The person Kelsey Grammer most wanted to like the Frasier reboot will never see it. “He was my father,” said Grammer when John Mahoney died in 2018. “I loved him.” Grammer’s own father was killed when he was 13, a year after the death of the grandfather who raised him. When Mahoney took the role of Frasier’s dad Martin, he also adopted the role of a loving, stable parent for what was a notably close cast. Taking Grammer to rehab in 1996 was, said Mahoney, “the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life”. But it worked.
Almost all the main players from the original show passed on the chance to return. Yet Grammer was adamant that Mahoney would somehow be present.
