Speaker 1: Little warning for our Pod Meats World listeners. This episode
Speaker 1: contains details of a horrific crime that involves not only violence,
Speaker 1: but sexual assault and intense grief. Please proceed with caution.
Speaker 1: One of the many lessons we have hosts have learned
Speaker 1: while making Pod Meets World is that you never really
Speaker 1: know what people are going through. We would drive to
Speaker 1: set every day ready to have fun. I would endlessly
Speaker 1: talk about boys, Writer would read a book he had
Speaker 1: stuffed into his oversized.
Speaker 2: Gene pockets, and Will would smoke.
Speaker 1: As kids, we just bopped around, laughing, care free, while
Speaker 1: our adult co workers around us doing their job, each
Speaker 1: hysterical and talented. We're experiencing difficult adult situations, and now,
Speaker 1: as middle aged human beings ourselves, we know that's not easy.
Speaker 1: And some of the most successful and funny actors of
Speaker 1: all time weren't exactly as ready for the spotlight in
Speaker 1: their personal lives as they were on screen. Matthew Perry,
Speaker 1: Chris Farley, and Carrie Fisher come to mind, and the
Speaker 1: new book Karen a Brother Remembers by sitcom legend Kelsey
Speaker 1: Grammer is another example of never really knowing what your
Speaker 1: favorite characters in movies and on TV could really be
Speaker 1: going through at home. This five time Emmy winner, who
Speaker 1: helped define modern comedy as Fraser Crane on Cheers and
Speaker 1: then his own show, Fraser, experienced tragedy at just twenty
Speaker 1: years old when his eighteen year old sister Karen, was
Speaker 1: raped and brutally murdered by men who had intended to
Speaker 1: rob the Red Lobster where she worked. She was kidnapped, assaulted,
Speaker 1: and then later stabbed by a group that ended up
Speaker 1: killing a handful of others before they were caught. Kelsey
Speaker 1: was soulmates with his sister, connected beyond the normal sibling relationship,
Speaker 1: and the way she was taken from him and his
Speaker 1: own conceived inability to save her still plagues him today.
Speaker 1: In his honest and brave writing, he finally faces the
Speaker 1: devastation and pain he feels, offering the reader a glimpse
Speaker 1: into not only his struggles, but his process of coping
Speaker 1: with tragedy. Because, in addition to Karen, Kelsey's father would
Speaker 1: be killed by a man in a racially motivated attack,
Speaker 1: his half brothers would die in a scuba diving accident,
Speaker 1: and his own daughter was slashed by a knife wielding
Speaker 1: man in a New York restaurant while she tried to
Speaker 1: pull the attacker off of another person. And yet Kelsey
Speaker 1: Grammar survived, fighting every day to get up and move forward,
Speaker 1: letting others enjoy his work on screen and on stage.
Speaker 1: So now we welcome to the podcast, a sitcom legend
Speaker 1: and a true survivor. It's Kelsey Grammar.
Speaker 3: Thank hello. That was quite nice, Danielle. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you for being here with us. So
Speaker 1: nice that you're here to share your and Karen's story.
Speaker 1: It means a great deal to us.
Speaker 3: I do appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 1: So the story of your sister is so tragic and
Speaker 1: yet beautiful with your ability as a vulnerable narrator. And
Speaker 1: I was wondering at Cheers or Frasier, did a lot
Speaker 1: of people know this story?
Speaker 3: No they didn't. Actually I didn't walk around talking about
Speaker 3: it a lot. You know, it's been with me, of course,
Speaker 3: you know since the day it happened, which is now
Speaker 3: it was fifty years this summer, I was actually thinking
Speaker 3: about a friend of an old friend of mine years
Speaker 3: ago who actually accused me of using it sometimes to
Speaker 3: try to score.
Speaker 4: It's because you weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was just weird. It was like, it's so
Speaker 3: funny that he brought it up. He said, well, Kelsey,
Speaker 3: when somebody asked you have sisters or brothers, you say, yeah,
Speaker 3: I had a sister, And then they asked you, and
Speaker 3: then somebody asked another question, how are they? What are
Speaker 3: they do? I said, well, actually she was killed, you know,
Speaker 3: And so it would come up naturally and I would
Speaker 3: never volunteer it. But I just suddenly thought what a
Speaker 3: strange friendship that was. I didn't wrote about it in my.
Speaker 5: Bo That's probably not a great friend.
Speaker 3: From somebody you call a friend, but it's okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can imagine, Yeah, it's been something you just
Speaker 1: abide with for a long time.
Speaker 3: And I never really actually there's a there's a great
Speaker 3: line ordinary human unhappiness, his life and its natural color,
Speaker 3: nothing to cavilove, and that's an audun line. But I
Speaker 3: always thought that. I thought, well, we don't any reason
Speaker 3: to let, you know, piss and moan about our lives.
Speaker 3: We don't have any real reason to complain about where
Speaker 3: we are. My purpose in writing the book came when
Speaker 3: I was kind of instructed through a medium and said, oh,
Speaker 3: your sister's here with me. She wants you to tell
Speaker 3: her story, and that was really kind of interesting. I thought, well,
Speaker 3: I wonder how that would go. So I sat down
Speaker 3: one day and I started writing, just to kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, do some sort of bullet points in my head.
Speaker 3: I thought, well, maybe I should give us a try.
Speaker 3: And about an hour later it had ten pages of
Speaker 3: stuff kind of jotted down, and I thought, oh, I
Speaker 3: guess I'm going to write a book. And that's that's
Speaker 3: what turned into Karen and I spent three years working
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 6: Basically, I'm so curious, having having read the book, what
Speaker 6: were the first ten pages that came out?
Speaker 3: Pretty much what you read the first ten pages.
Speaker 4: It was linear at the time, and it really became a.
Speaker 3: Kind of stream of consciousness exercise. And of course the
Speaker 3: style is stream of consciousness. But when I was twelve,
Speaker 3: you know, I read Portrait of the Artist as a
Speaker 3: young Man by James Joyce and I thought, boy, what
Speaker 3: a little crap. This is kind of harpooned byself. You know,
Speaker 3: we always become what we make fun of when when
Speaker 3: we were younger, you know, employee in that style, because
Speaker 3: it was so immediate, it was like, I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: working on another book now, And I just basically realized
Speaker 3: that I wanted to be like, you're having a conversation
Speaker 3: like you have, like we're sitting down for a coffee
Speaker 3: and maybe you know so it's several hundred pages, but
Speaker 3: still it's it's like, yeah, well we're sitting down, I'm
Speaker 3: going to tell you some.
Speaker 5: Stories, right well, I mean, for me, like what was
Speaker 5: so interesting about the book was how much of the
Speaker 5: book becomes or the journey of the book becomes the
Speaker 5: writing of the book, you know, I mean you're literally
Speaker 5: taking time where you're like, I'm not going to write
Speaker 5: for a little while.
Speaker 4: I need to, I need to take them some days off.
Speaker 5: And then you come back and say, I'm rereading what
Speaker 5: I wrote ten days ago and I'm picking up and
Speaker 5: I thought that was so interesting. Did you ever, I mean,
Speaker 5: how far into it were you like I have to
Speaker 5: finish this or were you ever were you still constantly
Speaker 5: like I might just put this in a drawer, and no.
Speaker 3: Once it began, I thought I have to finish to
Speaker 3: finish it out. Uh, what I found, what I found
Speaker 3: so engaging about it, and what was what I hope
Speaker 3: you know, we'll be shared with other people now that
Speaker 3: book's been out for about six months now, but no,
Speaker 3: maybe four. But I wanted it to be something that
Speaker 3: I discovered with the reader, and I think that I
Speaker 3: think that comes across. But I discovered things about time,
Speaker 3: and I mean, my my favorite metaphor ends up being
Speaker 3: that that carpenter's tool with the folding tape measure, the
Speaker 3: folding measure ring device, you know, the thing that suddenly
Speaker 3: it goes out to eight feet long or whatever, and
Speaker 3: then you fold it all in and say, it's just
Speaker 3: about this big, and that's all those marks and time
Speaker 3: just fold it in on each other and you can
Speaker 3: open any one of them and you're in that time. Yeah. Really,
Speaker 3: the organic kind of exercise of time in my life
Speaker 3: became completely different, completely quantum, I guess, is what you
Speaker 3: could say about it. And it was a wonderful thing
Speaker 3: for me to suddenly go to be transported from a
Speaker 3: memory of Karen when she was just a little girl
Speaker 3: to something I remembered about my own child, you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: three months ago. It was extraordinary.
