Every old show’s being rebooted these days; at some point, we’ll be living in a future in which Designing Women is once again sharing airwaves with Murphy Brown and a Roseanne-less Roseanne spinoff called The Connors. But some things are sacred. And so if NBC ever gets around to reviving Cheers, they’ll have to do it without Sam Malone.
Ted Danson was on Late Night with Seth Meyers Tuesday to promote his latest show, The Good Place. Cheers came up in the conversation, and the actor was quick to poo-poo the idea of a reboot. “It’d be a bunch of people in their 70s in a bar going, ‘What? What? A horse walked into a what?’” Danson cracked.
Danson, who turns 71 this year, then said maybe he’d be into if they moved it to an old age home.
It’s not just that he feels they’re too old: It’s that Danson has moved on. He’s not Sam Malone, baseballer-turned-bar owner and bartender, in real life, even if the the two will be forever associated.
“Playing Sam Malone was an anathema to me for the longest time,” Danson said. He said he never went to bars himself, and he even had to do heavy-duty research to get it right. “I went to bartender school and worked my little butt off to learn how to make drinks, and for the first month of shooting I was making Manhattans and Grasshoppers and all sorts of weird drinks. They didn’t give a sh*t. They want their jokes said well and on time, and they’re shooting you above your hand.”
The two discussed an episode of The Good Place in which his character, Michael, stood behind a bar, in an obvious nod to the show that first made his name. “If you watch the scene, you’ll notice that I would try to remember what I would do. ‘I used to wash shot glasses, yeah.'”
The episode was recorded and aired the day Bill Cosby was sentenced to three-to-10 years in prison and declared a “sexually violent predator” by the judge. Danson brought up his old show, which aired during the same era as Cheers, mostly to honor those who aren’t Bill Cosby.
“The reason why Cheers became a top-10 show was because of The Cosby Show,” Danson said, saying it elevated every show around it, as well as the medium itself. “It was a great show and it’s a horrible thing that he did — not my place to vote on that. But the show had other actors and it was an amazing show. I think it’s okay to say that.”
Meyers agreed: “You know, it’s not at the top of the list of the price that’s been paid by the awful things that he did, but it is strange that this thing now will be forever tarnished.”
Meanwhile, no Cheers reboot means we can’t see Sam and Diane get back together and break up for the 10th or so time. Of course, a Sam-less Cheers does mean we can have Shelley Long battle Kirstie Alley and show Diane Chambers was always and officially superior to Rebecca Howe.
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)
