Fans waiting for an on-screen cast reunion from the long-running TV series “Cheers” shouldn’t hold their collective breath. During a cast reunion of the NBC series at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, series co-creator and director James Burrows was resistant to a Cheers resurrection. Burrows said, “It’s so special now, I don’t know why you would even tamper with it.”
Ted Danson, who played womanizing bar owner Sam Malone, said he wouldn’t mind revisiting the characters–“maybe when we’re 70.” Danson appeared at the reunion Saturday with Kelsey Grammer, George Wendt, Woody Harrelson, Rhea Perlman and John Ratzenberger.
Among insider tidbits the cast gave during the reunion were:
– Characters played by Wendt, Ratzenberger and Grammer were not supposed to last more than a few episodes;
– The Sam character was originally a football player until Burrows casted Danson, who looked like a baseball player.
– Bringing Harrelson on as a dim-witted young bartender was an attempt to keep some of the youthful fans of Michael J. Fox, whose show “Family Ties” was a lead-in for “Cheers” on Thursday nights.
“Cheers,” which ran 11 years, bowed out in 1993, garnering 26 Emmy Awards. About the cast members’ infamous ’93 appearance on the “Tonight” show after the last episode, when most of them appeared to be drunk, Wendt commented, “It wasn’t a great way to go out.”