Speaker 6: I'm so curious because so much of the book is
Speaker 6: about loss, but it's also at the same time about
Speaker 6: the people that were so important in your life and
Speaker 6: So with all the loss of the book covers, has
Speaker 6: writing the book brought any of those people back into
Speaker 6: your life?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, what's fun is a couple of the people
Speaker 3: who are still alive. Brad Keller, for instance, is one
Speaker 3: of my great great friends I went to the music
Speaker 3: camp together with when we were seventeen. Is still a pal,
Speaker 3: and that's been great. Some of the folks that I
Speaker 3: looked up, you know, that I'd known in the past,
Speaker 3: wanted to talk to me. Some didn't, so I got them.
Speaker 3: But what was most important actually was to realize, as
Speaker 3: I'd never realized before, what a great gift my grandparents
Speaker 3: gave us and to grow up in that, you know.
Speaker 3: I Mean we everybodys talking about privilege and all that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff these days, but I mean we really
Speaker 3: were privileged for those ten years. I mean, we were
Speaker 3: just kids, and they gave us safety and art and
Speaker 3: you know, exposure to a great world. And they fed us,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean, that is a privilege to live
Speaker 3: in a world where you get fed, you know, and
Speaker 3: looked after. And we were told, you know, stories about
Speaker 3: what it meant to be an American, and we were
Speaker 3: told what it meant to be like pioneers. And I
Speaker 3: mean because the family was related to connected to pioneers.
Speaker 3: My great grandfather across the country ten times on a horse.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just this kind of history is extraordinary,
Speaker 3: and they gave us that, they gave us a sense
Speaker 3: of where we belonged in history. That was a really
Speaker 3: great gift. And so I ended up being extraordinarily grateful
Speaker 3: to them and to my mom because my mom had
Speaker 3: the courage to kind of it didn't work got so
Speaker 3: well with my dad, but she said, well, I need
Speaker 3: to go back to my mom and dad, and I
Speaker 3: ended up with this amazing man who taught me as
Speaker 3: a boy. You know, that was a great, great gift. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 6: Well, that was one of the things that really stuck
Speaker 6: with me is the vision of planting the garden you're
Speaker 6: never going to get to see.
Speaker 4: So the fact that he.
Speaker 6: Right before he passed, moved the whole family to Florida
Speaker 6: because he knew you were going to have the better
Speaker 6: life down there and never got to be in the home.
Speaker 4: That was the plan.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 4: That really stuck with me.
Speaker 6: Where it is it's somebody it is planting the garden
Speaker 6: that you know that you're not going to get to
Speaker 6: sit under the shade of the tree, but you're still
Speaker 6: you're still doing it was really wonderful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if I don't remember now if
Speaker 3: I wrote about it in the book, but Gordon, when
Speaker 3: I was about fifteen, came to me in a dream, right,
Speaker 3: and I was I'd gone down some some weird sort
Speaker 3: of series of staircases into a like a late a
Speaker 3: late night brothel kind of place where I was having
Speaker 3: a beer and he walked in wearing some khaki shorts
Speaker 3: and you know then his socks pulled up to his
Speaker 3: calf like a Safari each shirt. The hell are you
Speaker 3: doing here? He said, Oh, well, I just had to
Speaker 3: get out. I was losing my mind. He left me
Speaker 3: with him, you know, he said, yeah, yeah, I forget
Speaker 3: you coulda hadle it by then. And so I got
Speaker 3: this kind of release of like, well, yeah, he knew
Speaker 3: he was. He was passing the baton to me, basically,
Speaker 3: I was. It was really fun to kind of have that.
Speaker 3: It's almost joyous closure with this vision of a man
Speaker 3: who I mean, he loomed large in my imagination, of course,
Speaker 3: you know, in his his service in World War two,
Speaker 3: and he was god for twenty eight months. You know,
Speaker 3: that's extraording what those people did and that he was
Speaker 3: part of it. I knew, and then I had the
Speaker 3: privilege to know him, you know, really well, it was
Speaker 3: it was a great gift to know Gordon anyway, that's yeah.
Speaker 4: I also sorry, I just have to say I felt
Speaker 4: very connected to Jill. Oh.
Speaker 6: I'm sitting here right now in Avon, Connecticut, in the
Speaker 6: town right next to West Hartford. Kidding, my mom born
Speaker 6: and raised in West Harford, and her parents worked at
Speaker 6: the ETNA and the Hartford So there's a chance my
Speaker 6: grandparents knew Jill's family. There's a there's very much a
Speaker 6: chance that happened. Yeah, So yeah, it was such a connection.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was really in love with her. It was interesting,
Speaker 3: was it was. It was need to rediscover that as well,
Speaker 3: and they kind of realized that it was real. You know,
Speaker 3: for a long time, I just sort of died, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, you dismissed certain experiences in your life as
Speaker 3: being all flippant or or you know, maybe maybe too
Speaker 3: superficial or whatever, but it really wasn't. I mean, we
Speaker 3: were we were two kids that actually we're trying our best,
Speaker 3: and I just couldn't quite do what she needed.
Speaker 4: The story of so much young love though, I mean
Speaker 4: really there.
Speaker 3: Was no I was going to be able to make
Speaker 3: it her at that point.
Speaker 1: Those things, well, one thing I noticed in the book
Speaker 1: was a real openness to something you have already touched
Speaker 1: on talking to mediums and those people who work in
Speaker 1: a little more of a supernatural realm, and maybe that
Speaker 1: you even encountered a ghost on this journey. Were you
Speaker 1: always a believer in these things? Or was was the
Speaker 1: where is how you got there? The need to speak
Speaker 1: to Karen?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I I was always kind of interested in this
Speaker 3: world of you know, what level are we on? What? What? What?
Speaker 3: What aspect of existence is like in current form and
Speaker 3: then in other places you know, or dimensions if you will.
Speaker 3: And what is it about the psychometry or any number
Speaker 3: of other what they call oracles or you know, a
Speaker 3: guidance devices or or mechanisms. Yeah, and so I produced
Speaker 3: a show twenty years ago called the Oracles, and it
Speaker 3: never got on the air, But we had readings with
Speaker 3: seven psychics, basically, and some of them were good, someone
Speaker 3: weren't so good. But one of them was this Gal
Speaker 3: Allison who we ended up making a show called Medium
Speaker 3: about her gifts and about her story, and she was
Speaker 3: pretty interesting. But there was another Gal Dolores, who was
Speaker 3: a psychometrist and she had hits. She you know, you
Speaker 3: start to learn the language of it. There's a they
Speaker 3: get hits, they get they have sittings, they have a sitter,
Speaker 3: someone that's there and they're the subject of a reading.
