Glen and Les Charles

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As close to a flawless cast as I've seen.

All right, name names.

Why did you say close to?

Who are you thinking of when you say close to?

Welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson Sometimes.

Today, Woody and I are talking with two guys who, if they had never been born, you wouldn't know either of our names.

You certainly wouldn't be listening to this podcast.

I'm talking about Glenn and Les Charles, the screenwriters and producers who co-created Cheers along with Jimmy Burroughs.

Beyond Cheers, the Charles brothers wrote for so many shows that taught America how to laugh together.

Think Taxi, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and the Bob Newhart Show.

I'm so glad Woody was able to join us from London via Zoom for this special conversation.

These two mean so much to us.

Here they are, our friends Glenn and Les Charles.

So the whole reason why we did this was to be able to reminisce about those amazing 11 years.

So this opportunity to come and

sit down with you guys 30 years later and say thank you.

is, you know.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Well, thank you.

You guys

are without the two of you, it wouldn't have been a cheers.

Without Woody, we'd have gone five years now.

Oh, three years.

Three years now.

And been done.

He

saved our asses.

Well, let's show you.

Yeah, that's kind of you, but you'd have kept going regardless.

That show is just too good.

It's too genius.

The writing, extraordinary.

Tell me about the casting of Woody, how you first met Woody, what your impressions were and all of the above.

Well, the interesting thing is we had cast the

we had actually named the character Woody.

Woody, before we even read an actor, we named him Woody.

Before we'd ever heard of Woody.

Woody.

In fact, nobody had ever heard of Woody at that point.

Anyway, we said we want kind of a country bumpkin kind of guy, somebody from Iowa, Ohio, farm boy, and here's the big city of Boston.

So he's a little naive.

He needs to learn things.

And

so we read a guy that was right on the money.

And I can't even remember his name.

Sir, his name was John.

It's like

John

Pilts.

John something.

I'm going to start with a P.

And he was elated.

And then our casting director, Steve Kozak, said,

I know you think you've got your man, but I just saw something.

I think there's somebody you might want to look at, if not for this, for something else.

So he said, Sure, we'll do that.

Meantime, this John had gone out and bought a car and rendered it.

Got married, and he's now listening, he's listening 40 minutes later, going

right.

Yeah, he's in AA now.

And so we looked, we read Woody, and we said we should,

we were very interested.

And we had you had you come in

uh for the second read or was that the first one was it was the first right right after we done uh read woody ourselves we said have ted come in and we always wanted we always wanted

we always wanted to do that whenever we could on cheers as you know read actors together audition actors together to see the chemistry not just how good they are by themselves but how they interrupt and i think it's good for woody to hear uh that i was all in favor of him if you could say that so he could hear it you were you what?

Crying out loud.

Fought like hell.

No effing way.

No.

He's too young.

He's too cool.

Get him out of my sight.

I remember very well.

You said, I know you think you've got your guy, but this guy's more interesting.

And I said, okay, okay.

So we brought a little something more to the part.

A lot more.

And

the other guy, as I said, was kind of right on the money.

But uh, Woody was not exactly, he was the part,

everything we wanted in the part, but a little more.

And uh, just he's a dangerous motherfucker, there was this element of danger, yeah, there is

crazy as hell.

You know, it's interesting between the lines, yes.

We've lost, we lost three major characters on Shears, three major characters.

We lost Nick Colasano, coach,

we replaced him with Woody, step in the right direction.

We lost Shelley and got Kirstie, Yeah.

And

who is the other one?

I don't know.

You're out of that.

I was thinking too.

But hold it.

So tell me about, because that seemed to me almost insurmountable when Shelly was leaving after a lot of I had been there two years.

It was the fifth year.

She did the fifth year and then she was leaving.

And tell me what your mindset was like.

Well, cheer panic.

No,

there were some critics that said when Shelly walks out the door, that's the end of cheers.

And we had to sort of live with that because that was this element of the show.

A main element of the show was the Sam-Diane courtship and

the battle.

But we only, you know, Shelly just signed on for five years anyway.

Her contract was up.

It didn't like she said, I'm out of here.

She did say I'm out of here, but she was allowed to do that.

She was having a certain amount of success in film and thought she had a career in film so we

can't fight that

but with one thing we decided to do let's not let's not just try and fill in Sam's life with another

lady

let's make it maybe if there was a way to make get a woman that they had a

he was at odds with

like a superior like somebody who works for the company that owns shares so Sam has to kind of report to her and she needs to be attractive and everything.

And so we

read

a couple of ladies but Kirstie was right.

We went and saw Kevin Hot Tenroof at the Amundsen Theater and Kirstie was in that.

I thought, wow.

Interesting as hell, but I don't know how funny she can be.

But that's we then we decided, well, she doesn't have to be that funny because ev all the other characters around her are funny.

So she can and she's an actress, she's a a very good actress.

She's obviously very sexy and interesting to watch.

But it came around that she could be funny, too.

She was,

I forget, she was a really good drunk.

And also a woman who could play

desperation

on the verge of a nervous breakdown

and be moving and still be funny.

In fact, a nervous breakdown, not the verge.

