Kelsey Grammer looks like a motherfucker with some dark secrets

Saw this dude in a local (suburban!) restaurant a couple of months ago, dining with a blonde and some other dude. He seemed happy and healthy, and AFAICT, I was the only one in the place who recognized him. Aside from the chef.

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/8386/frasier.gif

i am actually kinda psyched for 'BOSS', incidentally. the trailer did not look so great but i think it has enough just 'elements i enjoy' to make me stick with it. it got renewed, already, also.

this might be the best pilot ive ever seen. gets increasingly implausible / grotesque in the last third, but i dont mind tbh.

From ‘Frasier’ to Filthy
Kelsey Grammer embraces his dark side as a seedy Chicago mayor. How much drama can he handle?

Kelsey Grammer is talking, of all things, about dismembered ears. Never mind whose ears they were; it’s what Grammer’s latest TV iteration does with them that counts. With cool confidence, the mighty mayor of Chicago he plays on his new TV series, Boss, shoves the pair down his garbage disposal and then casually mentions to his wife that they need a plumber.

Ruthless and twisted? Sure. But this is the kind of role the comedy giant has coveted for a decade. The scene, which comes early in the new Starz show (premiering Oct. 21 at 10 p.m.), leaves no room for conjecture about who his character, Mayor Tom Kane, is as a human being or a leader. He also stomps around with rage, shouts at his enemies, and is impenetrable to his underlings. As a man who has overcome formidable personal demons himself, Grammer says he is careful not to let Kane (seen below with his wife, played by Connie Nielsen) bleed into his psyche.

“I’m not one of those guys that draws on his personal experiences to fill a character,” Grammer says during a recent interview at Casa del Mar in Santa Monica, Calif. “I kind of just let my imagination grasp what it would feel like and then try to play it. I do worry, though, sometimes, like when I played Macbeth [on Broadway], because he’s so dark that it can affect your personal life.”

Just in case, before Grammer filmed the pivotal kitchen scene in the first episode, he stopped and “prayed a little bit.” After admitting that, he bursts out laughing and adds, “Of course, it’s always a little fun, too.”

As you might expect, the man who played Frasier Crane for 20 years enjoys a good laugh, and his is full and robust. But Grammer possesses a profundity that departs widely from his TV-sitcom persona and is in step with a human being who has faced several life-changing traumas. By the time he turned 25, Grammer had lost his estranged father to murder; his younger sister to rape and murder; and his two half-brothers to an accidental drowning. Turbulence followed him well into adulthood and middle age, even as he hit career gold with Cheers and its spinoff Frasier. Grammer, now a recovering cocaine addict and alcoholic, was arrested twice in the ’80s and ’90s for possession and drunken driving. At 56, he’s been married four times and has four children.

“Usually what f--ks up somebody or messes them up is enough for them,” Grammer says. “Everybody’s got their things that shape them, shift them, or turn them one way or another. And I had plenty of mine.”

In 2008 a heart attack shook his personal and professional worlds. The combination of the stress of a failed TV show (Fox’s comedy Back to You) and marital problems had taxed his system, he says. As he recovered, Grammer assessed the rest of his life, which led to the revelation that he no longer wanted to be married to his third wife, Camille Grammer, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star and mother of his two young children. Their divorce and subsequent custody fight has kept the Grammer family in the tabloids for more than a year, as Camille learned of Grammer’s wishes and new relationship while filming her Bravo TV show.

“I realized that for the years we were together, it was functioning, it worked, but there was something missing. I realized it was not going to change after my heart attack,” says Grammer, who married Kayte Walsh last year, a couple of weeks after his divorce was final. “I stayed another two years, but I realized at that point that it wasn’t the last story I wanted to tell with my life. It just took me some courage to finally get the gumption up enough to make a move and change things.”

A sense of honesty also attracted Grammer to his new role. In playing the power-addicted Chicago mayor who learns he is dying from a degenerative brain disease, Grammer says he had to shut off all self-awareness. The opening scene of the series focuses entirely on Mayor Kane as he receives the devastating news from a doctor who monotonously runs down the litany of symptoms. Designed by creator and executive producer Farhad Safinia to erase all traces of Frasier Crane from the minds of viewers, the scene elicits a stirring performance by Grammer.

“It’s the first time I’m not really concerned about how I look when I do it,” Grammer says. “I hate it when actors start talking about their emotions and their equipment like we know the answers to all the world’s problems. This is just my job, and this job asked that I not watch myself. I never borrow from my personal life to perform. What happens if everything is good and things are firing on all the right cylinders, my personal life will just come along for the ride ... But if you can’t separate yourself from your character, then you’re probably crazy.”

This, from the man who readily admits that Frasier Crane is not completely gone.

