David Hyde Pierce felt compelled to turn down the opportunity to reprise his role as Niles Crane in the reboot of the hit sit ’90s sitcom “Frasier” because he didn’t think the project needed him.
“I never really wanted to go back. It’s not like I said, ‘Oh, I don’t ever want to do that again.’ I loved every moment. It was that I wanted to do other things,” Pierce said during an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “I also thought, ‘They don’t actually need me.’ ‘Frasier’ has moved on to a new world. They have new characters. And I think I’m right. It’s doing great. And the new people they have are great.”
Pierce has been booked and busy. He’s currently starring as Paul Child in the Max series “Julia” and appeared in the Off-Broadway musical “Here We Are.” And when he was contacted to do the reboot, his bandwidth had reached its limit.
“When we got into real talks about the reboot, I had just started on the ‘Julia’ TV show and was working’ on a musical and going to do another musical, not this one. And I just thought, ‘I don’t want to be committed to a show and not be able to do stuff like this,” Pierce explained.”
NBC’s “Frasier” made its original premiere on Sept. 16, 1993 and ran for 11 seasons and 264 episodes, winning a total of 37 Emmys. In the show, Pierce played Dr. Niles Crane, Frasier Crane’s (Kelsey Grammer) younger brother.
The reboot of “Frasier” premiered on Paramount+ on Oct. 12. While Pierce will be taking a backseat, some stars like Peri Gilpin, who played Roz Doyle will be making a comeback.
“It was fun to revisit and felt really good. I wasn’t expecting it not to be, but I really was surprised at how great it felt to be there again,” Gilpin previously told TheWrap. “I genuinely love this character. So I would love to do it [again]. It just depends on what happens next.”
“Frasier” showrunners Chris Harris (“How I Met Your Mother”) and Joe Cristalli (“Life in Pieces”) previously admitted Pierce not returning was “a tough setback in the moment, but ultimately very freeing.”
“It let us build the show more organically from the ground up, focusing more on Frasier and Freddie’s relationship,” Harris told TheWrap. “The flip side of that is we don’t have several of the beloved characters that the original series had.”
If Pierce did happen to come back, the creatives said they would have been able to move the character and his story forward.
“Of course, Chris and I would have come up with something to evolve the character, make him fun and we’d love to still do that. But from his point of view, he felt like he wouldn’t add to this new version of Frasier and his son,” Harris continued. “He very understandably felt like he didn’t want to do that again, and he was in a tough place because everybody wants him to do it again. Writing Niles and Frasier banter is very, very fun. But the fact that he did step aside and allowed us to open up with a blank slate, and give room for all these new characters to grow.”
