Two Memorable Cheers Characters Were Never Meant To Last More Than One Episode
We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
Before "Cheers" ever got to rolling cameras on its very first episode, "Give Me a Ring Sometime," the show went through a great deal of evolution. In fact, the central "will they or won't they" relationship at the heart of the show's first five seasons between barkeep Sam Malone and waitress Diane Chambers didn't exist. The original pitch was to have Sam be a barkeep with a female boss, a dynamic the series would come back around to when Kirstie Alley joined the cast in season 6.
Television, maybe more so than any other storytelling medium, lends itself to constant evolution and change. Not only is there constant writing and rewriting while you are making an episode, you have audience feedback that informs how you tell your story as it goes. And sometimes a collaborator comes in that forces the creators to upend their plans and change course to suit that person. Creators Glen Charles, Les Charles, and James Burrows encountered this not once but twice when casting for the pilot for "Cheers."
George Wendt and John Ratzenberger are staples of the "Cheers" ensemble, both making their way through all 11 seasons of the show. However, before they became the series' signature barflies in Norm and Cliff, neither thought they'd be series regulars, let alone fan favorite characters.
Norm!
You could make a case that George Wendt's Norm Peterson is the mascot for "Cheers." The ritual of him entering the bar, everyone shouting his name, and him giving delivering a killer one-liner as he makes his way to his corner bar seat is the kind of thing that could only happen on this show. Norm is the beatdown, corporate cog with a home life with no spark, and the titular bar is where he can be himself. And when Wendt agreed to come in for "Cheers," this whole character did not exist. He writes in his book "Drinking with George" that he came in to play a different character and was only to appear in the pilot:
"According to the original script, I wasn't supposed to appear until the end of the episode. [...] I was supposed to be George, [Diane's] first customer. 'I'm Diane,' she would introduce herself. 'I'll be your waitress.' Then would come a rambling monologue, a minute long, about all the strange circumstances that had led up to her becoming a waitress. My job was to look impatient, until Diane finally remembered she was talking to a thirsty customer. 'Oh!' she'd exclaim. 'I should take your order. What can I get you?' At which point I was to deliver my single line. My single word, actually: 'Beer!'"
Wendt had appeared on an episode of "Taxi," which the Charles brothers wrote and Burrows directed, and they asked him to come in for this one-line part. Obviously, they knew that giving this gifted performer just a single line was patently absurd, and the next time he got the script, George was no longer there. Instead, it was Norm. And the rest is history.
The know-it-all
Like Norm, blowhard mailman Cliff Clavin was not in the original conception of "Cheers" either. John Ratzenberger was brought in to audition for a different role in the pilot. Instead of the creators writing a role to better showcase Ratzenberger's talents, as they did with George Wendt, the character of Cliff was a suggestion of Ratzenberger himself. In an interview with Ability Magazine, he recalled:
"I had originally come out to audition for another part, but as I was leaving the office after the audition, I turned around and asked them, 'Do you have a bar know-it-all?' None of the creators was from New England. They were all Hollywood-centered. And I said, 'Well, every local bar in New England has got a know-it-all—someone who pretends to have the knowledge of all mankind between his ears and is not shy about sharing it. All questions are deferred to this know-it-all, but there are never two in a bar. They are kind of like gun-slingers. If a new one comes in, then over a period of two or three days, I would imagine they would grind the bar to dust in their hands.'"
And thus, Cliff Clavin was born. Unlike Wendt, though, Ratzenberger was not signed on to be a series regular. Cliff was merely meant to be a recurring role, popping in here and there when the creators wished. Because the character was such a hit and gradually became more integral to the ensemble dynamic of "Cheers," he was brought back in season 2 as a regular and remained so until the show's ending. Look, shooting your shot is risky, but if you don't, you may never have your life completely changed forever. Thankfully, John Ratzenberg did.