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Kelsey Grammer is back in the building

As vintage comedy Frasier reboots, Kelsey Grammer talks with Krish Kandiah about his comeback and the significance of another recent role in Jesus Revolution.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

A group sit in a lounge playing musical instruments while the man closest to the camera laughs.
Kelsey Grammer plays Pastor Chuck Smith in Jesus Revolution.
Lionsgate.

Staying up late on a Friday night to watch Cheers was one of the regular highlights of my childhood. My parents were as bewitched as I was with the sonorous voice of Kelsey Grammer. Indeed, the whole world loved it. His spin-off sitcom Frasier went on to run for 11 years, winning 37 Emmy awards, a feat only recently surpassed by Game of Thrones. Grammer himself became one of the most decorated, well-loved – and well-paid - actors in the world. 

Nearly 20 years after its final episode Frasier is being rebooted. This time it is returning to Boston, the place where everybody came to know Dr Frasier Crane’s name. I, like many, are jubilant, convinced that the warm, masterful and often farcical humour will resonate just as well with a new audience. But what about Grammer? How does he feel about putting on the jester’s motley and playing Dr Crane again? 

“He's fantastic.”, Grammer explains to me with a broad smile and clear enthusiasm. I find myself wanting to tell him everything that’s keeping me awake at night.  

“Whatever it is about this journey with Frasier: he's lived a kind of a parallel life with me. Now we've found our way back to one another.” 

Grammer seems to be as excited as I am about the comedy comeback, but has Dr Frasier Crane changed over the decades? He explains: 

“He's a little wiser, a little calmer about some things. He's still a bit of a nuts on others. But the growth of the last 20 years or so in his life is reflected, I think, in this performance now.” 

Sometimes our greatest triumphs are accompanied by our lowest moments. At the same time that Frasier was first showering Grammer with fame, fortune and critical acclaim, he was wading through personal trauma. Substance abuse, addiction, and divorces resulted. I had to ask Grammer if he was a stronger person this time around:  

“I came to this one differently. I came to this one prepared to enjoy it. The previous manifestation of Frasier was a little bit much maybe a little bit too soon. It was challenging at times.” 

Grammer’s personal journey fascinates me. He seems to have resolved the sense of emptiness that so often accompanies great success.  Perhaps a clue can be found in the film Grammer is in London to promote. Jesus Revolution is based on a true story from the 60s and centres on a small church in Florida which gets invaded by hippies.  Grammer plays the role of Chuck Smith, the pastor who is torn between two very different congregations.  

“He spoke to my sense of good. People finding themselves, finding their way forward and not giving up, not relenting. I loved his search and his courage in the face of a waning congregation and the challenge of trying to make God relevant in that time.” 

Time magazine covers from the 60s and 70s.

Two Time magazine covers beside each other. One reads 'Is God dead?' The other 'Jesus Revolution'.

The film illustrates this challenge by bookending two editions of Time magazine. At the start of the film Grammer waves a 1966 cover at his sparse, stiff congregation. It is jet-black and asks pointedly “Is God Dead?” By the end of the film Grammer, surrounded by a crowd of unlikely long-haired worshippers, is clutching a Time Magazine from 1971, this time featuring on its cover a psychedelic picture of a bearded Christ proclaiming “The Jesus Revolution”.   

Grammer’s character experiences his own personal Jesus revolution in the movie. He welcomes those long-haired bare-footed hippies into his home, his church, and his life, and as he begins to see the world – and God - through their eyes, he becomes a kinder, braver and happier person.  

This is what I see in the Hollywood superstar I am interviewing: someone willing not only to talk openly about his faith, but to actively promote it. He is a man on a mission as he tells me: 

"You can defend and champion and be an activist for a sort of alternate lifestyle or any number of things that you think are important. I applaud that. But it's also okay to applaud and champion the idea that a life of faith has equal value…” 

Grammer, now wistful and warmer, adds: 

"I just thought, I want to do something that has value, meaning, you know, other than just making people laugh." 

Grammer grew up in a family of faith, but that family was also torn apart by heartbreak. His father was brutally murdered when he was just 13 years old. Seven years later his sister was abducted, raped, stabbed and left to die in a trailer park. I ask Grammer bluntly how he can have faith in God after such horrors and suffering: 

“Well, I've been wrestling with it my whole life, since the early days of when tragedy first came knocking at the door… And I spent a long time looking around, you know, thinking, what the heck happened? Very recently, I stood on a baseball field at one of the harvest revivals and I just said, “Where were you?”. He said, “I was right there.” 

Grammer has found a way to make sense of his life, a way to deal with trauma and tragedy. Like Chuck Smith making room for the outcasts, like Dr Frasier Crane making time to listen to troubled people on the radio, Grammer could be a new sort of pastor for a new generation.   

“I think people are walking around with broken hearts. I hope they have a chance to say: ‘Well, maybe, maybe this faith thing isn't so bad.’”  

