David Hyde Pierce is opening up about why he turned down the opportunity to star in the Frasier reboot. The NBC sitcom, which originally premiered on TV nearly four decades ago in 1993, returned earlier this year in a revival series on Paramount+. Kelsey Grammer, David's costar returned, but the 64-year-old actor declined to return in his former role as Niles Crane, Frasier's younger brother.
David received three Emmys for supporting actor in a comedy series when the show originally ran on television.
In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, David opened up about why he skipped out on the opportunity for the reboot. “I never really wanted to go back,” the actor said.
"It’s not like I said, ‘Oh, I don’t ever want to do that again.’ I loved every moment," he continued. "It was that I wanted to do other things.”
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“When we got into real talks about the reboot, I had just started on the Julia TV show and was working on a musical and going to do another musical,” he explained. Julia first aired in March 2022, and is a drama series in which David plays the role of Julia Child's husband, Paul Child.
“I just thought, ‘I don’t want to be committed to a show and not be able to do stuff like this.’ And I also thought, ‘They don’t actually need me.’ Frasier has moved on to a new world. They have new characters. And I think I’m right. It’s doing great. And the new people they have are great," David said.
In the reboot, the shows picks up after the finale in 2004. It follows the storyline of an older Fraiser who moves back to Boston to reconnect with his son. The cowriter of the reboot, Joe Cristalli, told Vulture that the hope was to always have Frasier and Niles back together, which wasn't possible when David turned down the show.
“For a long time, the idea was that Frasier and Niles were going to run a black-box theater, like how they bought that restaurant and brought it back to life,” Joe said. “But it’s hard for Frasier and Niles to run the theater when you don’t have Niles, so we had to step back from that.”
In an interview with People, Kelsey also revealed why his costar wasn't returning to the show. “David basically decided he wasn’t really interested in repeating the performance of Niles,” the actor explained.
“In a very funny way, it just took us to a new place, which was what we originally wanted to do, anyway, which was a Frasier third act,” he continued. “It’s an entirely new life for him.”
