Five years into the hit sitcom Cheers, set in a homely neighbourhood bar in Boston, its female lead Shelley Long, who played the prim waitress Diane, quit the series. This left Sam (Ted Danson), the self-obsessed bar-owner, no one to spar with, and risked depriving the show of its screwball-style sexual tension.
Kirstie Alley, who has died of cancer aged 71, beat Sharon Stone and Kim Cattrall to the role of Long’s replacement, joining the show in 1987. As the bar’s apparently tough new manager, Rebecca, she went toe-to-toe with Danson right from her audition scene. “She had an incredibly sexy voice that was perfect to drive Ted bananas,” said James Burrows, the show’s director and co-creator. “In the test scene, there was a line where she says she’s not attracted to Sam. With Kirstie, you believed it.”
