Although actor David Hyde Pierce won’t be involved in the new Frasier revival, his Frasier character Niles is getting a reboot that’s set to air one day before the Paramount+ remake.
Kelsey Grammer will reprise the role of Frasier Crane, the title character in the beloved sitcom Frasier. This revival series is set to air on Paramount+ in 2021. The series was created as a spin-off of the sitcom Cheers and follows the story of psychiatrist Frasier Crane, who returns to his hometown, Seattle, as a radio show host. Now, 20 years after his last appearance on television, the show Frasier has returned.
Kelsey Grammar’s Frasier revival won’t involve Niles
David Hyde Pierce’s decision to sit out the show was not welcomed by fans. Pierce played Niles Crane on the show, Frasier pretentious and snooty younger brother who has been described as “what Frasier would be if he had never gone to Boston and never been exposed to the people at Cheers.”
In an interview last year, Grammar explained Piecer’s absence from the upcoming revival.
“David basically decided he wasn’t really interested in repeating the performance of Niles,” Grammer toldThe People. However, he added that it worked out for the best as it took the writers “to a new place”, which happened to be “what we originally wanted to do”.
Niles gets Frasier reboot with fan-made project ‘Our Frasier Remake’
All is not lost though, as a crowdsourced project called ‘Our Frasier Remake’ is bringing Niles back in a Frasier reboot (of sorts).
Artist and filmmaker Jacob Reed (Our Robocop Remake, Our Footloose Remake), along with a group of artists, illustrators, and filmmakers, are coming together to remake the Frasier season 1 finale ‘My Coffee with Niles.’
According to reports, the episode was divided into 185 parts, each lasting between 6-12 seconds, and each one being worked on by an individual creative. And get this, the ‘The Our Frasier Remake’, or the Niles Frasier reboot as we like to call it, is set to released on 12 October – one day before Grammar’s Paramount+ show airs.
There’s already a teaser trailer which you can check out below:
Hyde Pierce on his involvement in Paramount+’s project
Hyde Pierce made it clear that he would prefer to remain out of any Frasier remake.Explaining that to do so could tarnish its legacy. Pierce didn’t want to do a repeat of his performance as Nile, which is why the writer’s decided to move Frasier back to Boston which would explain the distance between him and Niles.
Hyde Pierce, who is a Paramount+ director in the year 2022 and spoke to Hyde Pierce about this project.Vulture: “That whole time of my life, the writing on those shows, the actors I got to work with – all of that is deeply important to me. And I would never disrespect that in such a way as to say just offhandedly, ‘Oh, no, thanks. I’m not going to do that again.’ It’s too valuable to me.”
The actor went on that he “wouldn’t just do it” for the reason that the experience was such a “valuable” one.
“I believe it can be done without me, too – finding new stories to tell, in the same way that Frasier did after Cheers. They didn’t bring along the Cheers gang to make a new show.”