She would go all the the way.

Yes.

Way over.

Oh, she was a great friend.

You know, I watched the other day, Lauren Michaels sent me this clip from,

you know, there was that one, Cheers, where we all, or not Cheers, SNL, where we all showed up and surprised her, or maybe she already knew, I forget.

But

then

there was another one that I hadn't seen, and it was where all these guys from the cast were pretending to be our characters coming.

And,

but anyway, when she was talking about cheers and missing everybody, the emotional depth and range.

This is an SNL monologue.

I was, I was so astounded by her ability.

You know, I mean, I'm not astounded.

It just, I hadn't seen her in a while.

And it just was like, oh my God, I forgot how well she can go there.

You know,

how deep she can go.

God, I would love to see that, that SNL.

It is so good.

I'm glad we're talking about Kirsty because it's just,

I mean, it's been a while since

she passed away, but it was so out of the blue and so startling.

And to lose somebody who you spent so much time laughing and giggling and admiring and hanging.

And

so, you know,

three cheers to Kirsty Alley.

Yeah,

one of the things she brought to the show, too, above and beyond her performance, was just she was a great person to have around.

She was just

a great broad.

She was

hung with the guys and got drunk and carried on.

It was a

really fun

energy

who said that she was like a biker chick from hell.

Remember, she would have all of us over, the entire entire crew and cast and writer, everybody, everybody, to her house for either Easter or something.

And there'd be animals all over her property and kids loved going out and hanging with her.

Some of those animals, I still don't know what those were.

Illegal.

And for good reason.

I still got a rash from one of them.

Can we back up?

Because while we're on the subject of ladies, and we'll get to Rhea in a minute, but

Shelly Long,

I've said it, you all, I know I've said it in print, but Shelly really gave the first year or two or three

the boost that Cheers needed because she landed into her part feet first on the pilot and was astounding and unlike any other character we've seen since maybe, you know,

I Love Lucy or something.

We've said often that we're not sure that Church would have survived without Shelly's in that first season because she was so strong and so confident, knew exactly who the character was and who she was.

And I think

all of the rest of you were finding your way a little bit.

Kiss my ass, you know?

That's so rude.

Well,

you had to learn how to throw a baseball, Ted.

I had to learn so much, but this is pre-Woody.

Woody came in full-fledged, too.

But yeah, I was.

Yeah, Woody came.

Yeah, it was pretty honest.

Yeah, right from the movie.

Yeah.

I can't remember.

Did you leap over the bar in the first episode?

Was that?

Remember, Jimmy asked, you think you could jump over?

And I said, yeah, I think so.

But I was going to, I wanted to.

I just feel like we've gotten a little ahead of the game here because I wanted to get back to when you guys were working on taxi together, right?

And obviously Jimmy was there and just how things came about, you know, like how it all, how the first idea came and everything.

For Cheers.

Yeah.

And how you and Jimmy Burroughs hooked up together.

Well, we were working with Jimmy going back to the MTM days.

So by the time we got to Cheers, we'd had six or seven years together.

We were not a partnership at MTM, but we did happen to work on a lot of shows together.

He was doing a lot of shows at MTM, hopping around a little bit.

And we were on Phyllis and then the Bob Newhart Show.

And yeah, we just hooked up and we hit it off right away.

We came into the business about the same time.

So we kind of were the new kids in the organization.

And

it kind of grew up together, the three of us.

And then somebody gave you a deal to develop something and that.

And that

became cheers.

We went to Taxi.

They brought us over from MTM

to do Taxi, and we were producing, and he was directing.

We did all of those shows for four years together.

So, yeah, we had it worked out.

Worked out.

Double partnership.

We got along, and

we were united.

We had an

executive producer that

was very talented, but not all that easy to deal with.

And so

that kind of

bonded us uh was his name Ed or Jim

yes

so uh we were united and we had the same agent and uh we were got it we got we won Emmys for writing and the Shell of Horse won Emmys

and so we

Our

agent said,

why don't you form a partnership?

And we said, okay.

And

we formed the partnership and announced that we were leaving and to do our own show.

And of course, they tried to talk us out of it, but they understood.

They understood that we would never be

the runners, the ultimate voices on taxi.

We wanted our own show.

And so

we learned a lot from taxi

besides learning how to deal with people.

all sorts of people

so we thought we didn't want to be in a

nothing like a garage because the garage was dirty and smoky and you don't want to be there you don't want to be in a garage so where do you want to be

where do we want you want to be in a bar and

so we got bar

New York had been used as a location city by everybody

San Francisco

Eastern's better

so somebody brought up Boston I at that point, hadn't even been to Boston.

And when I first went and saw it, I thought, oh, God, yes, this is the bellist place.

Actually, we wrote the first script before we'd been to Boston.

With this

presumptuous?

Yes.

And before we'd ever been in a bar, too.

So we were just using our imagination.

So we took care of that

one strip, right?

So we, and we were, we had a very good casting director,

and we looked through a lot of people, and we, and we had time.

We had time, there was no rush put on us.

It was our show.

Interestingly, though, the reason we had so much time is there was a writer's strike.

