I attended two tapings of this series in 2004
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Frasier
jarrodmcdonald-1 — 4 months ago(November 05, 2025 07:22 PM)
I went to the Frasier set twice at Paramount studios. Both visits occurred during the 11th season. The first visit was in mid-January 2004. They had just returned from a month off for the holidays. The actor who played the father, John Mahoney, lived in a suburb of Chicago; and Kelsey Grammer had a home in Hawaii. So for them, this was coming back to L.A. and back to work at the same time.
Kelsey told us all before filming began on the episode called 'Boo!' that NBC had called him earlier in the day to let him know they would not be renewing the sitcom. He admitted he was disappointed with the network's decision, because he wanted to do a 12th season. There were seven more episodes left to produce. He said the scripts were all written and were good; he was confident they would be ending on a good note. He said he felt the tenth season was the worst and was glad they'd improved the quality in the final year.
Most of the behind the scenes personnel had been with him on Cheers. Many of them had worked together for two decades. In 2004 Kelsey had tied James Arness (Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke) for playing the same character in primetime for twenty seasons– nine years on Cheers plus eleven years on Frasier.
Kelsey would add two more years to his total for playing Frasier Crane when he reprised the role during the revival run in 2023 and 2024. So he sprinted out ahead of Arness, but now he does not hold the record for playing the same character on a primetime television series. The record is held by Mariska Hargitay on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit which is still filming new episodes and has extended her streak to 27 seasons as Detective Olivia Benson.
As I have indicated, the first episode of Frasier that I saw being filmed was 'Boo!' where Martin the father has a heart attack. It was a comedy-drama, less laughs than usual. In addition to the main apartment set, there was the coffee shop set where some scenes took place. Facing the audience, the coffee shop set was downstage right.
Jane Leeves, the actress who played Daphne, was on maternity leave. Due to the extended holiday break, during which time she'd had her baby, she hadn't missed any episodes. But her character was not written into 'Boo!' and it was going to be an episode in which she would not appear. However, because they had just found out the show was being cancelled, she came to the set unannounced that evening to be there during filming. They decided to write her into the very last scene; it was basically an ad-libbed bit without any dialogue. This meant she ended up appearing in every episode, though as I said, she was not supposed to be in this one.
I returned to the set in early March. The second episode I watched them film was called 'Detour,' and to my knowledge, it was the last episode done before a regular live audience. I say this because, the next episode they made after 'Detour' was 'Crock Tales' which used a framing device and relied heavily on clips of scenes from previous episodes. And then after that, they did the finale, which was done with a closed set, meaning only friends and family members of the cast and crew were allowed into the audience.
Just before the filming of 'Detour' an unknown guest actress had to be fired, because there had been problems with her performance during rehearsals. The reason I know this is because when we were on the set, Kelsey– who was directing this episode– had a chat with the live audience and told everybody this had happened. He did not reveal the name of the actress who was fired; but he mentioned this incident to the audience, so everyone would give a warm welcome to the replacement actress (Cady Huffman) who stepped in at a moment's notice to take over that role. She did a great job and Kelsey seemed immensely grateful to her.
The audience learned some interesting things from Mathilda DeCagny, the trainer who owned the terrier that played Eddie the dog. Because the show had run so many seasons, the original dog (Moose) had become too old and had to be retired. So Moose's son (Enzo) took over. Enzo did not have the exact same coloring or number of spots. Mathilda had to add some freshly colored spots on the younger dog's fur to fool viewers into thinking it was the same animal. While waiting for cameras to be repositioned and for costume changes to occur between scenes, Mathilda and Enzo entertained the audience on stage with some of the tricks she had trained Enzo to perform. That was almost more entertaining than the actual filming of the episode!