Since the show is enjoying a resurgence lately, I thought it’d be fun to look at how different it could have been.

>Kelsey Grammer didn’t initially want to play Frasier again and favored a pitch about a reclusive paraplegic millionaire and his street-smart live-in nurse played by Rosie Perez. Paramount insisted on a Frasier spinoff, but the producers repurposed the pitch for the characters of Martin and Daphne.

>The original pitch was set in Boston and focused on Frasier, his wife Lilith and their son Freddy. When Bebe Neuwirth, who played Lilith, declined a series commitment, the producers switched focus to Frasier’s career. Since there was already a popular sitcom about a private practice psychiatrist at the time, they envisioned a workplace comedy about Frasier starting a new career as a radio psychiatrist, based on a dropped plotline from Cheers. But there was also already a popular sitcom set at a radio station, so they downplayed that aspect in favor of Frasier reconnecting with his estranged father who never understood him, retconning the Cheers episode where Frasier claimed his father was a dead scientist.

>Grammer’s demands to accept starring in the spinoff were that Frasier didn’t get married again, that the show did not feature a kid character, and that Frasier move to a different town to avoid constant comparisons and callbacks to Cheers. Grammer said that he barely considers the Frasier from Cheers and the Frasier from his own show the same character given how different they are.

>Despite Frasier in Cheers claiming to be an only child, the producers decided to give him a sibling and initially considered a more accomplished older sister before a casting director recommended David Hyde Pierce due to his resemblance to Grammer, leading producers to repurpose the character as Frasier’s neurotic younger brother Niles.