Just as we were ready to go on the show, the writers went out, so we could do nothing.

The business was at a halt.

So all we had to do was sit around and cast day after day after day.

And all the actors were available because all of their stuff was closed and

nobody had work.

We read everybody for all these parts

and some of them two or three times.

And it was Steve Colzak would just not let up on us.

He says, I've got three more people.

So it was, I think that's one of the secrets of cheer success is that we had had that luxury.

You also, though, knew Rhea Perlman from both Taxi and I think a play that she was in or something.

So she was one of the first people.

Right.

Mainly taxi.

She was married to Danny.

yeah

and we knew them socially and knew right they were friends so you always yeah we

would be well we wrote it for her yeah that's what that's the only part that we wrote for it for an actor um

and we still read people we just stevie just said you know just to make sure you got the you got the right choice um read a black actress i remember that was an interesting way to go with carla would have been but uh

yeah that's the only everybody else we wrote the part, but without any specific person in mind.

Everybody kept saying Shelly Long.

You got to go see Shelly Long.

And she wouldn't read.

Oh, she wouldn't.

At first,

forever, she wouldn't.

She wouldn't read.

I don't know why she wouldn't read.

Well, she didn't want to do a TV series.

I think she wanted to go right into movies.

At that point, what had she done?

That's a good question.

That's a really good question.

I don't think anything major.

She gets rebuttal time, man.

So does she

care?

I don't think so.

I don't think we'd...

No, we didn't.

When she walked in, she was a new entity to us.

She finally agreed to come in.

She wouldn't even come in and say hi.

But as soon as she read,

oh, God.

Did even her reading come out full-blown?

Yeah, it was there.

She got the character.

So you knew right away.

Right away, yeah.

We were still doing due diligence.

I mean, we were still looking at other actresses

and did an audition, as you know, with

three different couples.

Three different couples, yeah.

Actually, as it turned out, it was Ted and Shelley, but I don't think we

manipulated that in any way.

Maybe Steve Colzack, our casting.

I think he was pushing for that.

I think he may have manipulated that.

But we weren't actually sure ourselves until after we did that with the three couples we all went back to the office and we said what do you think and we all said well there's no question

well i have joel thurm's uh account of that which we'll get to woody we interrupted you what were you going to say oh well i was just going to say i mean like you didn't talk much about how you ended up casting uh mr danson

uh so i want to hear how that all came about let me go on record first then you can rebuttal here uh i was doing

I was doing taxi,

just out of the blue, somebody fell through and I got to play this hairdresser on taxi.

And then Jimmy, who I'd met for an audition of True West, was at the name.

No, not True West, the best of the West.

Best of the West.

And didn't get the part, but he remembered me.

So you guys were the beginning stages of casting, and you invited me to come during a lunch hour of shooting the episode of Taxi.

And that was the first meeting, and within a couple of days another meeting.

And at the end of the second meeting, you said,

well,

don't take any other work before you check with us.

And I went, so, so does that mean I've got the part?

And you went, no, no, but just check with us.

Not at all.

First.

And then literally, there was a back door to where your office and there was a front door.

I went out the back door and up the stairs was a line of every actor, you know, ever lived.

Ever lived walking out the door inside.

It was an ex-Bushman.

Okay.

All right.

Your turn.

Well, there's two things I remember.

The first time your name was ever mentioned to us was Bob Broder, our agent.

Oh, really?

Thank you, Bob.

Yeah, he came in one day and said he had just seen Body Heat.

And he said, you should look at that guy that was dancing.

Or he said that guy dancing.

Also,

one thing I remember from that period is we had one of the executive producers on taxi.

You played a gay character.

One of our executive producers was convinced you were gay.

Yeah.

Positive you were gay.

And we said, Well, he's no, he's acting, playing a part.

He said, No.

I just thought it was

funny that somebody who's been in the business that long thought was couldn't believe that someone could act.

I hadn't made up my mind.

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Anyhow, when you went back after the, we did come down, there were three, two other actors and actresses sets and uh on the stage and we did audition for the network and the producers and writers and everybody and then you said you went back to talk about the casting choice I heard

that

oh hell here goes my brain

Mary Tyler Moore's husband Grant Tinker Grant who was the head of NBC at that point.

He was, yeah, he wasn't there.

He wasn't in favor of me, according to Joel Thurm, who was the head of NBC Casting at the time.

In his book, he writes, his tell-all book, that

oh, this is one of those stories that is really complimentary of me, but I'll keep going.

Grant said, no, no, no, this other actor I won't mention is one of the best actors in America.

How can you not take him?

William.

Would Devane, you know.

Devane, who was one of the best actors.

And

we have to go with William Devane.

And Joel Thurm said,

no, no, no.

You have to go with Ted

because he's more fuckable.

Was his quote.

Thank you, Woody.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

These guys are sitting here looking at me like, whoa, first off, how misguided.

And I can't believe you said that.

So that's never part of that.

I don't remember.

I just, Joel Thurm never used that phrase when he was talking casting with us for anybody.

How fuckable is that?

Grant Tinker said that?

No, Joel said it to Grant and Grant was so shocked that I think he just decided to give up.

