‘Cheers’: Ted Danson Reveals Cast’s Outrageous Reaction When Jokes Bombed
By the time an episode of Cheers aired on NBC, only the best jokes made it into the show. However, some episodes of Cheers were works in progress. Ted Danson, who played Cheers bartender Sam Malone for 11 seasons, said sometimes the funniest moments behind the scenes were when a joke bombed.
Danson was a guest on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast on March 11, 2018 when he was promoting season 2 of The Good Place. In an aside, Danson told Maron about times when the Cheers cast broke down in hysterics on the set in front of live studio audiences.
Ted Danson loved when ‘Cheers’ jokes bombed
On Cheers, Danson presided over a bar full of regulars like Norm (George Wendt), Cliff (John Ratzenbeger), and Frasier (Kelsey Grammer). His waitresses were Carla (Rhea Perlman) and, for five seasons, Diane (Shelley Long), with bartender Woody (Woody Harrelson) filling in after Coach (Nicholas Colasanto) died. After season 5, Sam worked for Rebecca (Kirstie Alley).
That’s quite a cast who delivered on Cheers’ punchlines. However, Danson said they loved it when the jokes didn’t work.
“There is something wonderfully funny though when a moment goes wrong, even if you’re in that moment,” Danson said on WTF. “It’s not just other people.”
A silent audience provoked giggles in the ‘Cheers’ cast
Cheers filmed its episodes in front of a live studio audience. In fact, they had to announce that fact because viewers at home complained they were using a laugh track. As loud as the studio audience laughter could be, their silence was even more palpable. Once the Cheers cast knew they’d stepped in it, it would take a while to recover.
“We used to have hysterics on Cheers when something all week had been killer funny,” Danson said. “Then you deliver the killer funny and the audience, you can hear a pin drop.”
When the audience was silent, the cast ‘would all roll on the ground’
Cheers writers like Ken Levine and David Isaacs would discuss the elaborate constructions of some jokes. Co-creator and director James Burrows empathized with the writers who had to think of new Norm jokes every week. Burrows also noted that some of Cheers’ jokes were so intellectual that the network complained. Fortunately, they still left them in the show. To the Cheers cast, the funniest thing was when any of those jokes were met with dead silence.
“It’s like falling through a trapdoor and it’s so f***ing funny that you just fell through a trap door that we would all roll on the ground with hysterics,” Danson said.
