Post by lemur on Jan 1, 2008 19:22:54 GMT -5
From: Fresh Air (NPR) November 5, 1998
Author: Terry Gross
Fresh Air (NPR)
11-05-1998
TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR, I'm Terry Gross. Frasier is a great example of a sitcom at its funniest with acting at its best. My guest, David Hyde Pierce, has received two Emmys, a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild award, and four American Comedy awards for his portrayal of Niles; Frasier's younger brother. Both brothers are psychiatrists; Frasier, played by Kelsey Grammer hosts a call-in radio show although he's out of work at the moment because his station changed formats. Niles' psychological insights didn't save him from one of the worst marriages and longest divorces in history. The brothers are snobbish, effete, egotistical, and insecure. Although they have a close relationship, they're very competitive and suspicious of each other. Here's Niles calling on Frasier.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- NBC TELEVISION SERIES FRASIER) DAVID HYDE PIERCE, ACTOR, FRASIER: Hello, I know I'm a bit early. I was hoping we might get a bite to eat before the theater.
KELSEY GRAMMER, ACTOR, FRASIER: Actually, no.
PIERCE: It will be on me, of course, as a thank you for getting those replacement tickets.
GRAMMER: You bought the tickets?
PIERCE: I know, I know I owe you money, and my gratitude; and if I keep talking you won't be able to tell me because you weren't able to get the tickets.
GRAMMER: Just haven't been able to get them yet.
PIERCE: Oh, I knew you hadn't gotten them yet. But now it's too late; it's six o'clock.
GRAMMER: Just calm down, I've made a few well-placed calls, I haven't heard back from a couple of people -- someone will call.
PIERCE: No, someone better call because everyone who's anyone is seeing this play. And you know who you are if you're not anyone? You're no one. And I've been someone much too long to start being no one now.
GROSS: The character of Frasier originated on the show Cheers. I asked David Hyde Pierce if when he was cast in the show Frasier he studied episodes of Cheers to get a sense of the family traits and mannerisms.
PIERCE: Yes, in fact that's specifically what I did. I watched a lot of old episodes of Cheers to get the physical behavior because I felt like when I looked at my own family -- first of all, I look more like Kelsey than I look like any other member of my real family. So, physical resemblance isn't necessarily the key, but what does happen is people have the same kind of speech patterns and the same physical mannerisms. We have all had the experience of looking in the mirror and being horrified to realize we were acting exactly like our mom or our dad. And, that kind of stuff, I thought, was what would let people know that we were really brothers. If we moved in the same way, if we had the same tilt of the head when we spoke, if we hit words and voiced words in a similar way.
GROSS: I know Kelsey Grammer is a big admirer of Jack Benny, and you can kind of see that in some of his gestures. Did you go back to Jack Benny also to kind of better get to know what Kelsey Grammer would be like and register that family trait?
PIERCE: I didn't. That's something else that Kelsey does which was a whole new kind of acting for me which is -- I don't know if you know the term "sampling" which they can do with pieces of sound technology. You can sample the playing of an instrument with a synthesizer, and Kelsey can almost sample famous actors. Like someone who does impressions, except what he does is he will incorporate Jack Benny or Bette Davis or James Mason or whoever into the lines that he is saying as Frasier so that it simultaneously echoes the famous person, but is really still Frasier speaking; and that gives him this enormous range; I even did a scene where he did Daffy Duck in a perfectly believable way.
GROSS: Frasier -- in a way the show is a contrast of two types of masculinity. You have a father who is the retired cop; and loves sports, and his old easy chair, and meat and potatoes. And Frasier and Niles who, you know, are impeccably dressed and are connoisseurs of wine and food and furniture; and in a way -- in a way they're almost like -- they almost embody certain of the traits that are stereotyped as gay traits, including some of their gestures. And I wonder if that's something that's ever discussed on the set of the show?
PIERCE: We don't ever discuss it on the show, although we did address it, actually, in an early episode. There's kind of a famous episode from the first season called 'The Matchmaker' where a new station manager took over Frasier's radio station, and the guy was gay but Frasier didn't know it. And Frasier...
GROSS: That's a very funny episode.