Speaker 3: Sometimes if they're if they're getting stuff that they don't
Speaker 3: know this person at all, and you know that's the case,
Speaker 3: and they're getting hits of more than sixty percent that
Speaker 3: are accurate about them, it's pretty phenomenal. You know, I
Speaker 3: don't know this person and yet I know these things
Speaker 3: about them as a result of some of the information
Speaker 3: I'm getting from wherever they're getting it. I don't have
Speaker 3: the gift. I discovered some gifts of inside. I guess
Speaker 3: because that's the kind of person I'm I'm empathetic. I
Speaker 3: guess as our way of living as an as an
Speaker 3: actress to kind of try to figure out what motivates people,
Speaker 3: why they do what they do, and so that was
Speaker 3: that's always been part of me. I can kind of
Speaker 3: see what motivations are for certain people that might you
Speaker 3: might not seem apparent to most. But so that's my gift,
Speaker 3: but their gift is really extraordinary. And like with Esther,
Speaker 3: when she first told me the thing, I mean, it
Speaker 3: was you know, almost cartoonish in my head because we
Speaker 3: were on the phone and she lives in England, and
Speaker 3: there really was that you know, there's a little rattle
Speaker 3: I heard, and I thought I heard some bones being
Speaker 3: thrown around where this goes. And then she pops out
Speaker 3: with that tell my story thing, and I thought, wow, okay,
Speaker 3: I believe that. And I've I've met others who who
Speaker 3: brought Karen by and you know, and got some input
Speaker 3: and others that I thought, well, that sounds a little
Speaker 3: derribative of what you'd just be able to read if
Speaker 3: you're interested. So but I do think it's a very
Speaker 3: interesting thing. And I've got some you know, fundamentalist friends
Speaker 3: or evangelical pals that you know say, oh, you know, Kelse,
Speaker 3: we can't really talk about this stuff, and right I
Speaker 3: respect that, because you know what, I do think it
Speaker 3: can muddy the waters. I mean, I do think you
Speaker 3: know your your life of if you're a devotee of Christianity,
Speaker 3: if you if you're following the Christian path, it might
Speaker 3: be wise not to invite in voices from some other place,
Speaker 3: some other plane. But I do think that, you know,
Speaker 3: in Revelation, you know, John Devine was actually channeling.
Speaker 2: So but you do.
Speaker 6: It's what That's the other thing that's so interesting is
Speaker 6: because at times you're talking about Buddha, at times you're
Speaker 6: talking about Valhalla. Yeah, I mean, there's it seems like
Speaker 6: you're kind of open to every spiritual path.
Speaker 3: Frank Yeah, absolutely, I think. Uh. I mean, they're they're
Speaker 3: man made, you know, and but they are they're they're
Speaker 3: taken from moments when man interfaced with the higher power,
Speaker 3: whatever that is. Wherever they're whatever, there are series of
Speaker 3: symbols and and uh and images are that the sort
Speaker 3: of resonate with them. Uh. It's still the same story.
Speaker 3: It's still our interaction with with God, with with the power,
Speaker 3: with our creator, something that is above us within us
Speaker 3: at the same time. And so there's different ways of
Speaker 3: expressing it. But I love the idea of voyeah.
Speaker 4: Me too, Yeah, me too as well. Yeah, same, so Yeah.
Speaker 6: One of the best quotes I heard was was God
Speaker 6: is the name that we give the blanket that we
Speaker 6: throw over the thing to give it shape. And I
Speaker 6: think there's something kind of interesting about that where it's
Speaker 6: you know, you got to you got to call it
Speaker 6: something right.
Speaker 3: Somebody years years ago. I think it was Theodore macaal
Speaker 3: as lecture in in my high school where he just
Speaker 3: said the word of jahweh or whatever basically just means
Speaker 3: that thing again that yeah, yeah, there is Yeah, there's
Speaker 3: that thing. Yeah, it just keeps coming up.
Speaker 2: That thing we can't quite describe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are a lot of times in the book
Speaker 1: where you mention that Karen is still with you, helping
Speaker 1: you in life and sharing her thoughts with you even
Speaker 1: while you were writing the book. And my husband also
Speaker 1: talks about this with his mother. He says, I can't
Speaker 1: explain it, but in times where something comes up and
Speaker 1: we're having a conversation, he goes, I know exactly what
Speaker 1: my mom would say, and he's sure it is like
Speaker 1: a direct placement of her her opinion into his brain
Speaker 1: from her. He's like, I just know it. I know
Speaker 1: for certain what she would say. Is that how it
Speaker 1: feels for you. What are some of the examples of
Speaker 1: Karen being with you and helping to guide you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really interesting. Of course it became more present.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was more aware of it as I
Speaker 3: wrote the book. Yeah, and then I realized that throughout
Speaker 3: my life with her, it's probably come up a few times.
Speaker 3: I mean, I remember I was sitting on a plane
Speaker 3: once years ago with a group of friends. It was
Speaker 3: like thirty years ago, and I was going to some advance,
Speaker 3: some upfront or whatever it was. And things were cool
Speaker 3: and we were drinking champagne and there were people all
Speaker 3: around and it was a real celebration. And a girl
Speaker 3: I was dating at the time said, you know, your
Speaker 3: sister's here, lovely ow. You know, maybe she is, so
Speaker 3: it's come up before I thought, he'll grab that phone.
Speaker 3: But in the descriptions of the events while writing the book,
Speaker 3: the sense of Karen around me, with me just became
Speaker 3: more apparent, you know, because I was accessing it. I
Speaker 3: was asking her to be there, and she was and
Speaker 3: it was wonderful, And it also released her in a
Speaker 3: way in some ways, you know, not necessarily feel like
Speaker 3: she had to be in the every day of it
Speaker 3: all all the time. But I still like her around.
Speaker 3: I still expect to see her when I'm done.
Speaker 6: Well, that was that was the thing that was one
Speaker 6: of the things that really struck me about how it
Speaker 6: was written, is it it almost seemed like a mirror
Speaker 6: of grief in that you have times where you're reading
Speaker 6: the book where everything's good and happy, and then all
Speaker 6: of a sudden, there's a letter from.
Speaker 3: The pear Board.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it's it's like it all comes rushing back
Speaker 6: right away, so you feel like you're able to take
Speaker 6: this breath, and then you're dragged under the water again,
Speaker 6: and there's something very does it Does it get easier
Speaker 6: as time goes on.
Speaker 3: No, it's really weird. It's just there. There's still that pang.
Speaker 3: The pang is just renewed. It just it just it's
Speaker 3: just as vibrant as the first time it happened. But
Speaker 3: what's weird is that it did seem like the first
Speaker 3: time the parole Board actually reached out to me. I
Speaker 3: guess there was a sort of a limit in terms
Speaker 3: of years as to how long that wouldn't happen. And
Speaker 3: then the period passed and the first letter came through,
Speaker 3: and I was with Kate at the time, so we've
Speaker 3: been together for fifteen years, and oh my goodness, I
Speaker 3: just I wept for days because it was like they
Speaker 3: just sent a knife through me. And they just said, oh,
Speaker 3: and this is happening. You need to do this, you
Speaker 3: need to now talk about And suddenly my whole the
Speaker 3: forty years that had passed before were gone, and I
Speaker 3: was still I was back as that twenty year old
Speaker 3: young man looking at his dead sister, and it was
Speaker 3: just a horrible, horrible thing. And I don't know, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know how to get around it, because yeah,
Speaker 3: people deserve justice, and yes, criminals who've done horrible things
Speaker 3: have a right to try to, you know, make amends
Speaker 3: and move on in life and stuff like that. I
Speaker 3: just there are some instances I think, I think that
Speaker 3: it's just not going to happen, but I believe in
Speaker 3: the process of it. But I mentioned it in the book.
Speaker 3: I think that's one of the parole people said to me.
Speaker 3: At one point. I said, you know, this is really
Speaker 3: cool stuff that you guys have to do to people,
Speaker 3: and all these innocent people who suffered have to suffer again.
Speaker 3: Why is that okay? And they said, well, it's it's
Speaker 3: not called the victim's justice system. It's called the criminal
Speaker 3: justice system.
