Don’t Call ‘Frasier’ a Reboot, Say Creators: “This Is His Third Act”

Thirty years ago, the series Frasier opened with elitist Dr. Frasier Crane recanting why he made his way from Boston to Seattle as a divorcé who had been duped by his equally snobbish brother into caring for their cantankerous father. The series would run for 11 seasons, win 37 Emmys and end as being recognized as one of the best sitcoms of all time. The 2004 finale was called “a happy ending for all,” so what would be left to say in 2023? Much more, according to Joe Cristalli and Chris Harris, the co-creators and showrunners behind the new series starring Kelsey Grammer on Paramount+. But first audiences must remove the idea it’s a revival. “I just don’t think it is a reboot because really, Frasier was a spinoff of Cheers. This is kind of just a spinoff of Frasier that we’re calling Frasier,” says Joe Cristalli. “This is his third act. Frasier going to a new place with all new characters in an all-new setting.”

When the series starts streaming Oct. 12, Dr. Crane (Grammer) returns to Boston for an extended layover and unannounced visit to his estranged son Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), who’s skipped his Harvard academics for a less-illustrious career as a firefighter. As he tries making amends, the gap between them widens. A conversation with an old Oxford buddy and fellow psychiatrist Alan Cornwall (Nicholas Lyndhurst) led him to the truth he’s been avoiding: He needs a new connection with son. The evening Crane is prepared to have “a deep dive about their relationship,” the dinner unexpectedly welcomes Cornwall, Freddy’s friend/roommate Eve (Jess Salgueiro); his nephew David (Anders Keith), Daphne and Nile’s son; and Harvard psychiatry department head Olivia Finch (Toks Olagundoye), who’s overtly trying to convince Crane to join the Ivy League as a lecturer. Before the night is over, Crane says yes to Boston, Harvard and being a better father to Freddy. Frasier’s fresh start begins.

Although Crane is back in Beantown, he will not be visiting a bar where everyone knows his name. Co-creators Cristalli and Harris talk to THR below about why there’s next to nothing of the original that will appear in the new series. But there’s one blast from the past they will always welcome.

Frasier‘s series finale aired in May 2004. How did you two get on Kelsey Grammar’s radar?

Joe Cristalli: Years after it ended, I started a Twitter feed called Frasier For Hire, which my joke was I want to get hired on Frasier. I would type up Frasier jokes and puns. And I did it for three years and nobody really cared. It wasn’t a very big following — I had like 2,000 followers. It was mostly friends of family. I’ve seen every episode a million times. I wasn’t doing just the Twitter as a parody. I was a fan. I thought it’d be fun.

But then Kelsey came out in the news and said he wants to do a revival of the show. I sent that Twitter feed to my agent and she was like, “Okay.” She sent it to Grammnet [his producers] and they met with me. At the time, I was a staff writer on Life in Pieces, or maybe a story editor. I went and met with them, and before I even got back to my car, I had an email from one of the guys at Grammnet saying, “Yeah, we can’t give you Frasier. This is a big deal. You’re funny. You’re clearly a fan.”

My agent was like, “Yeah, well, they’re not going to do it with you, but do you know anybody that’s done this a while and knows what they’re doing?” So I called Chris.

Chris Harris: Bring in the old guy. Yeah. So yeah, in the buddy movie about us. Yeah, I’m played by Clint Eastwood.

Cristalli: I’m Michael Cera. He’s Clint Eastwood. (Laughs.) But it wasn’t like I was doing all the work and Chris was just sitting there for clout. We wrote the pitch together, we wrote the pilot together and then Kelsey heard, I don’t know, 30 pitches, and we were one he heard. For a long time, it was just like, “Oh God, I hope he picks us.” Then a couple of years went by and he picked us, a couple more years went by the show finally started getting up.

Joe, you didn’t watch it when it was on air. You watched it in syndication, correct?

Cristalli: Yeah, it was a little bit before my time. So I really got into it in college. But once I got into it, I was just like — I’ve seen probably every episode like 10 times, which is sad and pathetic, but I just have. It’s just my favorite show of all time. A friend of mine, a writer friend, said, “You’ve manifested this. You could have manifested anything and you chose this? This is what you picked. You could have done some good in the world.” But, here we are.

Chris, besides Joe tapping you in to do this, were you a super fan as well?

Harris: I was not a super fan. In fact, Joe makes fun of me because there are probably a few episodes that have still slipped through my fingers. But I always loved the show and the character. I grew up watching Cheers as a teenager. I remember Kelsey’s character being introduced and watching that, and we were watching a couple old Cheers in the room, and at one point I was able to remember the joke that Kelsey enters with just by suddenly seeing it.

My fandom is longer, but not quite as deep as Joe’s. But when he brought it to me, as we started talking about it, it was so fun to inhabit that world. Both Joe and I have worked on lots of half hour shows, lots of single cams, lots of multi-cams, some that we’re incredibly proud of and some that we’re less proud of. Being able to work with these crisp characters tell these smart jokes, it was even sitting in my office before we’d even met Kelsey and it just felt warm. It felt so wonderful to dive back into that world and that style.

In the new series, what are you both grounding Frasier in as he returns to the screen?

