Cheers' Final Send-Off Had The Cast In A Disastrous Drunken State
On May 20, 1993, NBC's ultra-successful sitcom "Cheers" aired its finale episode, and it was almost instantly entered into the history books. Approximately 93 million people nationwide tuned in to watch the episode in 42.4 million homes, and untold thousands more watched it in bars across the country. Those numbers were good enough to make it the second highest-watched program in TV history, according to The L.A. Times — only the series finale of "M*A*S*H" scored more viewers.
That same night, 15 million people tuned into "The Tonight Show," which went on the road to the Bull & Finch Bar in Boston, which served as the exterior of the bar in the show, and host Jay Leno interviewed cast members Ted Danson, Woody Harrelson, Rhea Perlman, Kelsey Grammer, John Ratzenberger, and George Wendt.
Well, at least he tried to interview them.
As "Cheers" writer Ken Levine remembered in a 2013 article for Vulture, "The [series finale] ended at eleven. The next half-hour was an emotional tsunami. Everyone was hugging and crying and doing a lot of drinking. We were all completely wrecked." That's when "The Tonight Show" started:
The cast, in no condition to face anybody, much less 40 million people, dutifully trooped downstairs to do the live show. Us non-celeb types stayed back and watched on TV ... in horror. They were so drunk they needed designated walkers. They giggled like schoolgirls over nothing, fired spitballs into each other's mouths, squirted water guns, Woody Harrelson implied he gave oral sex to both Ted Danson and Oliver Stone, and Kirstie Alley sang a song where the only lyric was "dick, dick, dick."
But the Cheers cast wasn't finished
I tracked down the clip Levine was talking about on YouTube, and astonishingly, most of that aforementioned chaos happens in just one segment of the interview. After a commercial break, Rhea Perlman hijacks the microphone from Leno and, apparently using an unfortunate nickname for Kirstie Alley, says, "Krusty, you are my best friend, but we all need to say this to you," followed by Perlman and the rest of the cast shouting at the camera in unison, "You're stupid!", inexplicably using what sound like New York accents. (Alley had previously sent in a video message from the set of a movie where she was filming.) Leno, trying to hold back his frustration, does his best to hold things together, but it's no use — the cast is off in their own world, treating him like an annoying person who dropped into a party uninvited. At one point, Leno finds himself on the receiving end of some of the cast's squirt guns, and before he throws to a commercial, he exasperatedly yells, "This is what a substitute teacher has to go through!"
Personally, I can't stand Jay Leno. But as a fellow interviewer, even I felt some empathy for him as things went totally off the rails here. But hey, at least the cast had a good night, and the finale itself went down in history.