Speaker 4: Yeah, jeezu, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I get it. I mean, you know, and so,
Speaker 3: and we have a lot of that going on now,
Speaker 3: you know, Los Angeles, some of the bigger cities. You know,
Speaker 3: we're lost in this repeat criminal stuff. The stuff is
Speaker 3: going on every day around us. You know, you just
Speaker 3: keep thinking, how is this possible? But I guess that
Speaker 3: our better angels are telling us to try to be
Speaker 3: you know, forgiving and give people second chances. But maybe
Speaker 3: maybe nine or ten or eleven chances is one too many.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you talked about how you know, time sort of
Speaker 5: is meaningless when you have these pangs and you have
Speaker 5: these emotional and there's a really incredible scene in the
Speaker 5: book where you are you're playing lairties I believe and yeah,
Speaker 5: and he's talking about his sister being dead and you
Speaker 5: have you know, you were playing the scene and then
Speaker 5: you had this incredible dog you're in real life, who
Speaker 5: knew that you weren't acting for a moment and came
Speaker 5: running from backstage or whatever came to you to try
Speaker 5: to make you feel better. And it was such a
Speaker 5: striking scene.
Speaker 3: It was so beautiful.
Speaker 5: And then I was also thinking about how, you know,
Speaker 5: you've done a lot of comedy and that that's primarily
Speaker 5: been you know, the bulk of your career.
Speaker 3: The money Maker.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I'm curious about how the grief that you
Speaker 5: do clearly just have access to on a moment's notice, Like,
Speaker 5: how has that has that been something that you've accessed
Speaker 5: as an actor or is it something that you've avoided
Speaker 5: as an actor and and moved away from intentionally?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Interesting, I don't I'm not afraid of it. I
Speaker 3: think it actually kind of fortifies comedy to know that
Speaker 3: there's a tragic side, you know, that's that there's that balance.
Speaker 3: I think Fraser was always capable of being quite emotional
Speaker 3: when it was important, you know. And it was like
Speaker 3: when he had a scene with Niles when he says,
Speaker 3: you know, that woman's never been part of this family
Speaker 3: blah blah blah blah blah. I mean, and that got
Speaker 3: very emotion of what I remember. There was a great
Speaker 3: moment between Martin and Fraser where the boys had always
Speaker 3: suspected that this one summer their dad was having an affair,
Speaker 3: and it turned out that it was their mom. It
Speaker 3: just felt like just like a page rip out of
Speaker 3: my own life, right, And then, uh, John and I
Speaker 3: both sat and thought, isn't it remarkable that we have
Speaker 3: these feelings about these two people that aren't really real,
Speaker 3: but they're made real by us. We give them their flesh,
Speaker 3: their their life, their atmosphere, their their their emotions, and boy,
Speaker 3: I just it's just I mean, I was crying my
Speaker 3: eyes out back then. It's about, you know, suddenly realizing
Speaker 3: that you shared a grief with your parent that you
Speaker 3: didn't ever know about before. It was an extraordinary thing,
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't really know my dad. I talked
Speaker 3: about that in the book. But having the experience I
Speaker 3: had with John, Having the experience I had with David
Speaker 3: uh as as my brother and my father were relationships
Speaker 3: I didn't have in life that I got to experience
Speaker 3: because of the acting. Wow, kind of a great gift,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean, that's and I feel like I
Speaker 3: started to understand what that could be like like certainly,
Speaker 3: I mean, probably more idealized than most. I mean, because
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, human beings. Who is disappointing it's
Speaker 3: our actual parents and then people we've known, I mean,
Speaker 3: might not be quite so perfect in their revelations as
Speaker 3: we are as actors, but or quite so willing to embrace,
Speaker 3: you know, the emotion. But I had a wonderful it
Speaker 3: was a wonderful gift to have a brother and a
Speaker 3: father that I'd never had a relationship with in my
Speaker 3: real life. That's cool.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's I have to read a quote because as
Speaker 6: an actor, it's just so stuck with me. You wrote,
Speaker 6: I'm quite willing to share this theory. I think it's simple.
Speaker 6: Shy people are afraid to speak the truth. Acting as
Speaker 6: a professional past time in which a person can tell
Speaker 6: the truth and not get in trouble.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and set early on.
Speaker 6: It's just it's really did. It just really resonated as
Speaker 6: I read that. It's very interesting because I've always thought
Speaker 6: that unless somebody really deals with the tragedy early in life,
Speaker 6: your childhood really kind of ends the day you realize
Speaker 6: your parents are people.
Speaker 3: Oh that's that's pretty interesting. Yeah, that's a pretty sad
Speaker 3: day that first that they're like, oh.
Speaker 4: No, you're not superheroes. There's something about that. It's very real.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, it's like, oh, it's kind
Speaker 4: of deposing.
Speaker 3: It's very deflating. Yeah, shocks. Yeah, we're all perfect and
Speaker 3: now that's just small people, just people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you flawed human beings. It can't be possible. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then hopefully you have enough time to forgive them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1: Of course, you have eight kids, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: feels like a totally different book you could write. You
Speaker 1: write just a book about having eight children. What did
Speaker 1: they know about their aunt Karen before you wrote the book?
Speaker 3: Interesting? Yeah, most, I've never really told them a lot
Speaker 3: about it when I started to write the book. The
Speaker 3: younger set, you know, this is this group that's now
Speaker 3: we just had our fourth one, so it just became
Speaker 3: maate kids. It was like three days ago.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, congratulation.
Speaker 3: Christopher, that's just joined the family.
Speaker 4: Welcome Christopher.
Speaker 3: Yeah, lovely, Yes, But so this younger group, you know,
Speaker 3: I've told him they can't read the book yet because
Speaker 3: some of the stuffs too brutal. Sure, they don't really
Speaker 3: need to be exposed to that yet. My eldest daughter
Speaker 3: of this cluster.
Speaker 2: Coming clusters, when you have you can section them off.
Speaker 6: However, you've got several gangs that.
Speaker 3: Faith my my, you know, my thirteen year old. You know,
Speaker 3: I've told her some of what happened, you know, and
Speaker 3: then said, you know, maybe in another year or two
Speaker 3: you can probably probably read the book and be able
Speaker 3: to handle it. It's it's pretty brutal. But she's a
Speaker 3: very sensitive kid too, so I do you know, I
Speaker 3: want to be careful about it some. But Gabriel a
Speaker 3: year old. I mentioned him in the book too, He's
Speaker 3: the one that's more inquisitive. He says, how do you
Speaker 3: feel about that? How does it make you feel? Does
Speaker 3: your do you want to kill the guy that killed
Speaker 3: your sister? Stuff like that. I said, well, that wouldn't
Speaker 3: be right, babe. I'm going to take you know more.
Speaker 3: Death doesn't necessarily make things right, you know. But he
Speaker 3: asks really really probing questions. It's it's his thing, it's
Speaker 3: what he does. He likes to find out what's going on.
Speaker 3: I think he's going to be, I know, some sort
Speaker 3: of weird genius side of what he'll choose in his life.
Speaker 3: But but he's definitely in it with his whole heart
Speaker 3: and with his whole head. And it's it's it's it's
Speaker 3: fun to answer questions from someone who is so thoroughly
Speaker 3: interested in the answer. Yeah, And I admire him as
Speaker 3: a person. I admire his so you know, his stick
Speaker 3: to his tenacity and turn in searching for the truth.
Speaker 3: He's a really interesting kid.
Speaker 6: They're all interesting, just curious because you touched on it
Speaker 6: how I mean, complex is the wrong obviously word to use,
Speaker 6: but because it was so much closer to the time.
Speaker 4: Of your sister's actual death.
Speaker 6: What what did you feel when her killer's sentence was
Speaker 6: commuted from death to life in prison?