Harris: He’s had in the intervening years, almost two decades, a lot of success. As we find out in the pilot, and as we explore in the first few episodes, he’s had a live daytime show that did very well. He’s not wanting for money. So he’s looking for that next chapter of his life. What he comes to realize is: This is a time to give back. This is a time to maybe do a little bit of good, maybe correct some of the things that he realizes he could have done better in life. He’s a little bit more contemplative, I would say, than at the beginning of the original Frasier and through most of it, a little more comfortable with who he is, a little more confident, a little more laid back. The top button is unbuttoned now, but he also recognizes that he has some unresolved business, especially with his son Freddy.

It’s been interesting to explore that time of life. I would say that’s a big difference between the original Frasier and this one. Hopefully it will feel like a natural progression, instead of picking up after 20 years and everyone is exactly the same person.

Cristalli: What’s nice with Kelsey as he is, or the character Frasier rather, is he’s comfortable, but he can still get triggered and get real uppity real fast. He’s still got the anxiety. We’ve toned it down a little bit, but it still pops through. And when it does, it’s just a light bulb.

Harris: Yeah, he’s a little different. He’s a little different, not a lot different.

Cristalli: Mostly the same, just different.

The show ended on a great run. But with this talk of coming back and looking at some of the old characters returning, David Hyde Pierce went on record by saying he wouldn’t return because this revival is a chance to revisit the new world of Frasier. Why did Kelsey feel that his character still needed to come back? What was left unsaid?

Harris: He was actually very specific about that and making sure that this wasn’t just going to be, let’s do the same things that we did before in the same place with the same people. He was adamant. In fact, when he talks about it, he talks about, that’s why he waited for quite a while before bringing Frasier back. He wanted to make sure that the character had something to say, and he wanted to make sure that there was more to tell about the character itself.

He always, even when we were just pitching, knew that this was always going to be about Freddy the same way the original Frasier started with Frasier as son to his father. Now he’s father to the son. That’s really what this new version is bringing to us, and that’s what this next chapter of Frasier’s life is about: Is this one unresolved issue, which is that even though he thought he had a good relationship with his son, it was never close. As he finds out in the first episode, it was not quite as solid and not quite as strong as he had led himself to believe.

How important was it to have James Burrows, who directed 32 episodes from 1993-97, come back and direct the first two episodes?

Harris: Obviously, he’s the master. There’s no one close. We wanted to make sure that we had the right amount of connection from the past show to the current. We have Kelsey, we have Frasier himself, and we hope that the tone and the feel of the show will be familiar and cozy to people. But we did want to make sure that we had as many people as possible, and Jimmy was such a key part of the original that we were delighted when he agreed to join on.

John Mahoney, who played Frasier’s dad, passed away in 2018. In the first episode of the new series, there’s tribute to him. Talk about the approach to this storyline.

Cristalli: Since we’ve been working on this script, the show for whatever, five years, however long it’s been, I feel like the one constant was always going to be that scene where Frasier and Freddy really connect over how great of a guy that Freddy’s Grandpa, Frasier’s dad was, and how Frasier really always wanted to be like his dad. And maybe never quite was there with his son in all the years we saw him. He’s just trying to start that up again. Trying to be the guy Martin was now.

Especially being on set for it was just incredibly emotional. I can’t speak for Jack, but for Kelsey, I don’t even know if any of that was acting, that was all raw, visceral emotion because of how much he really loves, loved John Mahoney and hearing him talk about John and he wanted the whole pilot to feel like it was about John, the whole thing. Martin should be in the background of everything, and we even named the bar Mahoney’s just so we have him in every episode. I think he’s going to be throughout however many seasons we’re lucky enough to have, if we keep going, I think the idea of Martin is going to play a big role going forward.

When did you guys start filming this? It seems to be you guys got it in right before the writers strike happened.

Harris: We knew that the strike was a possibility. We did a little racing to make sure that we could shoot our full season before the strike started. We didn’t quite make it the last episode, which shot the day after the strike started. None of the writers were there. We’d set it up as much as we could and we left it in the hands of everyone else. That’s the last episode.

During its 11-season run, there wasn’t a lot of talk about diversity then. But here, how are you going to address that and making sure that the series and cast is more inclusive?

Cristalli: Since we weren’t a part of that one, it was just a different time back then. We can’t really speak to what they did. But I know for us, our writer’s room, I don’t have it in front of me. But I think it was a 50/50 split on diversity. The cast, we weren’t specifically going out looking for diverse actors, but Toks and Jess also blew us out of the water when they came in. It wasn’t really a question of whether or not we’re going to hire them. I don’t know that that even played a huge factor. It just feels like the world we’re in now, this is what Frasier’s orbit would look like. Not that it wouldn’t have looked like that back then either. But now I think we can highlight this is the world.

All of these people feel, to me, at least, none of these characters feel wedged in because we’re trying to check a diversity box. This feels like this is the very complete full world that we’ve just created for Frasier now. It also helps that all the actors are brilliant and extremely funny, just knock our socks off every week. I mean, also, all these parts just keep growing and evolving because of how much these actors are bringing to the table. What started as the Frasier and Freddy Show, it’s really a big ensemble cast now that’s just all getting giant laughs and hitting home runs every time they step on screen.

On this season of And Just Like That, Kim Cattrall, who played audience fave Samantha, came back for 30 glorious seconds. Do you hope David Hyde Pierce will make a special appearance?

Harris: We’d love to have him on. Whenever he’s ready, the door’s open because we’d be as excited as anyone else watching the show to bring him back because he’s a legend, and his banter with his onscreen brother is unparalleled. It’s fantastic. Anytime.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

Frasier releases new episodes Thursdays on Paramount+.