Kelsey Grammer believes many TV sitcoms don’t bring the authentic laughs like they once did.
“As a format, it’s struggling again for the right writers and for trust in the human experience,” Grammer, 71, argued in Us’ exclusive sneak peek of the Tuesday, July 28 episode of “The Katie Miller Podcast” with host Katie Miller. “They don’t trust their audience anymore. And the key to Frasier’s success was that it trusted the audience. It thought it was smart enough and we thought they were intelligent enough to enjoy discovering that we had a family and lives and things we cared about, as well as being funny. And, they’ve lost that again.”
Frasier ran for 11 seasons and told the story of Dr. Frasier Crane (Grammer) moving back to his hometown of Seattle, where he lived with his father and worked as a radio psychiatrist.
The TV show won a historic total of 37 Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globes during its run on NBC, making it one of the most celebrated sitcoms in television history.
“I’d hate to think it was the last one,” he said when discussing the future of sitcoms. “I’d like to make sure that there’s some more coming.”
Miller, 34, began to ask if writers are “too politically correct” or “too insular into their own lives in Hollywood” when trying to create the next hit TV show.
The question got Grammer to think about what could be having an impact on the genre.
“The idea of being too politically correct is probably killing the process, I think. It’s not necessarily destroyed funny for everyone,” he said. “It’s just they’ve eliminated funny based upon human behavior. They’ve made it just too on point on people that don’t actually behave that way.”
Grammer continued, “I think it may have maybe made a big wrong turn in terms of what people think is funny, it’s mostly slapstick, and you have to earn slapstick to make it believable. If it’s not believable, it’s just a terrible joke. And I think that’s where they’ve gone mostly.”
Recently, Grammer decided to step back from comedy and bring attention to America’s history by hosting Fox Nation’s documentary The Patriot War.
While chatting exclusively with Us in June, Grammer said he was open to the idea of stepping away from acting and exploring a political office down the line.
“I would consider it. It would possibly tick that box for me, in terms of the service I feel I should have given to my fellow man — to my fellow countrymen — that I missed in the military,” he shared. “Maybe that would be the way to do it. I have wrestled with it.”
To hear more from Grammer, listen to The Katie Miller Podcast’s new episode premiering Tuesday at 6 p.m. ET.