Well, that's a real surprise because Grant never said anything to us.

Well, I can edit this stupid story out.

Trust me.

No, I'm not saying that it's not true.

Keep it in.

Thank you.

No, the great thing about Grant was he never interfered with us as a studio.

Even when our ratings were in the dumper,

I remember, I think it was the week that we came in dead last in the ratings.

We went over to NBC and Grant, walking down the hall, and Grant came out of his office and said, don't change anything.

We were stunned.

I remember that.

Wow.

He was the best.

We as a cast were spoiled because you did never put that pressure because you must have felt pressure from the ratings.

But you never put it on us.

We felt pressure, but

we were sort of bolstered by the reviews

and the audience reception to the show.

Before we were even on the air, we'd had to go down to

shopping malls and pass out tickets to a show, come see a show film, blah, blah, blah.

We didn't do that personally.

Or did we?

I think one week.

We were a week away from doing that.

But anyway,

remember our first audience were the Seabees,

the group of Seabees from the naval station.

And

we'd never had an audience except people that were friends of ours and

friends of the actors.

And the Seabees absolutely loved it.

They didn't even know these characters.

That was a big lift.

And so we knew we were just

sort of masturbating.

There were people that liked what we were doing.

And they understood the character.

They understood the essence of the character.

We showed them the first show.

I mean, we shot the first show, I think, in front of the C.

We shot the first show with three different audiences, wasn't it?

Two different audiences.

And got a great response.

And

the first, I think, audience was the CBs.

And then we had

an industry audience, people that were agents.

And

the response is pretty universal.

And we felt a lot better.

So when the ratings came out, we said, good God.

Wait, we're not on the first page, second page.

How many you get a negative rating?

Some people who didn't watch said they wouldn't watch.

So

they could

subtract for that.

So can I ask a question?

You're saying you had already shot the show and then you showed the finished product to these two audiences?

They had been on the air.

So we would show

when a new audience came in, we would show them the original episode

so that they would understand the story

behind it.

I see.

Wow.

And then when we got on the air, we didn't need to do that, obviously.

But

I guess we did for a while because nobody was watching it at home.

But then, so it was when,

I mean, it was at the point where it went into reruns that it started picking up steam.

Because a show called, I don't know if you've heard of it, Simon and Simon,

was a detective story on CBS, huge ratings.

And those were the days where pretty much every show took the summer off.

So when the summer came around and everybody had watched TV on Thursday and I had seen Simon and Simon, what's this?

Cheers.

And then

it also helped that we won an Emmy for best

series, Best Comedy.

And Shelly won.

And Shelley won.

And we won.

and uh yeah we won oh you the writing the writing won something well that's

slow year yeah and jimmy won and uh yeah we we

took a bunch and that helped a lot and we got great reviews our reviews were so those things carried us a little bit but i wanted to ask you guys because uh cheers famously was the first sitcom to have everything be sequential like in time like it one connected to the next to the next what do you call that?

Chronological or whatever?

Up until that time, everybody thought you have to have a show that every week they can tune in, and it's starting from ground zero.

You can't assume that they've seen shows before that.

They have to stand alone.

And we sort of said, well, why not?

Let's try it out.

And it worked out.

And now, of course, with streaming and stuff, they're all like that.

You can't really tune into.

Breaking Bad in the third season and know what the hell's going on.

Here's what I was going to say.

We were the pioneers.

Let me go back and say: you reshot, if I remember correctly, the last scene of the pilot.

You reshot a couple of times.

You came back to it once we were already shooting other episodes and you tweaked the ending just a little bit.

Really?

I don't recall that.

Okay, I'm wrong.

No, no, I'm not sure.

Is that in Grant's point?

The ending was the very end,

right before the credits, is Shelly is working as a waitress.

She came in

in the first scene with her fiancé,

Sumner Sloan.

And the last scene, she's a waitress in a place she put down disparagingly and the people she thought were oaths.

So we might have shot that scene more.

I could be wrong.

I know we did shoot scenes over again.

We had that luxury of being able to come back and shoot an extra scene after we shot an episode.

So we did that, yeah, throughout the series.

We'd shoot pickups, as they call them.

When we had a turkey, we'd have to go back and try to

ruin you guys screwed up so badly.

Speaking of turkey, one of our favorite episodes, the Thanksgiving.

Oh, God, yeah.

There was no going back on that.

Oh, no.

Oh, my God.

No reshoot.

And by then.

About a film, Jimmy.

And by then, we had certain people had opinions of other people and had, you know, slight, not full-on grudges, but yeah, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to wing this person.

Oh, really?

Was there a little bit of

the throwing of the peas?

Oh, definitely.

No.

No.

You would have to go back and watch that again.

Everyone was aiming at Willie.

I get more compliments about the Thanksgiving show.

I know the cast loved it.

It was a good vent.

But I think that

there was some truth in that because most Thanksgiving dinners take too long and you get edgy.

And you get hungry.

And you get very hungry.

And

yeah, that kind of thing.

And violent.

Violent.

Violent.

If given the opportunity, yes.

But

we were going to be on it.

The story behind that is we were going to be on Thursday.

We were on Thursdays, as you know.

