch, and it's been, it's been great working with him.

Yeah, yeah, he's like my daddy in the show business, really.

Probably all of ours to some extent.

Yeah, question.

Well, my God, what a man.

What a fucking guy.

Yeah, amazing.

Yeah, so, so, how many have you started on your

second season?

We finished the second.

We're, you know, so we've got 20 shows.

I mean, it's so weird, this new sort of model of, you know, the streaming thing.

10 shows is all they kind of do.

Oh, oh, you already did.

Yeah, we're finished.

Yeah.

We finished.

The second season, they're just 10 shows.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a little

plus.

So it's kind of like finishing the first season.

So what's been fun about it is I've gotten to stand back and watch a little bit, and that cast is really coming together.

They're really fun to watch.

We've hit some stuff that

I thought we might hit, but it happened faster than I anticipated.

And the shows have been as good as anything I've ever done.

What's that like?

I mean, you have this template, two or three different templates for Fraser.

Is it hard to let go of your expectations or memories of what it, you know, and compare it to others and let it be what it is?

No,

that's been easy for me.

Oh, good.

Yeah, because this one, you know,

I was in the birthing room for this one.

i was i was pulling the baby out of the you know so literally in the writer's room yeah yeah so it's been it's been really good it's been really really fun and uh i still leave the writers mostly alone but in the very first draft of the pilot what we did a lot of back and forth for that speaking of kids yeah spencer spencer yeah we all met spencer 31 years old now kate do you remember my daughter kate of course she's 44

right yeah yeah about to have a baby all good Yeah.

It's very good.

Oh, good for her.

Is this the first one?

Yeah.

Oh, no kidding.

Wow.

Very exciting.

Oh, that's great.

Well, it's great that people can have babies, you know, a little bit further along now.

It's really lovely.

And we had,

I mean, honestly, Kate and I,

we were pregnant three times before we had a baby.

It was natural.

And then.

We started to lose.

We lost a couple of babies.

And we thought, boy, this is tough.

It's not good.

But then, you know, God smiled on us and we had a beautiful girl named faith which is fantastic did it and and then the two boys came along and uh the second

the second boy came along we we were twins originally with faith and then uh we lost the boy when he was like 14 weeks and uh we we had to do some stuff that was not not a good thing for us but uh

when kate was pregnant the second time you know so i was kind of proud i kind of got her you know

and

you know uh i said so what what do you think we're having?

And she said, if we're not having a boy, then everything I believe is bullshit.

We had a boy.

Nice.

So

that's Gabriel.

You had seven kids, right?

Seven total.

So really, lockdown was just like normal life.

You had to have people around.

Yeah, yeah, pretty much it was.

Yeah.

You know, some were, some were coming and going.

But yeah, our house is still full of kids.

I mean, I got, I got my second child, Greer, is in the home with us.

Jude's with us some of the time.

He's 19.

Now he's going off to Emerson College.

In a couple of of weeks i'm going to drive him up uh mason's now here my 23 year old i think she's 23

i always add a year they always get pissed off at me um

but i think i think she's 23 and um she's starting to work at the company now so you know it's kind of like an apprentice kind of stuff doing yeah doing production i i love that you said when you were describing your life with the ups downs but you're never happier than when you have all of your kids in the same room.

And it's the truth.

When we're surrounded by, we're 13 to table when you, when you count spouses and grandkids and everything, it's the best.

I don't do so well with the ex-spouse thing.

We haven't really tried to curry that.

Oh, we nailed it.

You guys did cry.

Well, I remember your vows with Mary.

I mean, we were like,

everybody's involved.

I was so impressed by that.

We loved it.

Yeah,

you're our family too.

Wow, that's crazy.

Were you part of the chairlift that

Jimmy Burroughs started for us?

Yeah.

Both of you guys were that.

I remember

it was one of the best moments, Mary said, in the entire wedding was when, I guess it's a Jewish tradition.

It's a Jewish tradition, where they lift you.

Lifting you up in a chair, but it was so tangibly

being supported literally by people you love and who love you in that moment.

It was so symbolic of

that.

Yeah,

it was a great event, Martha's Vane.

It was a lovely, lovely event that you guys put on.

And it worked.

Yeah, yeah i know i know it's fantastic we met on a movie

you can be rare you get the president as your best man or whatever well yeah there was all that going on it cut down on paparazzi yeah it did didn't it cruise missiles around

yeah

pretty many that was a good weekend um

where

are you guys living in nashville no used to have a place there because mary's writing music that's what i thought yeah yeah that's good that's a great story how'd you meet kate we met met on a flight to

England.