PIERCE: Yeah, well, it was a great episode. Joe Keenan wrote it; one of our very good writers, and there was a whole mix-up where Frasier thought he was setting up this guy to date Daphne and the guy thought it was a setup to date Frasier. And near the end of it, because of a variety of confusing circumstances, this guy also thinks that Frasier's dad is gay. And finally, it all gets straightened out in the end. And he says: "So, your dad's not gay?" And he says: "No, no dad's not gay." And then the guy says: "But, Niles, come on." And it was our away of addressing -- because a lot of people have talked about the fact -- especially with Frasier and Niles - a lot of stuff that they do together that, as you said, is sort of a stereotypical gay relationship in that they like to dress well, they like fine wine, and opera and all that stuff. But there's one critical part of gay relationships which they are not really into, and that seems to me to be the dividing line; and that's more of the anatomical area which is that they both love women. And so, I think that the rest of it, as you say, it really is a stereotype if it necessitates them being gay because they like those things. There's a certain sort of, as you described different kinds of masculinity, there's a very English as opposed to an English peasant, but a kind of an upper class English feeling about them also. Also, a sort of Southern gentlemen feeling -- it's a more of, I guess you could say, a feline masculinity as opposed to dad or Bulldog who's the sportscaster on the show is more of a eating hot dogs and beans and slapping people around kind of guy.
GROSS: Right. Now, the writing is so funny on the show. Can you think of an example of lines that you particularly like that kind of exemplify the quality of the writing?
PIERCE: Yes, the one that always pops into my head is there was a scene where the unseen mayoress is having a party at Frasier's apartment, and no one could find her; and I explain that she fell asleep and she's under all the coats on the bed. And my line is that she exhausts easily under the pressure to be interesting. [laughter] What I love about that line is if you look at the actual wording of it; it's a little bit wordy, it's a low bit high-faluting, "she exhausts easily." But what makes it funny is the description of his personality because in some way we've all been there. We've all been at parties and had to put on that face, and we know how you go home and it's supposed to have been a party and you're wiped out from the effort. And she just takes it to the nth degree, so it's a combination of a skillful use of language, but also a skillful depiction of character. And I think most of the humor of the show, as it should, comes out of situations like that as opposed to jokes.
GROSS: Because there's a kind of almost ornate style of speaking that Niles has, I'm sure his cadences are a little bit different than yours. Was it hard to get into that rhythm?
PIERCE: It's a good question. It wasn't difficult, because it's well written it's easy to pick up on the speech pattern. And again, because I was sort of modeling it after the way Kelsey speaks as Frasier I had a role model there. One of the things that we are always playing with, and one of the differences between the writers who write for our show; and sometimes when people send in scripts that they've written in hoping to get hired for the show is that the writers understand that there's a subtle difference between someone who uses language in a certain way and just simply writing a lot of big words because that somehow seems to be what the characters are all about. A lot of times we'll find that you have to tone Niles' language down because in a given situation, a very emotional situation say, or for example he might not fall into those elevated speech patterns that he would have when he's more relaxed and he's talking about the wine club. And I think that's also what keeps him real.
GROSS: Would you compare your voice and style of speaking with Niles?
PIERCE: Well, it's hard -- you know why? Because as soon as I start getting analytical and talking about the show and being philosophical about it then I automatically almost become him. And, I mean, let's see -- there's a certain -- I guess there's a certain other placement in the voice that he speaks almost in a little higher pitch than I do. And the pronunciation of the words is just a little bit archer, and a little bit more enunciated and oh, what's the word -- that sort of thing. And there's little reflections like that creep in. Sometimes I'll be like somewhere else in the country and people will say: oh, you don't have an English accent. Thinking that I do have an English accent because of whatever it is I'm doing as the character it sort of -- it reads that way.
GROSS: Yeah, it's arch and clipped.
PIERCE: Yeah, and a little bit operatic at times. He gets extremely agitated over not very important things. We just had -- he was just invited to a party where he brought a bottle of '81 Chateau aux briant (ph), and he wasn't there two minutes before he heard a pop, looked up and saw it being decantered into a punch bowl of sangria, canned fruit, and erotic ice cubes. So, it's sort of a higher range, I think, when he gets excited.
GROSS: It must be interesting to play a character for so long that you have to, you know, different styles of speech that you know so well; your own and your characters.
PIERCE: Well, and in fact, I think I've played him so long that when you asked me the question about what was the difference between my speech and Niles, I got extremely nervous because I suddenly thought, you know, I'm not sure there is one anymore. I think that the gap has narrowed over the last six years.
GROSS: I know you shoot in front of a live audience which means that there's real laughter that you have to deal with which will effect the timing. You can't talk over the high point of a laugh. The trick is, I think, if the audience is laughing and it's a fairly extended laugh; the camera doesn't pan to the audience it's still on you. So, you have to be doing something while you're not speaking during the laughter.
PIERCE: Yes. Well, we've all become masters of sort of idle fiddling and, you know, stirring coffee during long laughs or you can check your shoelaces and see if they're tied. What it is -- it's just fun, you try to find behavior that the character would actually be doing in the moment. But what your also doing is you're feeding the laughter because it just makes people laugh more when they see you riding that wave of laughter, however you choose to ride it out. If Kelsey and I are in a scene together then we can do a good ten minutes of just making faces at each other until eventually we both laugh and then it's over.