And they used to do, for the first few years, we brought a rerun on Thursday night because

it's Thanksgiving.

So the network that year said, why don't you do a Thanksgiving show?

Thanksgiving show.

You know, it's not like

a Christmas show.

I mean, there's things you can do with Christmas, but Thanksgiving, what do you do?

People just eat.

Yeah.

And wait a minute.

That's great.

We ran out of ideas.

You know another show that was on Thanksgiving?

Because

the network said, oh, no, you can go on Thanksgiving.

It's just another night.

Nobody cares.

We said, well, wait a minute.

Nobody watches TV on things.

So we bowed to

their greater wisdom.

And the show, Coach's Daughter, remember that from the first season?

Of course.

We had to show that on Thanksgiving,

I think, one of the best cheers episodes ever.

Nobody saw it.

It had a negative rating.

Like I say,

it was really a shame.

We felt so bad about that.

But then, in repeats,

enough people saw it to realize

what a gem that was.

Nikki Calasanto, who was Woody's predecessor, played the coach.

And it was kind of a defining moment for his character.

He wasn't just the silly man who'd been beamed in the head by baseballs too often.

He had such love for his daughter who was thinking that she was plain and not beautiful.

It was an amazing scene.

Great performance.

And you know, that kind of points to how

Nikki was really kind of the heart and soul of the show, you know, and

when he passed away, I think a lot of us also felt in that moment, what do we do now that we've lost this

center to the show as far as the heart?

goes.

And once again, singing your praises, Woody, you came in, you know, just blasting with both barrels and became beloved within, you know, an episode or two.

People just immediately embraced your character because of the writing and because of you.

But that was pretty amazing to replace Nikki.

I thought it was a great touch.

And then

not to sing the praises of the writing too much.

This wasn't my idea, or maybe it was, but

I think it helped a great deal that Woody came in having been in contact with the coach.

They had exchanged letters and he was really anxious to meet Coach.

And then when he heard he had passed away,

Woody was really

broken down about it, which the audience went right to Woody's at that moment and

cemented

him taking over the coach's spot.

And then once he leapt over the bar effortlessly and I couldn't and had to crawl over it,

they really loved him.

That's what we need.

Well, we need to keep talking trash about people.

Georgie, George Went, tell us about how, you know, his casting and all of that.

We worked with George on taxi.

He'd done an appearance on taxi.

We really liked him and

thought

he looked like a barfly.

It looked like somebody with hanging out in the bar.

Actually,

remember, he did the very first script we ever wrote, that MASH.

He was in that.

I don't remember that.

Yeah, he played the guy who comes to pick up the bodies.

He was really?

Interesting.

I'm sorry, I'm interrupted, but yeah, so we go back away.

I didn't know you guys wrote on MASH.

Just a couple episodes.

A couple of episodes, yeah.

Wow.

Before we went on to MTM.

That was our first job.

We got a MASH assignment.

Yeah, we're old, Woody.

We're

that was the Korean War, wasn't it, fellas?

It wasn't during the Korean War.

Okay, so you thought of him and wrote towards him, or no?

No, I interrupted Glenn.

We didn't write with him in mind.

No, we didn't, but

somebody brought him up.

But remember, he was committed to another series.

Oh, that's right.

We had him on condition after that.

Right.

And so we had read other people for

that role.

And

we were so heartened when the show

he'd been on was not picked up.

So we weren't sure.

But if it had been, yeah, if that show had been picked up by the network, we'd have lost George.

I don't know.

Hey, dude, the whole norm, the whole bar of people shouting out norm, what was the origin of that?

How did that come about?

Well, we did that on the first episode, and

people started to expect it.

And that became, speaking as a writer, one of the hardest

things about writing a cheer script is coming up with

what's new, Norm.

How are you doing, Norm?

I was like cheating, yeah.

Like I just ran over its dog.

You know,

do you have favorites?

Can you say they sound so casual and like you could come right out of off the top of your head?

But every time we came to a normism, everybody would put down the script and, okay, it's going to be half an hour now.

I remember it's a dog-y dog world, and I'm wearing, what was it?

I'm wearing milkbone underwear wearing milkbone underwear

that's that might be the most quoted joke yeah and cheers we had him on he's uh

he's still Georgie full-fledged George is George and George had that ability has that ability to go

light

or

or sad and dark.

And, you know, he has all this ability to go anywhere you want.

That's, sorry, I'm now rambling.

But that was the, I think, one of the great things about the casting, I will say, was you all as writers could go anywhere, which is not true with your story, because that's not always true.

But everyone in our cast, because of the way the character was written and because of the acting, you could go to them for a full story.

You didn't have to avoid people.

Our casting director deserves so much credit, directors.

We had one.

But

we were really fortunate, the cast we had.

I think it's

as close to a flawless cast as I've seen.

All right, name names.

Why did you say close to?

Who do you think I have when you say close to?

I always have to have a

word.

I think it's perfect.

Okay, it was a perfect cast.

But we were always intent on casting, not just for the funny, but for the actor, somebody who can really act.

And

I think a lot of comedies make the mistake of just, can they do a joke?

Yeah.