Speaker 3: Right. I was sort of on the periphery of that decision,
Speaker 3: but I thought to myself, well, that's weird. These guys
Speaker 3: actually they received the death penalty. Yeah, and there were
Speaker 3: three of them at the time. Ah, And I just thought,
Speaker 3: what's going on? And it was it was actually just
Speaker 3: it was toward the end of the Carter administration and
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court of Colorado just did a blanket commutation
Speaker 3: of all death sentences because they were reviewing everything. And
Speaker 3: of course, since then, the death penalty doesn't exist in Colorado,
Speaker 3: but it the life without possibility of parole did not
Speaker 3: exist then as a possible sentence, and so what happened
Speaker 3: was they had to they had to immediately be placed
Speaker 3: into a regular kind of paroling situation, which was probably
Speaker 3: inappropriate for them, but they were the only three for
Speaker 3: those years, and then of course now there's just the
Speaker 3: one left.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: I know you read the police report for the first
Speaker 1: time for the book. How did you take care of
Speaker 1: your mental health while reading writing this book?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a really hard day. That's one of
Speaker 3: the places where in the book I say I'm going
Speaker 3: to be gone a while. Yeah, yeah, I'll check that
Speaker 3: again in a bit, and I did. I took a
Speaker 3: few weeks after the first insertion into that report, I mean.
Speaker 3: And then the most devastating thing about it was the
Speaker 3: was the lack of identity for Karen, was that she
Speaker 3: was just a thing, just a girl, a Jane Doe,
Speaker 3: a corpse, and the language reflected that, you know, ongoing investigation,
Speaker 3: ongoing investigation on going first couple of her pages, they
Speaker 3: had no idea what had happened or who she was,
Speaker 3: and to read that just felt so dehumanizing about my sister.
Speaker 3: You know it, just call me, well, that's that's Karen.
Speaker 3: Surely you know that, right. But they didn't.
Speaker 7: It's okay.
Speaker 3: They were doing their job and you know, it got done.
Speaker 3: I mean. And frankly, the police works fascinating to me
Speaker 3: in terms of you know, capital cases, I guess, but
Speaker 3: they didn't really. They had a stroke of luck when
Speaker 3: one of the guys was arrested in New Orleans, and
Speaker 3: he said, I know about the girl in Colorado. That's
Speaker 3: how it came up. And then a couple of days
Speaker 3: later they called me, So.
Speaker 1: Have you ever I'm sure the answer is yes. Have
Speaker 1: you ever thought about out what Karen would have done
Speaker 1: with the rest of her life?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, all the time. Yeah, I'm not sure what
Speaker 3: it would have been, but she was she was kind
Speaker 3: of a wild animal, you know. Really, she was really
Speaker 3: a fun person. But she loved everybody, and she loved animals,
Speaker 3: so I you know, I pictures it might have been
Speaker 3: on a farm somewhere. Her last her last year was
Speaker 3: pretty much spent around at least the last summer, but
Speaker 3: pore she went to Colorado was spent around animals on
Speaker 3: a friend of ours branchi and in upstate Florida in
Speaker 3: a little town called we Laka, which was it was
Speaker 3: pretty fun. It was great. And I visited her there
Speaker 3: once and there was a wonderful swimming pole. It was
Speaker 3: it was so weird. It was like it was like
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty feet deep and was ice cold water,
Speaker 3: clear blue, and it was only like twelve feet across,
Speaker 3: but you jump in it and go this is amazing experience.
Speaker 3: And she and a couple of her friends were there,
Speaker 3: and we all loved each other. I mean, her pals
Speaker 3: and my pals. We all, we all, you know, spent
Speaker 3: time together, and it was it was a great way
Speaker 3: to grow up. We were a close group of young people.
Speaker 3: And it's funny, Yeah, we didn't really see much of
Speaker 3: our parents, weren't really around anyway. But uh we were
Speaker 3: just a really nice group of kids exploring things, trying
Speaker 3: things together, listening to music, you know, led that book
Speaker 3: the Beatles, and yeah, James Taylor. It was. It was
Speaker 3: a wonderful world, wonderful time, and it was kind of
Speaker 3: an innocence and it did seem like it didn't seem
Speaker 3: like a lot of people were getting hurt too much.
Speaker 3: Every It was sort of accepting the fact that, oh,
Speaker 3: we're exploring things, we're we're together, we're liking you know,
Speaker 3: this this experience, we're growing up together, and uh, I
Speaker 3: I kind of miss it. I don't know what. I
Speaker 3: don't know what we would have done if we were
Speaker 3: just on iPhones and stuff. It seems seems to be
Speaker 3: more impersonal now. And we were always there was always
Speaker 3: a group of us together you know, yeah, just trying things.
Speaker 3: That was That was nice.
Speaker 1: You have been open for years and in the book
Speaker 1: about your own struggles with self medicating and some reckless behavior,
Speaker 1: no doubt connected to what you have faced. How did
Speaker 1: you stop that cycle?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting I did do. I did about six
Speaker 3: years kind of actively in the in the program, you know,
Speaker 3: an AA twelve step kind of thing. But I've actually
Speaker 3: turned more toward God after that, okay, and realized that, oh,
Speaker 3: that's probably the avenue for me, like your sense of
Speaker 3: faith and offensive sense of strength and connection to God.
Speaker 3: And one thing that one of the guys I knew,
Speaker 3: who was kind of an old timer and the AA
Speaker 3: had said, he said, well, you know, the cause of
Speaker 3: addiction is unresolved grief. M That really makes sense for me. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and in a lot of ways, I got to resolve it.
Speaker 3: And once that happened, you know, uh, it was pretty
Speaker 3: smooth sale. And I mean I still have a drink
Speaker 3: once in a while, and I enjoy a party with
Speaker 3: my friends and Christmas Eve sometimes I'll have you know,
Speaker 3: one toddy too many, but it's pretty but it lost
Speaker 3: its teeth to like stop me from living, you know,
Speaker 3: for a long time, I allowed myself to have it
Speaker 3: abrupt me, have it, have it stop me, you know,
Speaker 3: have it shift me away from the things I wanted
Speaker 3: to do. And that was that's that's the mistake you make.
Speaker 3: I mean, and I think, yeah, there's clearly there's clearly
Speaker 3: a component of it. There's a disease that's like you
Speaker 3: could do, I say, a functional disease. I suppose, But
Speaker 3: it's a disease you can get over, you know. I
Speaker 3: mean my son, my son, one of my sons has
Speaker 3: O c D. And I said, honey, it's okay to
Speaker 3: like have oct but don't let it have you. And
Speaker 3: it may be an oversimplification, but you can make that
Speaker 3: decision about things like that. Yeah, you don't have to
Speaker 3: let it have you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, I I mean, I hope my message about you know,
Speaker 3: alcoholism or addiction is an encouraging one because it needn't
Speaker 3: have you. You don't have to let it take that place
Speaker 3: in your life. It's pretty tempting, that's, you know. And
Speaker 3: there are moments when you think, oh, pole asture, do
Speaker 3: need that? But then it goes away.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that the same guy, It's same guy years ago,
Speaker 3: he said to me. He said, well, you know, eventually
Speaker 3: the natch you know, becomes a good thing. And then
Speaker 3: he said, and this whole thing one day at a time,
Speaker 3: he said, nonsense. You know, after a while, you know
Speaker 3: you don't have to think about one day at a time.
Speaker 3: He said, you know, it helps it first when you're
Speaker 3: kind of a newby to think, well, if if I
Speaker 3: can get through a day without drinking, that's at least something,
Speaker 3: you know, he says, Noah, yeah, eventually you just know
Speaker 3: you're not going to be going down that path. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's it. But that grief thing really helped, And hence
Speaker 3: the reason for the book in a lot of ways,
Speaker 3: was to offer people to a context for why you
Speaker 3: would live that way or why your grief would be overwhelming,
Speaker 3: and to see that you can actually move on and
Speaker 3: you can actually take it and have it incorporated into
Speaker 3: your life. So that the book was always meant to
Speaker 3: be a kind of not an admonishment, but but a
Speaker 3: kind of an encouragement to say to somebody, remember the
Speaker 3: joy as of course, remember is you know the word
Speaker 3: that I you know, really focus on, but that gift
Speaker 3: that those people gave you in your life, the thing
Speaker 3: you're missing need to be missing all the time. You know,
Speaker 3: you can reclaim that joy and and you can weep
Speaker 3: that it's lost, but it's not lost. You still have it.