GROSS: If you're just joining us my guest is David Hyde Pierce, and he's the star of Frasier. He plays Niles, Frasier's brother.
Let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more.
This is FRESH AIR.
BREAK
GROSS: My guest is David Hyde Pierce, and he plays Niles on the series Frasier. Now, the story goes that, you know, no one knew that Frasier had a brother when Frasier was a character on Cheers, and I don't think Frasier knew he had a brother. And then when he was given a new series he still wasn't supposed to have a brother, but the story goes that the creators of the show were given a picture of you; saw this incredible facial similarity then watched tapes of you; loved your performance and thought: well, let's write him in as the brother.
Did you see the similarity when you looked at Kelsey Grammer?
PIERCE: My mom, when I first came out to L.A. which was about six or seven years ago, said to me: now, you look like Kelsey Grammer maybe you could be on his show. And that was back on Cheers.
GROSS: Oh, really?
PIERCE: Yeah, and no one else thought that at the time. But then, totally without me having anything to do with it, this casting director, Sheila Guthrie (ph) who was working with Jeff Greenberg (ph) the main casting director for Frasier; she brought them my photo and they didn't know who I was - like most people. And, like you said, she also brought them some tapes from the only other TV show I'd ever done -- the only other sitcom which was called The Powers That Be. It was a Norman Lear political satire where John Forsythe played a Senator -- I played a suicidal congressman, and they looked at those tapes and based on those they actually met with me. And this is the humiliating part because they met with me for about half an hour, and then they went away and wrote Niles. So, I don't know what that says about me, but that's the way it fell out.
GROSS: Right. So, it's funny because although I see certain similarities between you and Kelsey Grammer; you're a much more kind of refined version of it. Smaller, and, you know, more elegant.
PIERCE: Refined is nice. I like refined. He -- you know what? If you see pictures of him -- I saw a shot of him, he was just out of college which was taken in New York, and -- or also he was on a soap opera back then when he was still going to Julliard. And he looks -- it's me, it isn't even he looks like me, it's me. And, so, I think we -- depending on the year of the show, we look more or less alike each other. But there's definitely a familial resemblance kind of thing.
GROSS: David Hyde Pierce is my guest, and he plays Niles on Frasier. I'd like to run through some of the movies that you've been in, and maybe you could just say a few words about your part in each one and what it was like for you. Let's start with your movie premiere debut of Bright Lights, Big City.
PIERCE: Yes, that was my first ever. It cost me more to join the union than they paid me to be in the film. In fact, my agent had to advance me the money so I could do this movie. And I had one line, it was with -- Michael J. Fox was in this movie. If you ever see it, there's a scene where he goes to disrupt a fashion show that Phoebe Cates is doing and I'm standing behind the bar, and I say: "I'm sorry the bar is closed." And that was my first memorable line.
GROSS: Did you practice saying that a thousand different ways before doing it for real?
PIERCE: Well, for one thing, I was a nervous wreck. I mean -- I had been a stage actor for many years; I'd been on Broadway, and off- Broadway, and gone all over the place. I'd never done a movie, and they don't know that, and they treat you as if you're an old pro and they say: OK, now this -- he's going to come up; the camera's going to be here; you're going to hit your mark; you're going to do that and this. And of course, you say: yeah, right I'll be there. And your thinking: what's a mark? Who do I hit? Who's Mark? It was very disturbing, but I got through that and no one was injured. So, I think I did OK.
GROSS: Crossing Delancey.
PIERCE: Oh...
GROSS: Let me guess, you were the non-Jewish character.
PIERCE: I did once audition for a play in New York they did called O'Shane O'Madle, (ph) and it was for a Jewish character. And I had to say the line "you only love me for my mother's bagels." [laughter] I, you know, I didn't believe me saying it. They were very nice during the audition, no one asked me to leave or anything. But, anyway, no I was a non-Jewish character in Crossing Delancey. I love that movie; by the way, it's a sweet film. And what I most remember about it was I had to learn to play the cello. My character was a cellist and there was a scene where Amy Irving, who was the lead in the movie, was having a birthday and all of us who were worked in this little bookstore with her were singing 'Happy Birthday' to her and I was playing it on the cello. And I, literally -- they paid for lessons. I learned how to play 'Happy Birthday' on the cello. Amy Irving, who had done a movie called The Competition where she had to pretend to play the cello, made endless fun of me because, you know, I was squeaking. But I finally got through the take and did it, it was all perfect. And that scene segued into a scene on a phone from Florida where her parents friends were a barbershop quartet are finishing singing 'Happy Birthday' over the phone. Well, when they put the film together, the guys singing in the barbershop quartet were in a different key. So, they dubbed the cello playing; so what I had slaved for weeks to learn - I never had to do the first-place, they were just going to lay it in anyway. So...