And we'll just keep throwing jokes at them.

And no, we purposely wanted

the chops, actors with the chops, and they're so blessed.

Do you remember Georgie stopping?

George went stopping shooting because I can't remember what the setup was, Woody, but

they were nervous or something, and he was sweating so much.

And he took his shirt off.

I mean, his

sport coat off.

And you guys had rigged

huge pits.

Huge pits that were like visibly dripping.

But we had to stop shooting for the only time ever.

The laugh was.

No one stopped laughing.

Yeah.

Stop laughing.

We were a classy show.

Classy show.

Yeah, I love the story when Johnny came in.

And you guys,

you know, he kind of bombed.

He was on with us and we talked to him, but he kind kind of bombed the audition.

And then he turns back and says,

you guys have a bar know-it-all.

Do you remember that?

That's right.

I remember it very well.

He actually came in and read for

Norm,

and that wouldn't have worked.

And this is when we didn't know whether or not we were going to get George.

So we were reading him up, people.

But he said, do you guys have a know-it-all

in the bar?

What do you mean?

And he said, it's a guy that comes in, start of the evening, very prim proper.

By the end of the evening, he's doing this and poking everybody in the chest and screaming and yelling and

like that.

So we played mid-Alley.

He played with that a little bit.

And his flies open.

You agree with that?

Yeah,

we played a little.

Didn't remember that.

But anyway.

You played with that in the audition, you mean?

No, no, we played with, when we were writing the character, we played with that's kind of a, you know,

know-it-all, who would be a noted all, know-it-all, and it would be somebody that knows a little bit about a lot of things, but not a lot about it.

Little thing.

Anyway, he, uh,

how about how about a mailman?

Because, you know, they read magazines, they read the covers and the headlines.

Right.

And so

minimum knowledge,

but

he thought he was an expert on everything because he'd heard about it.

So that was Cliff, Cliff Claven.

And we thought we'd just use him for a few episodes here and there, like some of the other bar characters, but he was so funny that we eventually...

Oh, when I watch old episodes, Johnny can make me laugh harder than

he was so inmain and so out of Letfield.

One of my favorite John Vitts was when he was selling shoes.

Do you remember that?

He was directing that.

Oh, my name is.

Right.

He directed that.

Yeah.

That was a very funny show.

He was selling shoes and

mail-order shoes and he managed to sell to every guy in the bar, just in case somebody hasn't seen the episode.

And the shoes came in and they were all excited and put them on.

And then they noticed that they squeaked.

The shoes squeak.

All of the shoes squeaked.

And so they turned into an ugly mob to try to

chase Cliff.

And they're squeaking, though.

And we had little handheld squeakers.

Oh, really?

So we could all control our squeaks.

That's right.

I didn't know that.

Woody, were you there when uh the whole bar full of guys

uh

i think to the theme of but uh either bonanza or the magnificent seven we all sang that and galloped out because we were on some manly chase uh does this ring a bell at all Yeah, I remember that.

We were going after the guy from the other bar, Gary or whatever.

Oh, Gary,

something to do with that.

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah.

I think Kelsey was part of it by then.

Anyway, let's speak of, let's talk trash about Kelse.

He was brought in.

Another time you were only going to use him for a few episodes, right?

And he was so good.

Right.

Exactly.

Exactly.

We didn't

realize what we had at that moment.

You were looking for

a device for the Sam, in a way, the Sam and Diane relationship.

Yeah.

And interrupt that.

An opposite from Sam, you know,

pseudo-intellectual snob.

God, he was funny.

He was killed himself.

Yeah, very funny.

He is funny.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Still doing Frasier.

What year will this be of him doing that character?

Well, he was, what year did he come on shears?

This is the second?

So it's the third.

Third?

So it was eight years on shears, 11 on Fraser, and now we got a new one going.

That's up there with guns.

He is chasing down James Arness for sure.

Yeah,

I think we really

realized that we needed to bring Kelsey on was when we started to see the vulnerability in the character.

Because at first, he was just this pompous,

successful psychologist, and he had Diane, and everything was going great.

But then, when you started to see him breaking down,

we realized there were levels to this guy, and

he could really play them all.

Oh, Kelsey Grammar is one of our most talented, I think.

He could also

write music, play music, play the piano, sing.

He was always startlingly.

He would also show up

right up to the last second with a script.

And he literally truly did not know his lines.

He was reading from the script.

And it'd be like, oh, God, how's this going to work out?

He's carrying the show.

He has tons of lines.

And he would kind of barely have it.

And then turn around, audience comes, he'd step out, and he was like, word perfect.

I'll tell you, one of the moments that really impressed me, that was a series of moments, was Kelsey.

We were doing a rehearsal and he had a line.

And I said to him, you know, I think that's going to work best if you hit this word.

And he nodded and said, okay.

So in the next rehearsal, next time through, he hit that line.

The next time through, he hit another word.

The next time, he hit another word.

And then he hit another word.

The next time, every time it was funny.

How long is that?

Oh.

So I just shut up.

Left him alone.

That was phenomenal.

Shut my mouth.

And then when did you bring on Bibi Newirth to play

his

year?

