Ted Danson on Why the ‘Cheers’ Cast Didn’t Like Woody Harrelson at First
During a new interview on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, Ted Danson revealed that the cast of Cheers was not endeared to Woody Harrelson when the latter star joined the series. “We wanted to kick his ass,” Danson announced frankly. The admission came after Harrelson was conspicuously absent from the Cheers cast reunion at the Emmys in January.
Harrelson entered Cheers during its fourth season as Woody Boyd, a young Boston transplant who replaced Nicholas Colosanto’s Coach as bartender. Colosanto died of a heart attack amidst production on season three.
Danson, 76, admitted that there was some generational jealousy when Harrelson, 62, joined Cheers. At the time, most of the cast was nearing 40, and Harrelson, who was also present for the podcast interview, had just turned 24.
“Well, we were 37 when he showed up, and he was 24,” Danson said of Harrelson, before sarcastically calling his co-star a “f--kstick.”
Danson continued: “Thirty-seven is when you realize you’re no longer 25 or 24. We just wanted to kick his ass in anything we could find. We started with basketball, and as you later found out in life, he’s a really good basketball player," he said of Harrelson's famous role in White Men Can't Jump (1992). "So he kicked our asses there.”
But the cast, far from learning their lesson, were still determined to one-up the young Harrelson.
“Next, I have a vision of Johnny Ratzenberger, who played Cliff, out on the lawn by the stage doing the leg wrestling,” Danson explained, “where you’re both on you’re back and you try to flip the guy with just your leg. Johnny’s strong and got some thighs on him. Woody kicked his ass.”
Danson admitted he even has some lasting scars from his vainglorious pursuit of glory. “I literally have a bad elbow to his day because I wouldn’t give up arm wrestling,” he laughed. “I did finally give up, because he was kicking my butt.”
Accepting that Harrelson would best them at feats of strength, Danson and his castmates graduated to more intellectual warfare.
“We moved to chess. F--k this physical stuff. We’re going to beat him mentally,” Danson recalled thinking. But Harrelson “killed us at chess. This is all in the first week! Really.”
Harrelson may have walked away the victor, but he made himself a target of the cast from that point forward. “From then on, if you had some awful, mean prank to pull you would not waste it on anyone else instead of Woody. And to this day, that’s Woody Harrelson,” Danson said of his friend’s physical (and mental) prowess.
Even though Danson remembers their first meeting as a contentious affair, Harrelson told O’Brien, “It was the greatest reception I could imagine. Everybody was so lovely, so kind…All these guys, dealing with the loss of their dear friend and teammate. But boy, they couldn’t have been nicer. It was the most wonderful job,” he said of his eight seasons on Cheers.
The two stars have put any competitiveness behind them, and are launching a joint Cheers retrospective podcast called Where Everybody Knows Your Name. Back in January, Danson seemingly alluded to the podcast, which dropped its first episode last week, when he promised a reunion of some sort in the near future.
Cheers is streaming for free on Pluto TV, and on Hulu and Paramount+ with subscriptions. You can watch the first episode of Where Everybody Knows Your Name, with guest Will Arnett, below.