Speaker 3: You still have it. It's up to you to go
Speaker 3: ahead and dive in there and open the page and say, Hi,
Speaker 3: I miss you, I love you.
Speaker 4: That's great.
Speaker 6: So speaking of joy, then I have to ask what
Speaker 6: meant more or to you? The greatest moment you've ever
Speaker 6: experienced as an actor?
Speaker 4: Or that day water skiing.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's only so many of those, you get right,
Speaker 3: that end the surfing day, the surf I disappeared through
Speaker 3: the wave. I just uh, those were still the defining
Speaker 3: moments of my understanding where I am in the universon
Speaker 3: where the universe is with me. I still have them,
Speaker 3: they're still in there. But yeah, to remember what was
Speaker 3: great about that that session with Esther, which was the
Speaker 3: water angel thing. Uh, I'd never seen it through Karen's eyes,
Speaker 3: and that was the gift that she gave me that day,
Speaker 3: was to see her vision of watching this boy in
Speaker 3: the water.
Speaker 4: You know, yeah, wow, amazing. Do you still ride a motorcycle?
Speaker 3: I do not as much? You know, my wife.
Speaker 4: We had eight I mean, well, but.
Speaker 3: I will get another one.
Speaker 6: I tell you the way you talked about your dog
Speaker 6: and the way you talked about your bike, just how
Speaker 6: important things were.
Speaker 3: They were absolutely like, you know, talismans of my life.
Speaker 3: Absolutely touch those. Yeah, that motorcycle, it was a great bike.
Speaker 3: I mean there was one time, and I think it's
Speaker 3: called the Texas Canyon. I was doing about one hundred
Speaker 3: and thirty miles an hour. Oh my god, and it
Speaker 3: was just heaven. There was nobody. There was nobody on
Speaker 3: the road. It was a beautiful highway. And uh, you know,
Speaker 3: there's this thing you do, but when you're going fast
Speaker 3: on a motorcycle, you know, it's like you understand where
Speaker 3: the center of gravity is right. And when you're really
Speaker 3: going fast and you go deep into a turn, you
Speaker 3: don't decelerate. You have to accelerate. You have to you
Speaker 3: have to crank it up a little bit. And then
Speaker 3: once you crank it just a bit, the bikes stands up,
Speaker 3: the bike finds its center again, and you just feel
Speaker 3: so safe and secure on it. I mean, it's insane,
Speaker 3: but it's not. It's just you have this the sense
Speaker 3: like I am completely rooted to the universe in this moment,
Speaker 3: with this man made machine that is part of me,
Speaker 3: that is part of the earth. It is one of
Speaker 3: those expressions of existence. I guess it just it just
Speaker 3: blows your mind and it's so wonderful. And you know
Speaker 3: you're going somewhere. I mean, we're doing one hundred and
Speaker 3: thirty miles an hour through you know, Savage country. You
Speaker 3: know they look like John Ford the landscapes, desert scapes
Speaker 3: up John Wayne movies. And I was going on, you know,
Speaker 3: co Cheese Valley or whatever. I was going, Man, this
Speaker 3: is fantastic.
Speaker 6: And something in the motorcycle maintenance exactly exactly what it was.
Speaker 3: It was that experience. And I mean, I'm an eternal
Speaker 3: juvenile when it comes down to that. It's just fantastic.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 1: In your long Hollywood career, you have been a producer
Speaker 1: multiple times.
Speaker 2: Have you ever thought of turning Karen's story into a movie?
Speaker 3: You know what, I haven't, but there are there were
Speaker 3: some people talking to us now about the possibility of it,
Speaker 3: and and you know, I'm giving it some thought. I'm
Speaker 3: giving it some thoughts.
Speaker 5: You're it.
Speaker 3: The important thing for me, and writing the book as well,
Speaker 3: was to to invite people into the joy that we'd
Speaker 3: had together because growing up was wonderful. Growing up together
Speaker 3: was wonderful. Karen and I together was it was a
Speaker 3: great thing. I was closer to her than any other
Speaker 3: human being in my entire life, and it just felt
Speaker 3: it just fell that way. And that story when when
Speaker 3: Estra said, you know, I said, looks like I just
Speaker 3: was writing and I realized, oh my god, she's the
Speaker 3: love of my life. And she said yes. And how
Speaker 3: fortunate that you guys were born into the same family. Hmm,
Speaker 3: you didn't have to spend your life looking for each other. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there you were. And she said, yes, you've lived many
Speaker 3: lives together. Because you know, this is when they start
Speaker 3: talking about I don't know if I buy all that stuff,
Speaker 3: what I kind of do? You know? I'm living in
Speaker 3: LA you know we got All's the guy that reads
Speaker 3: auras and angels and says, oh, yeah, you've got one
Speaker 3: right there. You're telling you right now. He goes like,
Speaker 3: is he talking to But he told me once he
Speaker 3: told me, he said, you've lived two thy four hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty five lives.
Speaker 4: Okay, they're busy, busy, and you.
Speaker 3: Know, whenever I go to an airport, I look at
Speaker 3: all those airplanes and I see you know a quantas
Speaker 3: or you know cathe or you know whatever emirates or whatever,
Speaker 3: And I think to myself, what I was? You know,
Speaker 3: have I actually lived that many lives? And I've been
Speaker 3: at all those places from from all those places. So
Speaker 3: there's this weird thing that resonates with me. You know,
Speaker 3: it probably resonates with you guys too. You think maybe
Speaker 3: I've been an adventurer of it. Yeah, I circumnavigate the
Speaker 3: globe once, if you still believe it's a globe, you know.
Speaker 3: So you know, I've got a whole bunch of.
Speaker 4: Science that.
Speaker 6: It would be a wonderful film, Danielle, that now I'm
Speaker 6: thinking about it as a film, it would be It
Speaker 6: would be a wonderful film to see.
Speaker 3: It would definitely be a sumptuous kind of revisiting of
Speaker 3: the seventies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm curious.
Speaker 6: I know your your sister would be difficult to answer,
Speaker 6: But who would you cast to play your grandfather?
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think of an actor that I was interesting.
Speaker 3: You know, that's a really good question. Was such a
Speaker 3: monumental guy? I mean I really looked up to him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you could tell you definitely could tell.
Speaker 3: I've known very few people like him who seemed to
Speaker 3: show up, you know, just as surely as the sun
Speaker 3: was going to rise that day, he was in it.
Speaker 3: And there that's a great question I'm going to have
Speaker 3: to get back to you on.
Speaker 4: I'm so curious because you touched on it a little
Speaker 4: bit in the book.
Speaker 6: But I'm the idea that right before he passed he
Speaker 6: actually opened up about the war and being at Guadalcanal.
Speaker 6: Do you think and you touched on a little bit,
Speaker 6: you said you weren't quite sure, But looking back.
Speaker 4: Do you think he knew he was sick?
Speaker 3: You know what, I kind of do, But I don't
Speaker 3: know if he was ready to acknowledge it right. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm not even sure if he actually got a proper diagnosis,
Speaker 3: because everybody seemed pretty pretty surprised when he checked in
Speaker 3: and he got the diagnosis that he was riddled with,
Speaker 3: you know, c and well everybody's what you know, and
Speaker 3: including him, So it's a I think he sensed that
Speaker 3: he was going But that night, when he opened up
Speaker 3: to me about what had happened to him, was the
Speaker 3: first time he spoke to me as a man. I
Speaker 3: think that was part of it. Yeah. I think part
Speaker 3: of what he was trying to negotiate with me, or
Speaker 3: at least kind of a massage in me, was that
Speaker 3: you're on a you're at the sort of precipice of
Speaker 3: real manhood, and tragedy will will visit you, and you
Speaker 3: will You need to know how to maintain your character
Speaker 3: in the face of what seems like the impossible. And
Speaker 3: I think maybe that's what that lesson was. And to
Speaker 3: understand that in his heart it had been broken. I
Speaker 3: think that he had lived with a broken heart for
Speaker 3: a long time and was still brave about it because
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, he lost his mom when he
Speaker 3: was little. His brother blamed him extraordinary things, and he
Speaker 3: was a man of great accomplishment Captain of the crew
Speaker 3: at Berkeley, which was pretty interesting. Wow. Yeah, he's a
Speaker 3: dynamic guy and he did his part, and he was
Speaker 3: kind of uh in terms of World War Two, he
Speaker 3: was he was you know, he knew we were manipulating
Speaker 3: in that war. He thought he knew that, you know,
Speaker 3: Roosevelt kind of made plans to fight a war well
Speaker 3: before we were in it, and he didn't like that,
Speaker 3: but he went anyway. I mean, he left for two
Speaker 3: and a half years and didn't didn't have his wife
Speaker 3: or his daughter with him. And yeah, they're just amazing people, amazing.