She was a flight crew for Virgin Atlantic.

Of course, you make the movie.

Yeah, well, let me tell you.

It was pretty nice.

Then what?

Well, we were talking, and we just ended up sort of chatting.

I said, you know, what do you

make me a drink, you know, and I thought, boy, I'm in the mood for a B-52.

Do you guys ever remember a B-52?

Well, they didn't have those ingredients on the plane, but they did have Benedictine and brandy.

And I thought, well, okay, that's a B and B, they call it.

And I thought, yeah, put a little cream in that, a little bit of Kahlua.

I think that's going to be a great drink.

So we started with that, and then we started talking.

I got up to, went to the bar on the plane, and we talked through the night and arranged to, you know, have a coffee maybe a few days after I got there because I was going to

see if I wanted to do La Cache of Fall on Broadway, take the production from London to New York.

And

I had to rehearse a little bit.

We were going to do kind of a weird little commercial thing.

Of course, I never saw.

It just seemed like a very odd thing to do.

But so I was busy for a couple of days, and then I got a message at the hotel, give Kate a call.

So I gave her a call.

What year is this?

This is

2009?

Wow.

Yeah, I think so.

I think I was 54.

It was great.

It was just great.

And,

you know,

I was in my previous relationship had gone kind of

belly up, you know,

there were some issues.

There was some stuff going on.

It wasn't really fun or good.

And I knew that it was probably going to have to end.

I'd had a heart attack.

That was not a great experience, but it was actually a very positive experience in the end because it made me realize what I wanted.

And I was doing a show called Hank at the time.

Not very funny, and I knew it.

And so we'd finished shooting the, I think I even directed it.

It was the ninth episode.

And it just wasn't funny.

A terrific writer named Cawley

had come from Everybody Loves Raymond.

His rhythms and stuff like that were not mine.

And

there was just no way for us to gel.

I couldn't make his stuff funny.

He couldn't write funny for me.

So that's what happened.

And I called Peter over at Warner Brothers.

We were at Warner Brothers at the time.

And I said, Peter, you got to put a bullet in this show.

I mean, I'm sorry, man, it's not funny.

We got to end this.

He says, I have obligations.

I got to shoot at least the first 13 and then see what happens because I've got foreign I've sold it to and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he says, I'm sorry.

I wish I could help you out.

Literally, the next morning, the head of ABC at the time called and put a bullet in it.

Wow.

And one hour later, I got a call from Bray Weiser in New York City.

He says, What are you doing?

Are you busy?

I said, as it turns out, I'm not busy.

And he said, I want you to fly to London and see this as this production for me.

So in about eight hours,

my whole life was going to change.

And I knew it was.

And I knew when I got on that plane that I was going to a new life.

And I met Kate.

Wow.

Yeah.

I love that.

I love that.

That was pretty great.

Oh, and I'll go even further.

This is fantastic.

So what happened was we go for this cup of coffee.

And I'm in a bar.

Now, I'm at a hotel that at the time, it used to be the

it was the Mandarin Oriental.

It had been something, the Hyde Park or something before that.

And it used to have a great restaurant in it.

That was gone.

All that was over.

It had been shifted into a kind of a new kind of Mandarin hipster kind of place.

I walked in when I checked in.

The concierge looks at me, and there's about a six foot eight Russian girl with hardly any clothing on.

And he looked at me and said, Mr.

Grandma, you know, anything you'd like, anything at all.

I was like, oh, dear,

this is not going to go well if I accept this guy's offer.

So I said, thank you very much.

That's very kind of you.

No, thank you.

And I just headed up to my little room.

So as I came down to meet Kate for our drink,

I looked in the bar and it was just loaded with what clearly was a professional group.

Yeah, I thought there is no way I'm going to meet this girl here.

So, I walked down to the street and I just waited for her.

I knew she'd be getting out of the tube stop right up below Harvey Nichols.

So, I'm sitting there, or standing there rather, in

the little median between the hotel and Harvey Nichols.

And sure enough, she comes up and I see her and she stops and reapplies her lipstick.

Then as she's doing that, she notices I'm there standing there.

And she was like, oh, shit.

And I said, listen, I don't want to take you for a drink in there.

Let's go take a walk.

And it was just before Christmas.

So they had the Winter Wonderland thing that they do in Hyde Park.

And

we started walking toward the park

and the snow started to fall.

I looked at her and said, this is just,

this is too perfect.

And we had our first kiss.

And, you know, we got together a while later.

I don't really know her, but she looks beautiful.

I love her smile.

She's a great girl.

She's a great girl.

