Jane Leeves on Frasier, Kelsey Grammer and Her Memoir Daphne and Me
Jane Leeves, who played Daphne Moon for 11 years on Frasier, says she did not want a tell-all in her new memoir Daphne and Me. She spoke about Kelsey Grammer's struggles, her view of the show, and why Thursday-night TV has vanished.
Jane Leeves, 65, who played Daphne Moon for 11 years on the sitcom Frasier, says she did not want to write a tell-all about the show, and what Jane Leeves thinks Frasier meant for its star, Kelsey Grammer, runs through her new memoir. She spoke in the lounge of a West London hotel about the book, Daphne and Me.
Leeves co-wrote it with her daughter, Isabella Kathryn Coben. It is part memoir, part TV history, and it looks at her life mostly as it relates to the show that made her famous.
A book without the dirt
Leeves said she "didn't want to write a tell-all". She described the thing she avoided as "some sort of dark, horrid thing". "First of all, the world doesn't need that right now," she said.
She called the show "a glorious 11 years of just magic and wonderful people". Writing the memoir was "very challenging", she said.
Before she began research, she had not watched Frasier in years. "It would come on TV and I would change the channel," she said. Time away helped: she said the space since filming let her look at the show "more objectively".
Grammer's struggles
Not everything behind the scenes was light. Co-creator David Angell died, along with his wife, in 9/11. By horrible coincidence, they were travelling on one of the hijacked planes.
Grammer also fought addiction and substance abuse, which the tabloid press pounced on. In 1996, the cast staged an intervention for their friend and co-star after he was involved in a car accident while driving under the influence.
Those struggles "never showed up on screen," Leeves said. "This is a man who's suffered a huge amount of unimaginable tragedy in his life."
She recalled his earlier role on Cheers. "He was the hit-and-run guy in Cheers, you know, never the centre of the show," she said. Leading Frasier brought a new level of attention and scrutiny while he was still dealing with "all this pain underneath".
"He hadn't figured out how to deal with that yet," she added. She said that depth helps make him a great actor, because "there's such depth and tragedy behind the eyes all the time".
The show and its era
Frasier spun off from Cheers and moved Grammer's haughty psychiatrist from a Boston bar to Seattle. Leeves played the live-in physiotherapist to his father Martin, played by John Mahoney. The show won 37 Emmys.
Daphne's slow-burn relationship with Frasier's brother Niles, played by David Hyde Pierce, placed Leeves at the centre of one of TV's great love stories. In 2002, she was the highest-paid British female actor in history, outearning movie stars such as Catherine Zeta Jones.
"Back then, it was appointment television," Leeves said. "You were in on a Thursday night, and you watched Wings, Friends, Seinfeld, and Frasier." People carved out their evenings around those shows, she said. "But that just doesn't exist anymore."
