Interview
Culture
S&U interviews
4 min read

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 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.

Review
Awe and wonder
Culture
Theatre
1 min read

This Narnia play left me yearning to cheer on good

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is still relevant at 75.

Steve is news director of Article 18, a human rights organisation documenting Christian persecution in Iran.

 A play set shows a witch and lion on stage.
EMG Entertainment.

This article contains spoilers.  

It’s been 75 years since C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was first published, and the story is still captivating audiences and even sparking fresh controversy. 

If you hadn’t heard the news, the role of the lion, Aslan, is rumoured to have been offered to Meryl Streep, a woman, for Greta Gerwig’s upcoming film, set to be released in time for Thanksgiving next year. 

I recently saw another adaption of the famous book - Adam Peck’s play - in a theatre in Torquay, as part of a 75th anniversary tour of the UK.  

And having previously read the book and watched two different film versions, I still found myself considering elements of the story I hadn’t previously, hidden depths I hadn’t noticed - even if these didn’t include Aslan’s gender. 

For those not familiar with the tale, it follows the journey of four children through the doors of a magic wardrobe, which transports them into a fantastical kingdom in which a lion reigns but a witch has held dominion for 100 years. 

Under the White Witch’s spell, there has been only winter for a century - “always winter and never Christmas”, as one famous line from the story goes. 

But now, thrust into this story in the fulfilment of a prophecy long foretold, four “sons of Adam and daughters of Eve” - boys and girls, to you and me - come as the lion king returns, and a new day dawns. 

The winter begins to thaw, Spring is in the air, and Father Christmas even shows up to shower the children with gifts. 

But the return of Aslan - and even Santa Claus - doesn’t signal the end of the story. There is still a battle to be fought; the witch still has power and even ensnares one of the children, Edmund, with the promise of all the Turkish delight he could wish for, and the title of a prince. 

It is at this moment - still early in the tale - that the battle between good and evil is clearly laid out, and the forces of light and darkness clash thenceforth. 

In the play, those enslaved by the witch are clad in black to emphasise the distinction, while much is made of the meaning of the name of the youngest child, Lucy: “bringer of light”. 

The imagery is abundantly clear, as it has ever been in Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, of which the The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is the first and most famous of seven books. 

And the author, renowned for being an atheist who later became a Christian, leans heavily upon his newfound faith throughout the Narnian tales, and not least in the character of Aslan. 

Yet while you and I may frustratingly regularly let ourselves down, there is also something within us - is there not? - that ever yearns to cheer on the forces of good. 

At Easter, it is especially hard not to see in Aslan’s death and resurrection a striking similarity with the figure at the centre of the Christian faith. 

Indeed, it was this moment of greatest sacrifice - for the “traitor”, Edmund - that most struck me this time around, even though I already knew the story so well. 

At church the following day, as I took Communion, I was still reflecting on Aslan’s sacrifice and wondering whether Edmund more closely resembles the average Christian - myself included - than the older, nobler brother, Peter, in whom most of us would prefer to see our likeness. 

My mind returned to a moment in the theatre that had humbled me, when the lady sitting in front of us handed me £20 to treat my children for being “so good”, having at the interval made me bristle by asking them to sit quietly and stop kicking her chair. 

“Fair enough?” I hear you suggest. Well, perhaps, but I didn’t think it until that humbling moment after the curtain had closed. 

My son later told me he hadn’t thought the lady had been unkind, which again got me thinking about my own imperfections and need to be more childlike. 

Yet while you and I may frustratingly regularly let ourselves down, there is also something within us - is there not? - that ever yearns to cheer on the forces of good. 

I doubt many audience members were rooting for the witch, while I suspect most can also understand the need to “beware the witch”, as one song from the play puts it 

Another biblical parallel is the fulfilment of a prophecy long foretold, while both the Bible and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe highlight the special significance of someone innocent dying to save the guilty. 

There is even a clear reference at the very start of the book and play to one of Lewis’ most famous pieces of theology, when the professor in whose wardrobe the children later get lost asks them a question as they consider whether or not to believe Lucy about the magical kingdom that she first glimpsed. 

She’s either lying, mad or telling the truth, the professor says, in much the same way that Lewis says of Jesus Christ’s own central claim: he’s either “mad, bad or God”. 

As for the success of the play, as someone who no longer lives in London, I was certainly impressed by this West End product. 

The scene changes are creative, aided by music, dance and possibly even a trapdoor - my children and I had different opinions on how the magical disappearances of certain characters were achieved. Maybe it truly was magic. 

There’s also the nice touch of the play starting even before it officially begins, through the twinkling of a soldier’s fingers upon the keys of a piano while the audience take their seats - perhaps to help us turn our minds from a sunny day in the English Riviera to dreary London at the time of the Blitz. 

So, do go and see the play if you get the opportunity - it’ll do you good and make you think, whether or not you choose to consider if the lion is male or female.