Frasier EP Explains Why Not Bringing Back The Original Cast Turned Out To Be A 'Blessing' For The Revival
Frasier Crane is coming back to TV... but he won't have his old supporting cast with him.
Kelsey Grammer reprises the title role in the new Frasier revival, premiering this Thursday on Paramount+, but no one else from Frasier's original cast is back as a series regular. Instead, Frasier moves back to Boston to reconnect with his son Freddy, now played by Jack Cutmore-Scott, and meets a whole new cast of characters. So why did the revival decide to start fresh?
"Kelsey had always envisioned it as more a continuation or the next chapter of Frasier's life," executive producer Chris Harris (How I Met Your Mother) explains, "versus 'Let's go back and have the exact same people in the exact same place.'" Harris admits that "originally, yeah, we wanted to bring everyone back," but David Hyde Pierce, who played Niles on the original Frasier, "is on the record as saying he just decided he didn't want to go back to that character... Obviously, we would have loved to write for his character and work with him. But we absolutely respect that."
In fact, the lack of original cast members actually ended up helping the new show, Harris believes: "Now we think it was a blessing because instead of having one foot in the past and one foot in the present, it did help us to shift focus and say, 'OK, let's really make this a third chapter. Let's really make this its own creature, even if it still has the name Frasier, and let's build up a new world around Frasier.'... Instead of writing hopefully really good fan fiction for the previous characters, now we're doing our own show that hopefully will feel organic and feel like it fits with where the character should be in his life."
Fans will get a blast from the past when original cast member Peri Gilpin, who played Frasier's radio producer Roz, and Bebe Neuwirth, who played Frasier's ex-wife Lilith dating back to the days of Cheers, return for guest appearances on the revival. But "we waited until the second half" of the season "to bring them back," Harris says, because "we wanted to get the feel of our own show down." He emphasizes, though, that "the door is open to all of them. I mean, it's such a rich world, Frasier and Cheers. We have a lot to draw from in the Frasier-verse."
Will you miss seeing the rest of the Frasier cast on the new revival? Or are you open to a new chapter? Hit the comments to share your thoughts.