Last week, we reported that Kelsey Grammer had taken a break from doing Transformers movies and playing amoral lawyers to consider rebooting his old sitcom Frasier. The actor was just in “the exploratory stage” regarding how to go about restarting the series, but still, the tossed salads and scrambled eggs were callin’ again, for all to hear. As the famous line from Silence Of The Lambs goes, “Do you still hear them, Clarice? The screaming of the tossed salads and scrambled eggs?”
The answer for Grammer, apparently, is still a deeply ambivalent, “maybe?” During a discussion with Vulture last night at the premiere of his new Netflix film Like Father, the once and possibly future Frasier Crane voiced uncertainty about whether he would actually go back to playing the dulcet-toned radio psychiatrist:
Honestly, I’m not sure it’s something I really want to do. We are discussing what is the right thing to try to do. What would make it interesting? That’s the nut that must be cracked.
At the time of the initial story, we said the tentative plan was to have new characters in a new city interacting with the fictional shrink, but Grammer shot down the idea. “I do not picture that, no,” he said, but then—perhaps sensing that we seemed a bit confused—he went on to further explain that he would want the old gang back together. “Certainly I think everyone that was on the show should be on this show, and then go from there.” As one potential example of the direction it could go, Grammer entertained the idea of Frasier reuniting with his son Frederick. “I think there’s certainly some distance to go with that. I think there’s a kernel of good thinking there—that the relationship becomes the Martin–Frasier relationship.” Quite stylish!
Just as he would want to return Niles, Daphne, and the rest of the Seattle-set crew to their old familiar places, Grammer wants to keep the format of the traditional multi-cam sitcom. “It’s a great way to live, it’s a great way to work,” said the actor of the classic method of shooting a TV comedy. “I would never walk away from that. I think it’s the best—the best fun, the most entertaining style of TV show. Its fall from grace for 20 years was basically due to reality television, and I think people have maybe played that card enough.” Though you’d think anyone claiming reality TV was running out of steam might end up with scrambled eggs all over his face, Grammer stood firm, adding that even if a reboot ended up somewhere other than network TV, he didn’t think the good doctor would be interested in using language other than that approved by the FCC. “I don’t think it’s in him to swear. I think ‘Oh my God!’ is as far as that goes.”
“Oh my god,” or “Oh, Good lord”?