Jane Leeves says Kelsey Grammer ‘didn’t want an English girl’ on “Frasier” before audition changed his mind

Ryan ColemanWed, July 29, 2026 at 9:06 PM UTC

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Kelsey Grammer and Jane Leeves on ‘Frasier’Credit: Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via GettyKey Points -

Jane Leeves is looking back on how Kelsey Grammer nearly blocked her casting on Frasier.

“He marched in and they called me in and we were about to go in the room to read with the producers and everyone and Kelsey went, ‘Nope,’” Leeves recalled on the Still Hot in Cleveland podcast.

Leeves was eventually cast as dizzy live-in nurse Daphne Moon, a role she played across 11 seasons.

Bring on the tossed salads and scrambled eggs — just make sure they’re American!

Jane Leeves recently revealed that she nearly lost her career-defining part as Daphne Moon on Frasierbecause of her Englishness.

“I got Frasier in a really weird way,” she explained on a recent episode of the Still Hot in Cleveland podcast, hosted by that sitcom’s star, Valerie Bertinelli, and one of its executive producers, Todd Milliner (Leeves also appeared on the TV Land series alongside Bertinelli).

Though she made it all the way to auditions, Leeves says she was nearly blocked before ever testing for Daphne — and by the series star no less.

Kelsey Grammer and Jane Leeves for ‘Frasier’Credit: David Rose/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty

“My agent said to me, ‘There’s some interest in you for this spinoff from Cheers.’ And I loved Cheers,” Leeves explained. But she was already deep in the process of testing for 1991 sitcom Nurses. She thought to herself, “‘I’m not taking these two shows. I want to read for [Frasier].’”

Things got moving quickly. “I went in [to] read for the producers. Cynthia Nixon was in the room, she went in before me. I went in, I read for the producers. They said, ‘Hold on a second. Could you just wait outside?’ And I went outside... then Jeff Greenberg, the casting director, came out and he said, ‘Would you be able to come in tomorrow to read with [Kelsey Grammer]?’”

Leeves was thrilled, but remembers forcing herself to downplay it — “And I was like, ‘Oh, let me check my calendar,’” she recalled saying.

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Grammer had played the persnickety, fancy-boy psychiatrist Frasier Crane on Cheers for nine years before David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee spun the character created by Glen and Les Charles off into his own world in Seattle. Though Frasier is a man of refined tastes, Grammer had a vision for the spinoff that did not gel with an actress of Leeves’ refined background.

Before her official audition for the part, Leeves recalled sitting on the steps outside Grub Street’s production hub when “this red Corvette came flying in and out jumped this beach boy looking guy and I — ‘Oh my god, it’s Kelsey Grammer.’”

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Leeves said the actor looked “nothing like Frasier, you know, flip-flops, the whole thing. He marched in and they called me in and we were about to go in the room to read with the producers and everyone and Kelsey went, ‘Nope.’ Told the producer to stay outside, because he didn’t want an English girl. He thought it would be Nanny and the Professor. So he didn’t want their influence.”

The cast and crew of ‘Frasier’ at the Emmys in 1998Credit: Chris Haston/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty

Starring Juliet Mills and Richard Long, Nanny and the Professor itself was a loose riff on Mary Poppins, revolving around a slightly magical English nanny, her American employer, and his brood of kids. The series only ran for two seasons on ABC in the early 1970s, but left enough of a cultural footprint to push Grammer to seek his own path.

Leeves was able to read with Grammer after all, and everything else, as they say, was history. “[Greenberg] called the boys in and I was sitting outside and then Kelsey came out, ran off, jumped back in his Corvette, and they called me back into the room and they said, ‘Welcome to the show.’”

You can watch Leeves’ full conversation on the Still Hot in Cleveland podcast above.

on Entertainment Weekly

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