“I’m still that way around the house,” he says, laughing. “There are times when my delivery to the dogs reminds me of Frasier.” He looks down at the floor, imagining he’s speaking to his pups: “‘Oh, really? Did we have to do that today?’ I’m still him.”

oh god yeah this was great, can we give it its own thread?
martin donovan!

SSSSSSSSSSSSPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPOOIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~also the sex scene was v good also

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okay i did this, BOSS, w/kelsey grammer, feat. martin donovan
if it's just me + ☆ in there then i promise to play one side of a measured, weekly post-ep discussion

i was almost unaware starz still existed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/magazine/questions-for-kelsey-grammer.html?ref=magazine

Opening Q and A:

Q: There’s a scene in your new Starz show, “Boss,” when, as Mayor Tom Kane of Chicago, you open a package containing the ears of an activist who has been causing you trouble. Then you nonchalantly grind them up in your garbage disposal. Something tells me you’re more like this guy than Frasier Crane.

A: You actually hit on something there. One of the reasons I decided to do this show is that there’s so much that people don’t really get about who I am and who I’ve been for all these years.

, like all the grinding up of ears i do

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/10/30/magazine/30talk/mag-30talk-t_CA0-articleInline.jpg

hahahahaha

can we have a stylesheet that incorporates this jpg intensively

excellent photo frpm the Graun today

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/gallery/2012/jan/30/screen-actors-guild-directors-guild#/?picture=385217403&index=2

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/1/30/1327915659498/64th-Annual-Directors-Gui-032.jpg

that just gave me goosebumps
terrifying

"good evening, have a seat", and then he forces you to take a seat.
"let me get you a drink" and he insists that you have a drink.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAmXK9VquzA&feature=fvwrel

those were the very worst jokes

http://i.imgur.com/QX5o5.jpg

"k dude, I'm about to give you the ace of spades"
"what?"
bzzzzzzz

i hope his tattoo is a photo-realistic copy of http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/1/30/1327915659498/64th-Annual-Directors-Gui-032.jpg

http://d3rm69wky8vagu.cloudfront.net/article-photos/large/3.160590.jpg

this Boss poster cracks me up every time I pass it on the subway. They're so nonchalant compared to that woman in Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

^ditto; file under too much time on ilx.

Jay Thomas (who played Carla's husband, Eddie LeBec): I would see Kelsey sometimes at 5 o'clock in the morning with no shoes on, pushing a sports car down the street with a half [passed-out] woman in the passenger seat. I'm pulling in to get gas, and I go, "Hey Kelsey! What are you doing?" And he goes, "Well hey, how are you?"

I like the "sometimes", which would seem to indicate that this exact scenario played out multiple times.

He stormed off Piers Morgan recently because they ran a picture of Camille (not because Morgan is a nitwit).

lol i also immediately though of this thread when i read that anecdote, and also wondered 'is he sure she was only passed out...and not dead?'

The editorial change to his quote, "with a half [passed-out] woman..." has me wondering.

Half-pissed?

Half- fucked up?

Half - [makes thwwwpt sound with tongue]?

half-dead

nice deflection from kels there, answering jay's question with another question

can't stop imagining kelsey grammer appearing whenever an mc shouts IT'S MOTHERFUCKIN KELLS

watching a Cheers where Diane says "just when my life seemed to be at its darkest, I met Frasier Crane"

That bearded grin above leaves me imagining a Hanneke/Grammer collab.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c186/Meaghanism/ybookkelsey_zps2f8102c9.jpg

Kelsey Grammer looks has always looked like a motherfucker with some dark secrets

Roz bring me my compact disc player. I want to listen to some classical music.

"The suspected shooter has been identified as 15- year old Allen Kelsey Grammer, a theater student at Pine Crest School."

almost looks like

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c163/wvferrell/dlr.jpg

holy fucking shit u guys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzMbIJpK-iU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu-BqOsvj00

William (Bill) Cary Zucker is an American actor, comedian, writer, performer and musician. He has often been associated with Kelsey Grammer, Jenny McCarthy, Gene Simmons and Dog The Bounty Hunter in various projects. He is a classically trained musician and can play Guitar (acoustic and electric), Pianos, Synthesizers and Strings, Drums and Percussion, Violin, Harmonica, Bass and assorted other stringed instruments.

that zucker video is so aggressively unfunny and odd

Kelsey Grammer, Jenny McCarthy, Gene Simmons and Dog The Bounty Hunter

I had to look up Dog to confirm that he was crazy.

i hope i will never grow tired of that video, ZS

the sound he made at 0:10 signaled the dead of a million puppies.

also the dead of my English skills.

This outtake from X-Men 3. There are no words.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvHW1oIKUxI

It's like some lost episode of Frasier where Dr Crane has inexplicably been cast in a Hollywood blockbuster, and has decided to over-egg his small supporting role by inserting Shakespeare quotations into the script at every opportunity.

If only they could have gotten Tony Randall/Felix Unger in on it too.

lmao

is that scene supposed to be funny?