The One Frasier Storyline Jane Leeves And David Hyde Pierce Would Change

Jane Leeves And David Hyde Pierce played Daphne Moon and Niles Crane on 11 seasons of NBC's hit sitcom "Frasier," from 1993 to 2004. The duo engaged in one of the longest will-they-or-won't-they storylines in sitcom history — before Daphne ran away from her wedding to Donny (Saul Rubinek) to be with Niles during the Season 7 finale, "Something Borrowed, Someone Blue (Part 2)." Niles and Daphne went on to have one of the best proposals in TV history before getting married and having a son. Yet the show's writers gave their romance a terribly awkward start. 

Leeves and Pierce singled out one storyline, which was written so that Leeves could go on maternity leave to have her first child, in a 2026 interview with The Guardian. To explain Daphne's weight gain so early in her romance with Niles, she was given a complusive eating disorder and went away to a "weight loss spa." Leeves acknowledged that "those were different times," but said she wished the situation were handled differently.

"Daphne and Niles had just got together. I came back and I was pregnant — and they probably thought it was too early for Daphne to be pregnant and they wanted to explore this relationship," Leeves hypothesized about the writers' reasoning. However, in her mind, there was an easy fix that didn't require fat shaming her character or hiding her pregnancy. "But then again," she added, "it might have been interesting if she was!"

David Hyde Pierce, who also participated in The Guardian interview, praised his former on-screen wife's idea. "I've never thought of that, Jane, that's interesting, so off the rails: the idea that we see them run off together at the end of a season and when they come back they're having a baby," he said. Arguably, they're both right. Some of the best storylines in sitcom history involved a pregnancy, no matter what stage a couple's relationship was in.

Although "Frasier" wrote in Leeves' second pregnancy for the show's final season, she could have joined an impressive group of comedic actresses years earlier if her first pregnancy had been part of Daphne's storyline. Although "I Love Lucy" wasn't the first show to incorporate a real-life pregnancy into the script, Lucille Ball's pregnancy happened at the height of the show's popularity, making it one of the most famous examples. Meanwhile, Chelsea Peretti's pregnancy during the run of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" launched a paternity mystery in that show's fourth season, Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) became a surrogate for her brother on "Friends" Season 4 while Kudrow was pregnant, and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) and Marshall (Jason Seger) had a baby on Season 7 of "How I Met Your Mother," during Hannigan's second pregnancy.