Warning: SPOILERS for the Frasier revival’s first two episodes are ahead!
After nearly 20 years away, Frasier Crane is back in our lives, with Kelsey Grammer reprising his most well-known role in a revival airing exclusively to Paramount+ subscribers. Rather than taking place in Seattle like its same-named predecessor, the new Frasier sees its title character moving back to Boston, where viewers had previously seen him on Cheers. But will the Frasier revival ever bring back any Cheers characters to cameo at some point? The executive producer has addressed whether or not that’s in the cards.
While Grammer is joined by new faces in the main cast of Paramount+’s Frasier, it has been confirmed that Bebe Neuwirth and Peri Gilpin will respectively reprise Lilith Sternin and Roz Doyle later on in the season, with the former having also appeared in many Cheers episodes. While they appear to be the only familiar characters who will reunite with Frasier this season, EP Chris Harris certainly sounds game to bring in more Cheers and Frasier characters if the series continues, telling TVLine:
… [T]he 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.
Ahead of Frasier’s premiere, it was revealed that the revival would reference Cheers, and that turned out to be Frasier Crane telling Nicholas Lyndhurst’s Alan Cornwall and Toks Olagundoye’s Olivia in the first episode, titled “Good Father,” that when he previously lived in Boston, he “may have spent a little too much time at a certain bar.” It’s indirect, to be sure, but hey, it’s better than nothing! Fortunately, if the new Frasier keeps going, Chris Harris is more than ready to have its title character reunite with many more people from the Cheers and original Frasier days. Who knows, maybe the show could arrange to have Frasier even return to the Cheers bar so we can see how it looks nowadays, even if that won’t be his regular watering hole anymore.
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“Good Father,” saw Frasier Crane returning to Boston following his father Martin’s funeral to give a guest lecture at Harvard and spend some time with his son Freddy, played by Jack Cutmore-Scott. The two have had a strained relationship with ever since Freddy dropped out of Harvard and became a firefighter, and things only got worse when Freddy didn’t come to Martin’s funeral. By the end of the episode though, Frasier and Freddy are on slightly better terms, and the former decides to accept a teaching position at Harvard so he can live near his son. So now the odds of him running into someone like Ted Danson’s Sam Malone, Rhea Perlman’s Carla Tortelli and Woody Harrelson’s Woody Boyd have increased significantly.
Naturally we’ll let you know if any Cheers cameos are announced for Frasier, but first we have to wait and see if Paramount+ will renew the show for a second season. New episodes of the show premiere weekly on the streaming service, and read over our 2023 TV schedule to learn what shows are airing elsewhere. In addition to their availability on Paramount+, both Cheers and the original Frasier can also be streamed with a Hulu subscription.