We were in New York, my L.A.

wife and I, and we'd been to a play,

and we'd heard about this review called Upstairs at O'Neill's.

The bar of

the actor,

I can't remember his first name.

Anyway, he had a bar, and they had a stage upstairs, and they had late-night reviews.

And

we

saw baby Noonworth that night for the first time.

We couldn't take our eyes off of her.

I mean, she just has that deadpan look, and there's something about her that's captivating.

So, when we came to a point and cheers where we needed

perhaps a lot of interest for Frasier, we thought, well, we've got to get her because,

and she was very funny.

Oh, my God.

And came in full-blown.

She was, you know,

what was her name?

Sorry, character name?

Lilith.

Lilith,

the witch.

Perfect name.

But

no, we've been so fortunate that, as I say,

every person we've lost has been replaced

by someone equally good, if not better.

I mean,

we've just been very, very fortunate.

I think I count our casting directors and give them so much credit.

Yeah, every time we needed somebody, the actor walked through the door.

It might not have been the first person, but we've been on other shows where the person never comes in.

You never find.

But somebody we always had Woody walk in.

Woody walked in the door and sneezed, I think, didn't you, Woody?

Is that the

first time we ever saw Woody

opened the door, walked in the door?

No, no, I was blowing my nose.

Walked in the door and blew his nose.

I didn't know I was walking through the door and you guys were on the other side of it because we'd already walked through another door.

And, you know,

I just was unaware.

It was perfect.

You guys laughed.

It was the perfect entrance.

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I don't know if you knew what was going on behind the scenes with Woody.

When Woody arrived, he was 25, I think, Woody.

I just turned 24.

24, and we were all 37, George, John, me, and

Kelsey, I don't know how.

Anyway,

and 37 is right around the time you realize you're no longer 25 and you don't have those physical capabilities.

But we were determined to show this whippersnapper a thing or two.

So we all love basketball.

So we took him out to the basketball court and he tore us apart, just whooped us.

So we switched gears and we did.

John, who has sizably muscular legs, decided to do that leg wrestling thing.

We lie on the ground each time.

He cleaned John's clock, just whooped him.

I then arm wrestled him, and I literally still have some bad tendonitis in my right arm because I didn't want to lose.

So I held out longer than I should have because he cleaned my clock.

So we took him to the chessboard.

cleaned our clock.

It was like,

from that moment on, it was like any kind of vengeful

trick or anything we could play.

It was wasted on anybody if it wasn't played on Woody.

Wow.

Yeah.

Did you know that was going on?

I definitely, well, we didn't at the time, but we've heard about the stories.

Definitely heard about it.

And I think basketball was the first time we heard about Prey's prowess.

No, while you were doing all of that, we were up working.

Oh, right.

You might have heard of that.

And you guys did actually work.

So

I remember that.

Remember Gary David Goldberg?

He used to play basketball back there.

Oh, yeah.

I think he was the one who put up that basketball court.

Yeah.

I'd love to know how you got from, was it Henderson?

Henderson, Nevada.

Nevada.

Raised Mormon.

Who left Henderson first, but what was that like growing up as a young teenager kind of thing?

Henderson is a well-known town now.

A lot of Californians move there, in fact, retire there.

So in those days, though, it was a very small town.

It was built essentially during the Second World War as an industrial town, so it was a cheaper place to live than Las Vegas, its nearest neighbor.

But I really liked growing up in Las Vegas.

That was very good.

In those days, they didn't have photo ID,

so we could

get somebody.

There was a guy in our high school that

could fake IDs and he could present it and get in the lounges late at night.

And that's where I first saw, I saw Shecky Green and Don Rickles and people like that doing comedy.

And I really liked it.

It turned me on a lot.

I was the first to go because I'm the oldest.

I went to school in Southern California.

But

yes, we were raised in the Mormon church.

I don't think our mother was devout and insisted on us going to at least three meetings every Sunday.

And our father was...

More if there had been any.

Yeah, if there had been any, she'd come.

If there had been 12, we'd have our father was also a Mormon, but he was not a good one.

He smoked a little, drank a little.

So you had some wiggle room.

Well, we had yin-yang.

We see life from both sides now.

They were not totally unlike Sam and Diane, her parents.

Mother was a reader and

constantly going to school and getting educated, and dad was down having beers.

With the guys.

Yeah, and loved sports.

Did your parents live long enough to see the success of cheers?

They did, fortunately.

Yeah, my mother lived to 77.

And then there was a thumbs up from your mother.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I'll know she still, I mean, up to her passing, talked about the night she met you in my office or less is all.

I don't know if you remember coming up, and this is when she was on the air a while, and she was introduced to you.

And oh, she still talked about that.

He's so much better looking on screen.

Yeah,

that was her, right?

That was her.

Oh, good.

So I met your mom.

So, my question about did she live long enough?

Yeah, she did.

She did thank you.

Now,

Teddy,

yeah,

this is an embarrassing, awkward moment.

Now, oh, fuck.

Do you remember their mom?

Not at all.

I don't remember anything

in my defense.

Okay, so

who made that first move of

I'm going to write.

I'm going to be a writer.

I'm going to be funny.

