How Shelley Long Saved Ted Danson's Lackluster Cheers Audition
Add Ted Danson to the long list of classic sitcom stars who didn't exactly ace their initial auditions. According to a 2012 oral history of "Cheers" from GQ, the "The Good Place" star didn't exactly set the world ablaze with his initial take on womanizing bartender Sam Malone. In fact, the charming actor didn't give off Neanderthal-like jock vibes at all, which made the writers' initial plan to make Sam a former football player (he ended up playing a pro baseball player instead) a bit harder to imagine.
According to series co-creator Glen Charles, "Shelley [Long] was everybody's choice right away, but there was controversy about Ted. He was clearly not a football player, and not only physically. He didn't bring that attitude, that mentality." Plus, as Charles put it, "He wasn't the sloth that scratches his armpits, which had been our original impulse." Writer-producer Sam Simon agreed, noting that "Ted isn't Sam Malone at all. He was a little bit insecure —not in a bad way, but not a jock. That was a challenge for him."
Danson wasn't enough of a jock for the part
Luckily, though, Danson got to do his final audition with Long, who would go on to earn the part of Sam's more pretentious half, Diane Chambers. According to an interview Glen and Les Charles did with the Television Academy, three pairs of potential Sams and Dianes performed in front of studio executives in a final audition, and Long and Danson bounced off one another perfectly. "They would play off of each other. One would do something a little unexpected and the other would respond to that, and they just enjoyed playing with each other, having fun together," Les Charles explained. "It's fun to watch that."
It's that partnered chemistry read that Danson believes got him the gig. "I maintain that I got Sam because I was teamed with Shelley," he told GQ. "She was really unique. You can't imagine anyone else playing Diane. She was Diane." The actor also admitted that he had a hard time getting into the headspace of his womanizer character, saying, "It took me at least two years to feel, 'Oh. I know how to play this now. I get it.' Because there was an ease and an arrogance to Sam, and I was not a womanizer; I didn't date a lot." The Charles brothers recalled seeing Danson in "Body Heat" and initially deciding he was wrong for the role, but his ability to come to life on the spot with Long went a long way. "It turned out Ted and Shelley, standing at the bar with a little bit of an audience of network executives watching, really took off," Les Charles told the Television Academy.
A chemistry read with Long helped him nab the role
From that point on, the character of Sam was changed to fit Danson. He was no longer a football player, but a Red Sox relief pitcher — one who had some traits in common with a real-life major league player. "At the time, there was a [Red Sox] relief pitcher named Bill Lee, the 'Spaceman,'" Glen Charles told GQ in 2012, noting, "He was kind of nuts, as we found out a lot of relievers are." When the writers decided to make Sam a baseball player, that "gave us a very offbeat athlete — one with a lot of intelligence."
Making the bartender less of a meathead also turned Sam's contentious early relationship with Diane from accidental mixed signals into something wilder and entertainingly sadistic. "It made his treatment of Diane early on kind of intentional," Glen Charles admitted. "He was trying to bug the hell out of her."
As for who would've gotten the part if Long and Danson hadn't hit it off? The Charles' say it was William Devane, the "Knots Landing" and "24" star who's also appeared in movies like "Interstellar" and "The Dark Knight Rises." That would've been a very different version of the bar where everybody knows your name.