‘Cheers’: Kirstie Alley Approved Jokes About Her Breasts
The NBC comedy Cheers added Kirstie Alley to the cast in season 6 after Shelley Long departed. Already in her first year on the show, Alley’s character, Rebecca Howe, was the subject of jokes about the size of her breasts. Writer Ken Levine has said that Alley was always a good sport about such jokes.
Levine gave a commentary for the season 6 episode “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” on his podcast, Hollywood & Levine. The 17th episode of the season opened with a joke about Alley’s breasts.
Kirstie Alley approved this breast joke on ‘Cheers’
The episode is about Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer)’s bachelor party prior to his wedding to Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth). Most of the episode takes place outside Cheers with all the guys in the cast, so Levine wrote a scene for Rebecca and Carla (Rhea Perlman) to open the show.
“We begin with the teaser and this is one that features Rebecca and Carla,” Levine said on Hollywood & Levine. “The reason is because since it’s a show about Frasier’s bachelor party, we wanted to at least do one scene where Kirstie Alley and Rhea Perlman get some screen time. The premise of this particular teaser is that Carla is breastfeeding twins and needs a decoy. Since Rebecca is very well endowed, maybe she could be the decoy.”
Levine confirmed that he got Alley’s permission to do such a sensitive joke about her breasts.
“We went to Kirstie beforehand and asked her if it was okay to do this because here’s a big joke that depends upon her breasts,” Levine said. “She was fine with this and I will say this about Kirstie. She was a great sport. Just about anything we threw at her, she was happy to do.”
Kirstie Alley is in the next scene too
Before the bachelor party, Lilith asks Rebecca to be her maid of honor too.
The first scene is the investable set up scene and these are very difficult to write because there’s nothing really going on. You’re trying to establish okay, Frasier and Lilith are getting married. They’re looking for a best man and a maiden of honor. Sam becomes the best man and one of his responsibilities is to host a bachelor party. We have a scene, at the moment Lilith is talking to Rebecca and asks her to be the maid of honor which is kind of fun considering that Rebecca didn’t really know her but the fact that they’ve had just a couple of conversations ,that makes her her best friend.
Ken Levine, Hollywood & Levine podcast, 5/1/19
‘Cheers’ writers could always depend on Kirstie Alley
Alley was not only game to make jokes about her body. Levine said the writers could always rely on her to sell jokes they wrote for other characters.
“Another point I want to bring up about Kirstie, since I’m not going to be talking about her too much in this episode, always gave great reactions,” Levine said. “You could always cut away to Kristie for a reaction and get lots and lots of laughs.”