That's so cool.

Well done.

Thank you.

And I love the stepping on the boat story.

And you know what?

It's nice to have.

Your mate care that much about you.

He goes, no, I don't want to lose you.

So here are the rules.

It was great.

Yeah.

That was really great.

Yeah.

I ran into you then,

Kelse, and you were just about ready to start that.

I remember I was in London.

Right.

But I had a sense that I met Kate then.

You might have.

You might have said hello then.

Did we go have, we had a martini at the American bar, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'll tell you, yeah, yeah.

How am I going to?

I think we did.

If not, we did it later at the same time.

Yeah, she probably did.

But

I didn't know she had you guys had just started that.

Well, we actually, that was the, that was the, the, the prologue.

And then we actually waited about seven or eight months, almost a full year before, you know, things really shifted.

But

by then, you know, my previous

wife had, had gone off to, you know, she was involved with somebody else.

And that was fine.

You know,

that's what happened.

That's okay.

But I needed to make sure we did it

as possibly, as best as I could, because as I said to Kate when I first met her, I said,

you're too important to be somebody's secret.

And I don't want to do that to you.

So we're going to have to play this above board and take our time.

So we did.

It was a long time before we got, you know, actually,

I guess the best word is consummated.

But when we did, it was finally, that was a good thing.

You know,

it wasn't anything we had to hang our heads about or even dodge in a weird way.

Yeah.

So, you like,

you had this discipline about this, you wanted to make it about the other, yeah, the other head, yeah,

the other, the other, a man, a man of two minds.

I never would have guessed that that happened that way.

I mean, maybe you're just now telling it this way because you have to officially.

I don't know.

I remember, I think it was Robin Williams.

I was dancing on the screen, and the snow is coming down.

It was amazing.

That was amazing.

But that's where it ended that night.

I think Robin Williams is one of the same man doesn't have enough blood flow for two heads at the same time.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

The nun over here is blushing.

Well, I remember some stories that were so nun-like.

I'm trying to push it.

I'm trying to push the nun story.

They're bad nuns.

They're bad nuns.

Sure.

They're bad nuns who go wrong.

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Hey, you,

this, we're talking about all those things that you're not supposed to talk about.

We did a little bit of politics, not much.

But you, I notice, credit, not credit, but religion as part of what enabled you to put it all together or move on or heal yourself.

Yeah, I had a

lot of people.

I also had an abiding sense of faith.

It was an interesting thing.

It was sort of a wrestling match.

you know, that was like, oh, I still hear you over there.

But I grew up in Christian science and

as a little boy.

As a little boy, yeah, Sunday school

maintained it.

And my grandmother or her aunt, my grandmother's aunt actually kind of knew Mary Bakeretti, who was

the progenitor of

that discipline of examining the miracles of Jesus through this lens of science and faith at the same time,

which is pretty fascinating and very metaphysical and the kind of stuff that appeals to my head anyway.

And so I was brought up in that.

I hung on to it.

I mean, I read it every day, almost even through the bad times.

Sin, disease, and death are not real.

All is infinite mind and its infinite manifestations.

Stuff like that just kept me alive.

You know, it kept me connected.

It was very empowering.

Yeah, it really was.

And so

I maintained that.

Now, my active

faith, my relationship with Jesus, if you will,

was not something I was even comfortable declaring of it.

It wasn't something we did.

That's not the way we talk, basically, the Christian scientists.

and so it always seemed a little odd to me and then when i was writing the book about karen

i had this wild moment on on a plane where i'm

jesus is sitting down right next to me and talking to me

and it was undeniably true and real

and reassuring and uplifting and i got to surrender and i started tears were just dripping down my face on a plane all by myself well i mean there's you know people aren't around but it was an extraordinary moment.

And it just was that thing, that thing that happens, you know, and suddenly it was revealed to me and there I was.

And

I guess I was saved.

But he'd been there all along.

Right.

And that was that was the real trick because

I'd been fighting the fight of like, well, I've got this.

I got this.

And then, of course, he was basically saying, no,

I got it because I can.

And that was great.

It was fantastic.

And at the same time, I did that movie,

Jesus Revolution,

which got a lot of response and a lot of

good

feedback.

But I was having a kind of a meditative evening

in my home one night, in my living room, about 3 a.m.

And I thought to myself, I want to do something that's important,

something important.

I don't know what it is.

But I just sort of just gave up and said, you know, guide me.

This is before I would have sort of the moment with Jesus on the plane.

And

the next morning, the Jesus Revolution script came to the door.

I sat down and read it and said, Yeah, I'm doing it.

