Ted Danson Apologizes to Kelsey Grammer for Arguing During ‘Cheers’

Ted Danson is apologizing to Kelsey Grammer for an argument they had on the set of Cheers.

Danson, 76, issued his mea culpa during the Wednesday, October 23, episode of his SiriusXM podcast “Where Everybody Knows Your Name,” on which Grammer, 69, appeared.

“I feel like I got stuck a little bit with you during the Cheers years,” Danson told Grammer. “I have a memory of getting angry at you once.”

“Yeah, you came and told me that one day,” Grammer replied.

“And it’s stuck in both of our memories,” Danson said. “But I feel like, f—, I don’t know. I missed out on the last 30 years of Kelsey Grammer and I feel like it’s my bad, my doing, and I almost feel like apologizing to you.”

Danson added, “I really do apologize.”

Grammer then recalled a time that Danson “said something wonderful” to him that he has since quoted to other people. 

“When I turned 40, you came up and you said, ‘You know what it means, don’t you? Now that you’re 40, it means you’re finally worth having a conversation with,’” the actor quoted Danson as telling him on the set of the beloved sitcom.

“That was f—ing brilliant,” he told Danson. “I always loved that. … And I’ve repeated it. And my love for you has always been as easy as the day. You know, as easy as the sunrise.”

Cheers aired on NBC from 1983 to 1993, with Danson playing bartender Sam Malone and Grammer stealing scenes as Frasier Crane, a psychiatrist and regular at Malone’s bar in Boston. Danson won two Emmy Awards for his role and then went on to star in TV’s Damages and The Good Place.

When Cheers ended, Grammer reprised his character in NBC’s Frasier, earning four Emmys during the show’s 11-year run. Last year, he revived Frasier on Paramount’s streaming service. Season two premiered in September.

“You can go off in different directions, you can have different lives,” Grammer mused, “but that bond, that love of making something really funny and really good and cracking each other up and going through life and still showing up — you know, like [Cheers] director Jimmy [Burrows] said, ‘I don’t care what you crazy people do during the week. Just show up on shoot night and be funny.’”

Danson called Burrows, 83, “like my daddy in show business. Really, probably all of ours to some extent.”

In August, Grammer name-dropped his long-running alter ego while sharing 25 personal facts about himself with Us Weekly. 

“One thing I’ve learned about myself from portraying Dr. Frasier Crane is that I’m not as weird as he is,” he told Us, listing one fact.

Another: “My favorite scene in Cheers was when Frasier had been arrested for being too rowdy at a hockey game, and I walked in and said, ‘Damn me to a junior college for saying it, but I was enjoying myself.’”