I majored in literature in college, and

I didn't specifically have an idea of being a writer, but

I took a course in drama and got in a couple of plays.

And I thought, wow,

this is such a different style of writing than if you're writing a novel.

And the lesson I had, he's five years younger than me.

He had the.

Still am.

Still, it doesn't show.

Kids.

We had the same tastes.

And

my first

job job

was a I was an advertiser, excuse me, I was a copywriter and advertising agency in in Los Angeles.

And

Les was going to school still.

And

I think the movie was Chinatown.

Not that this is important, but we went to see Chinatown, Les's wife, and me.

And

we came back from Chinatown, which was very, it's a great movie, I think.

Anyway,

we talked about great writing, and we both agreed that we'd seen some really good television shows like Mary Tyler Moore, MASH,

Bob Newhart.

All of those shows were on the air about the same time.

And we said, kind of, I don't know who said it first, but let's write for TV.

How hard can it be?

Famous last words.

It was very hard to get in,

to get an agent.

It took a long, long time, but we did eventually get an agent.

And we both were.

With

a spec script or something?

Exactly.

Spec script.

For which show, do you know?

We wrote a spec MASH, a spec Mary, and

we wrote a new heart.

Yeah, but it was the Mary Time Remorse show that got that really got our foot in the door.

But the first sale was MASH.

Right.

That was our first, actually got paid to do the show.

And then MTM called to put us on staff.

Right.

We made him interested in being on staff, which was

we'll think about it.

Because MTM was the

place for TV comedy in those days.

And they said it was like going to Harvard Law School, going to MTM, working at MTM.

Boy, that's true.

Working at Paramount had that same feeling of there were so many shows on at the same half-hour comedies.

And I think I remember, or at least this is what I've always said, but sometimes friends of yours who were writing on other shows,

if any one of the shows had a real problem or issue, sometimes people from other shows would, writers, would drop by and sit in the room for a while and work it.

Is that

MTM, too?

Yeah.

People who are trying to break in the business wanted to go to Paramount.

Yeah.

And they wanted to go to MTM before that.

And in fact, we got

two producers, you know very well,

Casey and Lee, were working on another show entirely.

They were working on Jefferson's, I think.

And they wrote a spec script for cheers.

Sent us a spec script and we couldn't believe it.

These guys are our producers on another show.

And it was, I think, the best spec script we ever got.

As well as it should be.

Yeah, it was brilliant.

Amazing writers over the years.

Ken Levine, wasn't he there in the beginning?

David Isaacs.

Yeah, Ken and David worked

with us first year, and they were producers.

A lot of late nights with those guys.

You were our upbringing in this business, and it was such a

luxury,

privilege to be raised by your writing, your relationship to actors, your respect for actors, your respect for

how important casts can be.

And just the whole process

was such a gift to us.

I mean, we're sitting here.

We're allowed to keep working because of cheers.

Can't thank you enough.

Thank you.

It was to this day the greatest experience of my life.

I really so appreciate you guys creating this show and letting me be in it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you guys.

I mean, good Lord.

Thanks.

It means a lot coming from you guys very much.

And it's such an incredible blessing for a writer to have a cast that you can, you know, they'll get it.

And you know if they don't, if they can't bring it off, then there's something wrong with the writing because

you guys were just the ultimate, ultimate cast.

Well, thank you.

I'd love you and miss you guys.

Thank you.

Miss you too.

And it's kind of miraculous.

Cheers too.

Horse walks into a bar.

What?

I said a horse.

What?

Anyway, love you, Woody.

Thank you for taking time to do that.

Love you, too.

Great seeing you guys.

Let's be in touch

in Big Island.

And Glenn, I'd love to see you sometime too.

Anytime.

Great

I live in Pebble Beach, and you're more than welcome anytime.

Oh, Pebble Beach.

Okay.

Glenn and Les Charles, it was truly special to spend this time reminiscing with them.

And thank you, Woody, for calling in from London.

That's it for our show this week.

Special thanks to our friends at Team Coco.

If you enjoyed this episode, why not send it to someone you have a a crush on?

Thank me later.

You can always watch us on YouTube by visiting youtube.com slash Team Coco.

As always, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts if this episode made you feel happy

or even happy-ish.

More for you next time.

Where everybody knows your name.

You've been listening to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson sometimes.

The show is produced by me, Nick Leo.

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

Sarah Fedorovich is our supervising producer.

Our senior producer is Matt Apadaka.

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

Research by Alyssa Grawl.

Talent booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista.

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

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

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Hey, everybody, it's Paul Scheer, host of How Did This Get Made, a podcast that covers the best, worst movies.

This week, we're diving into the brand new War of the Worlds reboot starring Ice Cube.

Yes, the movie that got 2% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Ice Cube is saving the world from aliens via his computer.

It's so convoluted, this plot, but basically, if you have an Amazon account, you can save the day just like Ice Cube.

There is so much going on in this movie, so join me, June, Diane, Rayfield, and Jason Manzukis, as we break down every bizarre choice and every Ice Cube one-liner on this week's episode of How Did This Get Made?

The podcast that makes sense of movies that don't.