Thomas has been telling the story for years, but he’s not exactly the best source, as people always tend to come up with reasons for why they didn’t get a particular job. He said, like in a movie, "Are you sitting down?" And he goes, "Look, we're not going to have you back on the show. ![]() I knew they were deciding whether to add me or Bebe to the cast full-time, and I thought he was calling with good news. I'm doing Cheers, having the greatest time of my life, and one day I get a phone call from Jimmy. Soon after, rather than being added as a cast member like Bebe Neuwirth (who also made recurring appearances in seasons 6 and 7 before being officially joining the cast in Season 8), Thomas was done for good. When asked about kissing Carla on Cheers, Thomas noted he received combat pay for doing so. However, I think it is fair to say a leading cause in Thomas' dismissal had to do with comments he made on his radio program (Thomas still kept his disc jockey job even while acting). Now obviously, when you have a cast as large as Cheers, while they were able to add characters more easily than other shows, it was still not an easy thing to do, so there were plenty of reasons why the show would not be willing to add Thomas to the actual cast. As it turns out, it appears Thomas' own big mouth got himself kicked off of the show. Instead, his character was killed off-screen in Season 8. In Season 6, they got married and it seemed like Thomas would be sticking around. ![]() That’s exactly what it looked like was going to happen with Jay Thomas' character, Eddie LeBec, who joined the show in Season 5 as the boyfriend to Rhea Perlman's character, the perpetually pregnant waitress Carla. So Cheers had clearly established itself as a series where notable characters could be added to the ensemble. The show actually aired longer without its original female lead than it did with her, a remarkable achievement for any television show. Finally, and most importantly, Kirstie Alley successfully replaced the female lead Shelley Long (who played Diane) after Season 5. Later, Bebe Neuwirth joined the cast as Frasier's wife Lilith. Originally intended for just a short story arc, Diane's new boyfriend, Kelsey Grammer's Frasier Crane, ended up sticking with the show for the rest of its run (plus 11 more seasons in his own spinoff series). He was replaced by a young hayseed named Woody Boys, played by Woody Harrelson (amazingly enough, the character was named Woody before Harrelson was cast), who improbably became even more popular than Coach! Even before Coach's departure, the show had introduced a wrench into the main romantic relationship between bar owner Sam Malone and uptight waitress Diane Chambers. ![]() The comedy, about a bar in Boston, lost one of its main characters after the third season when Nicholas Colasanto, who played the beloved bartender Coach, passed away. All the leads from Friends in its final season were the same as in its first the same with Seinfeld.Ī notable exception was Cheers. ![]() It is very difficult to work your way into a hit TV show after it has become a hit. While obviously one of the most amazing things that can happen to an actor working in television is to be part of a show that turns out to be a major hit (look at the ways that, say, the cast of Friends went from an assortment of mostly no-names, and "Hey, that's the girl from the Bruce Springsteeen video!" to global superstars), there is something that is almost more amazing, which is to join one of these shows after it has become a hit and become accepted as part of the show's DNA.
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