And it was a big thing for me.

Wow.

I have to see that.

It's good.

It's a good movie.

And it's actually what's funny is that there's a time in our lives that we would, you'd probably remember because it was 72.

And

I remember in Florida, there was these, these, oh, God, these girls, I just came off the beach.

I'm just standing there one night, just watching the waves because I was surfing then.

And

these two magnificent women come out of the,

off the, off the beach and say, hi, have you met Jesus?

Well,

I'd like to.

I'm ready.

Where are we going?

Which one?

Which one is

close here?

But what was funny was because I had that sort of ongoing relationship with Christian science at the time, and I was always still reading it, I said to them, well, honestly, I think I have.

And they said, well, we're going to go to a

service right now.

We're going to, you know, just praise the Lord, blah, blah, blah.

We're born again.

And I thought, well, good for you.

You know, that's great.

But I said, honestly, I'm okay.

I'm sure.

But I sure was tempted.

But that was what it was about, that whole movement, all those young people getting baptized and looking for meaning in a world where everything had sort of taken a

spiral into hallucinogenics and stuff like that.

That was pretty popular then.

I don't think I use the same words,

but who does

as you?

But I have the same exact feeling.

One of my moments that was really kind of quite lovely for me was being on a small

aircraft.

It was a twin prop Cape Air, you know, that was one of those things.

And they were expanding into Indiana and we were campaigning

and we

got the VIP treatment where the pilot came running out and said, we're going to beat the storm.

Come on, Kevin.

Come on, Mary.

And so we, you know, the VIP treatment always

sucks.

A little questionable.

Yeah.

Don't do it.

Don't be making mistakes.

And we got on the plane and it was a massive storm system that was sweeping the entire north, south of the United States.

And we flew smack dab into it.

And it was, you couldn't see out the airplane it was pure white it was thunderous from the the rain mary cracked two ribs from the the turbulence and the bouncing you had to hold on as if you were riding a you know i've never ridden one but a bull you know it was that kind of bouncy and usually when you're with your mate one of you will be in fear and maybe the other one isn't.

So the one who isn't can go, it's okay.

We're going to make it.

It's all right.

We looked at each other, and neither one of us could say, We're gonna make it.

And I remember, you know,

it's not that I only pray in

scary situations, but we tend to turbulence brings out Jesus very quickly.

But I remember saying, you know,

putting myself in your hands, Lord.

Right.

And, you know, and

please watch after and then, or whatever, was how i phrase it in my head and then the next thought was

you've always been

in his hands yeah her hands whatever whatever you want to call it whatever you want to call it

and it relaxed me so much it's brilliant that it wasn't you know anyway

yeah it's no it's brilliant there's that thing again you know that there it is mortality is a is a not a bad thing yeah Gravity is not a bad thing.

If it weren't for gravity and mortality, we'd all be partying like crazy and we wouldn't have a spiritual thought in our heads.

Exactly.

But yeah, are we lucky?

Aren't we lucky, really?

Yeah.

You know, it's interesting because

I grew up quite,

you know, religious and

quite, quite, you know, I was Christian.

And then.

But you even trained.

Sorry, Woody.

I don't know if Kelsey knows this.

You trained to be a priest.

Is that not right?

Or

started it?

I was thinking about becoming a minister.

Yeah.

Well, not a priest.

We weren't Catholic.

But, you know, I had given some

couple of sermons

up to when I was in my early 20s.

And

but then just before I moved to New York, I suddenly found a new religion, hedonism.

And

it was just right on time.

But anyway,

I had a long time where I just wasn't sure.

I don't know that I've ever talked with you guys about religion or Christianity, but I really.

I had a long time where I was just like, I don't know what the situation is.

So,

you know, I'm just going to

just, I'm just going to say I don't know, you know, and I'm going to back off from my whole rather, you know, religious mentality.

And then I read, ironically, I read autobiography of a yogi.

And I was like, okay, Parabahatsa Yogananda is either a fraud and a total fake,

or he's exactly what he appears to be, deeply spiritual man who is telling the truth which means

there is a god yeah

yeah and and and so that's why i don't discount what you're saying like but to say you were sitting on a plane and then jesus was next to you i i really need you to kind of

did

I mean, you felt like you physically saw him sitting in the seat next to you.

No, I guess I could have, but you know, no, wasn't, that wasn't what I needed at the time.

It was clearly in my head, but

it was unmistakably the voice of something other than in my head or me.

And that was the

hearing the voice.

Yeah, it was just, it was a conversation, you know, that was not being dictated by me.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

It was just there.

Wow.

Let me have it.