Speaker 1: I did want to ask a work related question. We
Speaker 1: have often mentioned the pilot of Cheers as an absolutely
Speaker 1: perfect episode of TV on this podcasts.
Speaker 2: Did you know immediately Cheers was something special?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean Fraser. When I joined Cheers, it
Speaker 3: was like, yeah, that was special too. I mean, I
Speaker 3: am actually writing about that right now. They're just too good,
Speaker 3: so discover it again. But but Fraser was one of
Speaker 3: those things where it just came right off the page
Speaker 3: at some point, this is this is good now. I've
Speaker 3: heard Jimmy Burrows talk about the pilot of Cheers and
Speaker 3: said the same thing. He said, you know, they'd written
Speaker 3: a script that was He said it was a script
Speaker 3: for radio. He says, you could have done that script
Speaker 3: success without ever seeing it. So I think that's that's
Speaker 3: a really good indication of what it could be. And
Speaker 3: I think I think Fraser had the same hallmark to it.
Speaker 3: We had some fun with it. We got we did
Speaker 3: a rehearsal of it once and got a standing ovation
Speaker 3: from a full house and thought, well, that's weird. We
Speaker 3: weren't even filming yet. And that's when David came up
Speaker 3: to me and said, say, he said, what do you
Speaker 3: what do you think this means? And I said, honestly,
Speaker 3: I think it means you're going to be able to
Speaker 3: buy a house. He said, what doesn't mean for you?
Speaker 3: And I said, I think I'm going to be able
Speaker 3: to buy two houses?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean that's I'm the resident television addict and historian.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 6: And I know that there were times where I won't
Speaker 6: get into names, but other cast members of Cheers would
Speaker 6: sit there at the table read and say, man, we
Speaker 6: really got.
Speaker 4: To get rid of the Fraser character.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well where you know, there were times it was
Speaker 6: very difficult and and and some people didn't even want
Speaker 6: the character around. To then become what Fraser became, it
Speaker 6: was truly amazing. Yeah, truly extraordiny.
Speaker 3: It's a reflex.
Speaker 6: And I have to ask, just because I'm such a fan,
Speaker 6: what is working with James Burrows?
Speaker 3: Like, Uh, Jimmy just knows his story, you know, he
Speaker 3: knows the story he wants to tell. He's I called
Speaker 3: a requisite disrespect he has. He has no particular respect
Speaker 3: for anything he's doing except that he just knows what
Speaker 3: he's doing, and it's just on an automatic pilot. You
Speaker 3: don't get there unless you've done it long enough. Right now,
Speaker 3: this is the this is the thing. You know. I'm
Speaker 3: all for it, trying to give people jobs and stuff,
Speaker 3: But we got the last decade or so, we're giving people,
Speaker 3: you know, directorships to people who've never directed, and you
Speaker 3: keep thinking, what the hell are we doing this for?
Speaker 3: And there was a whole bunch of reasons for it,
Speaker 3: but lack of preparation destroyed a lot of TV lately.
Speaker 3: Pople just weren't showing up. They didn't know how. Jimmy
Speaker 3: Burrow shows up. He always shows up. He always knows how.
Speaker 3: He sees what's wrong with the character, he sees what's
Speaker 3: wrong with the story. He can look at it in
Speaker 3: two seconds and say, well, you got to write that better,
Speaker 3: or you got to you don't need that. And and
Speaker 3: because he's earned the sort of respect that he has
Speaker 3: in the industry, people just take the note and do
Speaker 3: it right. It's very hard to find younger writers, especially
Speaker 3: these days, who will actually take a note. You know,
Speaker 3: and you think, you guys got to get the got
Speaker 3: to get the hang of comedy. Comedy is a collaborative effort. Man.
Speaker 3: It's not like you're sitting in some closet thinking about
Speaker 3: what's funny, and then there's a bunch of actors who
Speaker 3: don't know how to make it funny, and you think
Speaker 3: it's their fault. Some of the funniest, most talent people
Speaker 3: in the world sitting there doing their best and it
Speaker 3: ain't funny.
Speaker 6: Right, Maybe do you think sitcom is gone? Do you
Speaker 6: think the sitcom that we know and love is ever
Speaker 6: going to come back?
Speaker 3: I don't think so. Actually, I think I think it's
Speaker 3: being gradually sort of reintroduce. Now. We tried with the
Speaker 3: new Fraser, and you know, there was some resistance over
Speaker 3: Paramount Plus and they didn't quite know what to do that.
Speaker 3: I think they may have even devalued the project as
Speaker 3: a result. But we were close. We were close. I
Speaker 3: really liked the new show and I loved where it
Speaker 3: was going to go. But we haven't really done more
Speaker 3: than one season of it, right. We did twenty shows, right,
Speaker 3: so that would have been oh, hi, now we know.
Speaker 1: Who you are, right exactly.
Speaker 3: There's the show now, and now we get the next
Speaker 3: nine years, which is I mean the first year to
Speaker 3: figure all that stuff out and have people fall in
Speaker 3: love with the characters. Again, I thought we were well
Speaker 3: on our way, but they didn't know what to do
Speaker 3: with it. You know. What's happening though now behind the scenes,
Speaker 3: what I'm hearing is, you know, Amazon wants to put
Speaker 3: commercials on. They want to make programming maybe just once
Speaker 3: a week.
Speaker 4: They want to go back to network TV.
Speaker 3: So what a great idea. It's kind of ext but
Speaker 3: I mean, I know, I'm it is a wonderful medium.
Speaker 3: I didn't like sitcoms when I was a kid because
Speaker 3: I thought, well, it's not theater, it's not TV, so hey,
Speaker 3: you know, but it was a bit of a snob
Speaker 3: and a joke.
Speaker 4: So right understands.
Speaker 3: Now it's the most wonderful way to kind of relate
Speaker 3: to the audience. It's the indulge you he acknowledge the audience.
Speaker 3: You know they're there, that they laugh, you have you
Speaker 3: play to them. Uh, And that's what entertainment has always
Speaker 3: really been, you know. I at one point what happened
Speaker 3: to Fraser when Fraser was you know, but the first
Speaker 3: five years we were just swimming, and then they introduced
Speaker 3: this show called When the Animals Turn on their owners.
Speaker 4: When animals attack. Yeah, right, we're competing with taking.
Speaker 3: Kidding me? Who wants to sup crap like that? But
Speaker 3: you know when you put an alligator next to a
Speaker 3: guy and you see him chopping, you know you think, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: I sound like to see that the different world. I thought, well,
Speaker 3: how the hell did that happen? And then of course
Speaker 3: then we got to sex and the City and a
Speaker 3: couple of By then they started the single camera comedy,
Speaker 3: which of course they didn't know what to do to
Speaker 3: make you laugh, so they ended up putting calypso music.
Speaker 3: Whenever a laugh track would have been right, you know,
Speaker 3: they just said, they just said, well, here's your cue,
Speaker 3: this is your kye. Now you can laugh. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they talk about a funny thing happened on the way
Speaker 3: to the forum. In in previews that musical, it was dead.