Maybe he’s right. For a man that has experienced more than his fair share of personal tragedy, I have the feeling that he knows what he’s talking about. I came away feeling moved by his continuing faith in God despite everything he has suffered and despite everything he has struggled with. I hope audiences will see something of that authenticity and challenge in Jesus Revolution.  

 

Jesus Revolution is on UK and Irish cinema release. Tickets are available now.

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Podcast
Comedy
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Poetry
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4 min read

My conversation with... Frank Skinner

Re-Enchanting... Comedy. Frank Skinner is only interested in the weird. In the un-graspable. In the outrageous. Belle Tindall gets a lesson in "super poetry" from Frank.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

Around a table with microphones, three people record a podcast, one leans in talking and gesturing with a hand while the others listen.
Recording Re-Enchanting... Comedy.

In David Baddiel’s (admittedly excellent) book The God Desire, he has a section on his long-time friend Frank Skinner entitled ‘In a Car with Frank Skinner and his Sins’ (not that Frank would know; he’s refused to read it). After my conversation with Frank Skinner for the Re-Enchanting Podcast, I’d like to similarly entitle this piece ‘On A Rooftop with Frank Skinner and his Doubts’.  

Frank Skinner; a comedian, broadcaster and author who has entertained millions through TV shows such as Fantasy Football League, The Frank Skinner Show, Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned and Room 101, as well as many sell-out stand-up comedy tours. His penmanship is also a force to be reckoned with, having crafted the undeniably iconic Three Lions football anthem (which he penned with the afore mentioned Baddiel) as well as my favourite piece of his work, A Comedian’s Prayer Book. He’s always been open about his Catholic faith, determined to ‘keep his hand up’ as a (very often the) Christian in any given room. Frank’s faith has been, and still is, shot through everything he does – even his ‘sinning’.  

This conversation was always going to be interesting.  

And as such, there are many things one could take away from this conversation with Frank. Perhaps the value he places on doubt as a tool of refinement and source of growth, or his comparing of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens to bullies at a Christian disco, or even his efforts in ‘responsible sinning’. It’s a fascinating conversation from beginning to end, as I rather embarrassingly told him to his face, I enjoyed "every moment of it."  

However, there was one salient question that was left lingering in my mind days after our conversation ended – are we (by ‘we’, I mean Christians) interesting?  

There’s been a theme that’s run through Re-Enchanting thus far, prevalent in our conversations with Jennifer Wiseman, Paul Kingsnorth, Francis Spufford, and now Frank Skinner. And that theme is this: in the context of our 21st Century cultural moment, Christianity is profoundly weird, and that weirdness is the very basis of its power. It cannot, and should not, be blended into the so-called secular moment we find ourselves in. This is confronting for me, someone who has admittedly spent her life watering down the ‘oddest’ parts of Christianity (only in public, I should state) in an attempt to make it more palatable to my secular peers. As a result, I’ve ashamedly become the type of Christian that Tom Holland would tell to ‘grow up’. Well, if one finds themselves somewhat disillusioned with such a boring ‘no-man’s-land’ of compromised belief, this episode is certainly the perfect antidote. In fact, this entire series is.  

Frank is only interested in the weird. In the un-graspable. In the outrageous. The way he speaks of interactions with his (beloved) atheist friends made it seem as though atheism is one of the most obvious things one could claim to be, meaning that there’s nothing particularly interesting about it:  

“There’s something I find a bit confusing about people in the 21st century saying “this is how daring I am – I’m going to come out as an atheist”… atheism given over as if it’s a brave stance. I’ll show them a brave stance, and it’s not atheism.” 

Speaking , in comparison, of sitting in Mass in his local church, looking on as his priest holds up a piece of wafer declaring that it is the Saviour of the world, Franks says,  

“in the 21st Century, the idea that there’s a God, that he’s got a lamb, a representative that came to earth, that he takes away the sins, and that here he is in this bit of wafer… it’s outrageous. I don’t like the idea that we have to go to them (atheists). It’s made it (Christianity) a dull half-way house." 

Hence this lingering question: are Christians actually the more interesting ones? My conversation with Frank made me think that we may just be.  

Even though, as I have mentioned, the entire conversation was one to remember, it was the final five minutes that that truly ticked the ‘re-enchanting’ box for me. Justin and I, along with our guests, have often discussed Christianity as ‘the greatest story every told’, but Frank introduces us to Christianity as a  

“living poem, super poetry, poetry that’s physical, poetry made flesh, poetry that actually exists.” 

And not only that, but 

“we are a part of that poem, we just need to step into it. There is a blank line waiting for us…” 

How beautiful. It’s clear that, to Frank Skinner, Christianity is not only very interesting, it’s profoundly enchanting. Listen to the first episode of Re-Enchanting Season 2 enjoy Frank’s disconcerting ability to make you simultaneously laugh lightly and ponder deeply. 

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