That seemed incredible.

Yeah.

It was remarkable.

And then, of course, I look back to all the other things that have happened in my life and

recognize it.

I see the footsteps, you know, the fingerprints, and I go, oh, okay.

Because it is a miracle that all three of us are here.

Yeah, absolutely.

Truly.

I mean, in a silly way, it's a miracle.

Truly, I remember what my special cows.

Yeah, especially Kelsey.

Thanks.

Bless you.

We're still working on you, Winnie.

My mother came home

to die.

She had a choice of going to the hospital.

She had really bad pneumonia and she went, no, no, you know, wanted to come home.

Good for her.

And for two weeks,

she had the most amazing, she had the passing the last weeks of her,

you know, this is how she wanted to go.

There were nuns that she knew from Colorado who came down and sang evening prayers every night with her and hung out with her.

People hoping Navajo would come say goodbye to her, who knew her.

It was like the perfect passing for her.

And I remember I had the night shift.

My sister did the days, and

she lived next door.

And

I would be there after she had really kind of could no longer be really present, but her body was still going.

And I remember looking at her

and realizing

that that moment of I don't know.

know,

all of my readings, my teachings, my philosophy, all the things that mentors have told me, all the things that I've used to heal over the years

went flying out the window.

And I went,

I don't know.

She may,

or she may be about to, but I don't.

I really, truly don't know.

And it boiled down for me to kind of

try to do the best you can in every moment because you do know

what the best choice is in every moment.

Yeah, you do.

You really do.

And if you just, you know, slow down and listen and try to do the best thing.

That's as much as I know.

Try to be a little better every day.

You know, that's good.

And that to me, I can wrap my brain about.

Yeah.

Around.

Oh, bless you.

But I know there's...

There's something.

Yeah.

I mean, even.

You try to explain how this planet and this universe could possibly be if you didn't put something higher than ourselves.

It's really funny.

I mean, of course, I mean,

bless your mom.

I was just thinking about your mom.

That's a beautiful story, actually.

But

even

the most advanced string theory guys that exist say, oh, no, there's something.

Yeah.

Of course there is.

Here's why I love that we're all kind of in the business of making people laugh, you know, or find something witty or

ironic or something in life.

That we all, hearing that story, and then I walk out the door and I think I'm in control of my day and I actually know,

you know,

so

no.

But I do think we're meant to enjoy the ride and we're supposed to have free will.

We are definitely here for free will.

And then so we get to make a choice.

Yeah.

Some of us are maybe not going to choose wisely you know

and some of us are lucky some of us are lucky to you know turn around to be around long enough to get to make the right choice yeah that's that's my what a great life you have yeah kelsey grammar really thank you you too yeah yeah us too what a wonderful thing to be uh just to spend time with uh you kelse i don't get to see you enough man every time i see you is great so i i don't get it's always a real occasion when we get together i always love it i love seeing you.

You always got something going on.

Your brain's always thinking some way that most people don't.

And it is a joy to know you.

And it always has been.

And the feeling is mutual.

Yeah, you too, Kelsey.

You too.

I love you very much.

I love you too.

Yeah.

You know what?

We should just do a little moment of

thank you, Jimmy, lesson, Glenn.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, we've all gone on and done many other amazing things in our life.

Isn't only cheers, but without cheers, I would not have be sitting here talking to you guys.

I would not be pretty much doing anything in my career.

It was such an amazing

platform for us to jump off of.

That's what the everybody knows your name.

They burnt our careers.

Yeah, they did.

They did, yeah.

Kelsey Grammar, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed it.

I had the best hour and a half that I've had in weeks.

It was just so sweet.

Cheers gave us such a platform to jump off into life, and it was fun to reminisce.

Anyway, that's it for this week's show.

Special thanks to our friends at Team Coco.

If you enjoyed this episode, please send it to a friend, subscribe, rate, and if you're in a good mood, review.

And you can always watch full episodes of this podcast on Team Coco's YouTube channel if that's your thing.

I'll be right back here next week where everybody knows your name.

You've been listening to where everybody knows your name with Ted Danson Woody Harrelson.

Sometimes.

The show is produced by me, Nick Liao.

Executive producers are Adam Sachs, Colin Anderson, Jeff Ross, and myself.

Sarah Fedorovich is our supervising producer.

Our senior producer is Matt Apodaka.

Engineering and Mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez.

Research by Alyssa Grawl.

Talent Cooking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista.

Our theme music is by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Gen, Mary Steenbergen, and John Osborne.

Special thanks to Willie Navery.

We'll have more for you next time where everybody knows your name.

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