Speaker 3: They thought, what the hell are we gonna do? It
Speaker 3: doesn't light up, it doesn't spark, it doesn't go. And
Speaker 3: then somebody said, well, let's tell them it's okay to laugh.
Speaker 3: And the first thing they wrote a song called comedy Tonight,
Speaker 3: and that's what opens it to night. And then suddenly
Speaker 3: it turned around and the show.
Speaker 7: Is a success.
Speaker 3: So you've got to give them permission to laugh, right,
Speaker 3: So you have to find some way to do it.
Speaker 3: You got to give an audience the wink of the
Speaker 3: eye somewhere and say, come on in, we're going to
Speaker 3: have some fun. Yeah. Yeah, so they traded out with
Speaker 3: you know, it's not canned laughter, it's actually recorded laughter
Speaker 3: from the actual event.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: Well, there were some shows where they would can't do it,
Speaker 3: you know years ago Dick Van Dyke show. Sure, no
Speaker 3: audience for that. Yeah, but it worked.
Speaker 1: My last question for you, if anyone is newly facing grief,
Speaker 1: like a listener has just stumbled into the death of
Speaker 1: a loved one, what is your advice to them, Considering
Speaker 1: all the work you've done to survive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to accept this now, you're not going
Speaker 3: to get over it. It's always going to be there.
Speaker 3: And let it be impossible, Let it be awful for
Speaker 3: a while. Yeah, because you can't. You can't have it
Speaker 3: go away. You just need to let it breathe and
Speaker 3: breathing you and miss that person and then slowly try
Speaker 3: to climb out and remember what was good between you
Speaker 3: and hope that you know there is justice in the world.
Speaker 3: There really isn't a lot of the time, right, But
Speaker 3: I mean, what's happened with it, you know, some of
Speaker 3: the highly publicized stuff that's going on lately. I mean,
Speaker 3: not of those poor people have lost their their loved ones,
Speaker 3: and those beautiful young women have been killed. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just awful, awful, and to die that way, well,
Speaker 3: it is, I guess, part of the human story, you know,
Speaker 3: But it's been going on for thousands and thousands of years.
Speaker 3: Tragic endings and horrible circumstances and people's disregard for one another.
Speaker 3: But through it all, you have a right to embrace
Speaker 3: the memory of that person and remember them, as I've
Speaker 3: said before, in the in the sumpture of their lives,
Speaker 3: and then the joy that they brought you. And it
Speaker 3: may not bring solace now, but in time, the memories
Speaker 3: of those people, that first smile you had, the first
Speaker 3: the first kiss they gave you, the first hug you felt,
Speaker 3: the first time you wept for them because they were
Speaker 3: in pain, whatever, all those things are precious gifts about
Speaker 3: what means in life, what means eventually everything to you
Speaker 3: in life. Those are the only things that actually mean anything. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that is that connection and someone took it away, and
Speaker 3: then you have a right to actually be upset about it.
Speaker 3: Then you have a right to expect justice. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't think you can actually go meet it out yourself.
Speaker 3: I mean, although you know, for a long time I thought, well,
Speaker 3: I'd go kill those guys if I could, right, But
Speaker 3: you just don't let them. Don't let that memory be
Speaker 3: sold by the way they died.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The book is called Karen a Brother Remembers by the
Speaker 1: incredible Kelsey Grammar. It is available everywhere, and you should
Speaker 1: be so proud that you were able to share her
Speaker 1: story and yours with all of us. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for being here with us today.
Speaker 3: Good pleasure. Good to see you guys.
Speaker 1: Good to see you.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you, thank you, Thank you too.
Speaker 7: Bye bye.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: His ability to go from telling such a funny being
Speaker 1: so funny and telling a great story and then just
Speaker 1: within seconds tapping into raw emotion is just unparalleled.
Speaker 6: Well, he's a genius. I mean, he's an actual genius.
Speaker 6: And that's when you read the book. One of the
Speaker 6: first things that happens to him, which is just so insane,
Speaker 6: is he's.
Speaker 8: Kicked out of Juilliard. Yeah, so it's like it's like,
Speaker 8: who the did you keep? I'd love to know, because
Speaker 8: I mean, seriously, he's you see it just in a
Speaker 8: conversation with him, but when you when you watch his work, Uh,
Speaker 8: it's insane.
Speaker 4: There's a there. He reminds me a bit of.
Speaker 6: Bill Daniels or you know, in that there's this this
Speaker 6: gravitas to him even as he's.
Speaker 4: Just sitting there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and and he can make a sitcom Shakespearean and
Speaker 6: there's something wonderful about that.
Speaker 4: And he's yeah, he's a living legend. I mean he
Speaker 4: really is.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he's so open, you know.
Speaker 5: And it's about actors that I always find so is
Speaker 5: that the emotions are right there, just teeming somewhere right
Speaker 5: under this. And it's like that, you know, because you
Speaker 5: can easily think of her actors as fakers or people
Speaker 5: who you know, But like he said, it's actually being
Speaker 5: able to tell the truth. It's actually just always knowing
Speaker 5: that it's just going to flow out of you, you know.
Speaker 5: And that's why when he said he wrote the book
Speaker 5: as a stream of consciousness, is like right, because you've
Speaker 5: been training all your life for a for things to
Speaker 5: flow out of you, for the words to come out
Speaker 5: for the you know, and so that accessibility is just
Speaker 5: it's so powerful, and you know, you can see like
Speaker 5: he just we start talking about a certain subject, he's
Speaker 5: going to start crying.
Speaker 3: He's going to let it happen.
Speaker 5: He's going to let it come through, and then you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's an amazing thing to see.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, if his goal with the book is
Speaker 6: to introduce you to a person that by the end
Speaker 6: you feel like you know, then he did it. I mean,
Speaker 6: you do you feel like you know this girl who
Speaker 6: was taken when she was nineteen in a horrible way.
Speaker 6: And while you do know all that about her, you
Speaker 6: also know the kind of free spirit she was and
Speaker 6: the guy she was dating and the life she was leading,
Speaker 6: and you know, going to this place and going to
Speaker 6: that place and living here and living there.
Speaker 4: That's one of the things about the two of them.
Speaker 6: They were total had total wanderlust. Both of them, you
Speaker 6: could tell, just wanted to travel and see the world.
Speaker 6: He keeps talking about like, oh, and then I drove
Speaker 6: to San Diego again from Florida, and then I drove back,
Speaker 6: and then I drove to Texas and then I drove
Speaker 6: It's like they're not even flying to these places. They're
Speaker 6: hopping our motorcycles, they're hopping in cars, and they're experiencing
Speaker 6: the trip, the journey for them.
Speaker 1: And even when he talked about past lives and he
Speaker 1: talked about being on airplanes and like, I've been to
Speaker 1: all these places, I've done all you know, I've circumnavigated
Speaker 1: the globe.
Speaker 6: Like, yeah, yeah, it's yeah, really incredible. That might might
Speaker 6: be my favorite conversation we've had with anybody. And we've
Speaker 6: had some, we've had some great ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really great. I'm so glad he came and talked
Speaker 1: to us about it. Thank you all for joining us
Speaker 1: for this episode of Pod Meets World. As always, you
Speaker 1: can follow us on Instagram pod Meets World Show. You
Speaker 1: can send us your emails pod meets World Show at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com.
Speaker 4: And we've got March Hug the people you love.
Speaker 1: March pod meets Worldshow dot com will send us out.
Speaker 4: We love you all, pod dismissed.
Speaker 6: Podmeets World is n iHeart podcast producer and hosted by
Speaker 6: Danielle Fischel, Wilfredell and Ryder Strong Executive producers, Jensen Carp
Speaker 6: and Amy Sugarman, Executive in charge of production Danielle Romo,
Speaker 6: producer and editor, Tara Sudbaksh producer, Maddy.
Speaker 4: Moore, engineer and Boy Meets World superfan Easton Allen.
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