GROSS: Tough luck.
PIERCE: That was hard.
GROSS: Sleepless in Seattle.
PIERCE: That was my first connection with Seattle, and that, you know, of course was a big hit movie. I had a very small part in it, but the funny thing is if you go back and watch it, the little scenes that I have -- I play Meg Ryan's brother. I'm actually married, in a very similar marriage, to the one that Niles has with Maris. The actress who plays my wife is a little on the petite side and she's kind of shrewish the way the character's written, and we have sort of a hate-hate relationship, I think. But, it was sort of foreshadowing of my -- the rest of my life.
GROSS: In Oliver Stone's movie Nixon you played John Dean. What did you do to get in character?
PIERCE: I met with John Dean; had several meetings with him, and did a lot of reading about John and the whole Watergate crisis. And found out that depending on which book you read, John Dean was either a completely innocent victim of this whole thing or the evil mastermind behind the entire Watergate scenario which was a little bit of a of a history lesson. And the other thing I did was watch the tapes of the hearings, and other than that it was just the thrill of, you know, acting scenes with Anthony Hopkins.
GROSS: What'd you do with your voice for John Dean? It's such a familiar voice for people who remember the Watergate hearings.
PIERCE: Yeah, I didn't do a lot. I -- there was some -- a little bit of -- I'm trying think of what it was -- he's from California, and it wasn't that he had a particular accent. I think maybe some of the vowels were a little flatter than mine. Again, I didn't -- none of us were trying to do exact imitations of the people. I mean, Anthony Hopkins is the most obvious example that he -- when he did Nixon he's completely capable of doing a spot-on Rich Little quality Nixon impression. But he didn't want people to watch him do a Nixon impression because the most you get out of that is sitting there thinking: oh, he's really good doing a Nixon impression. So, he kind of split the difference between hinting at Nixon's actual voice and certainly getting the physical mannerisms, but really making it more of a character performance for him. To my taste, I think it was a really smart choice.
GROSS: So, I want to hear about other movies and stuff that you have coming up outside of Frasier.
PIERCE: I'm a voice in this new Disney picture movie A Bug's Life, and that opens -- I think it opens around Thanksgiving time.
GROSS: What's the voice?
PIERCE: The voice is Slim who is a walking stick bug. It's one of those bugs that's sort of tall and has a couple sets of hands, and kind of bug-eyed -- I guess they're all bug-eyed come to think of it. But he's particularly bug-eyed, and its got a great cast. It's a -- technologically, it's awe inspiring. You just can't believe how beautiful it is. But that's not the point of the movie, it's a really good story and it's very well told -- oh, and then I did a -- over the past hiatus, I was in Montreal shooting a movie which is a biography of Jacqueline Susann. That stars Bette Midler as Jackie, and Nathan Lane as her husband and manager, Irving Mansfield). And John Cleese is in it; Stockard Channing, Amanda Peet. It's a great cast, and it's a terrific script by Paul Rudnick) who wrote In and Out, and Jeffrey, and The Addams Family movies, and stuff like that.
GROSS: David Hyde Pierce, it's been a real pleasure to talk with you. I really want to thank you.
PIERCE: Well, thanks Terry.
GROSS: David Hyde Pierce plays Niles on Frasier. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
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Author: Terry Gross
Fresh Air (NPR)
11-05-1998
TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR, I'm Terry Gross. Frasier is a great example of a sitcom at its funniest with acting at its best. My guest, David Hyde Pierce, has received two Emmys, a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild award, and four American Comedy awards for his portrayal of Niles; Frasier's younger brother. Both brothers are psychiatrists; Frasier, played by Kelsey Grammer hosts a call-in radio show although he's out of work at the moment because his station changed formats. Niles' psychological insights didn't save him from one of the worst marriages and longest divorces in history. The brothers are snobbish, effete, egotistical, and insecure. Although they have a close relationship, they're very competitive and suspicious of each other. Here's Niles calling on Frasier.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- NBC TELEVISION SERIES FRASIER) DAVID HYDE PIERCE, ACTOR, FRASIER: Hello, I know I'm a bit early. I was hoping we might get a bite to eat before the theater.
KELSEY GRAMMER, ACTOR, FRASIER: Actually, no.
PIERCE: It will be on me, of course, as a thank you for getting those replacement tickets.
GRAMMER: You bought the tickets?
PIERCE: I know, I know I owe you money, and my gratitude; and if I keep talking you won't be able to tell me because you weren't able to get the tickets.
GRAMMER: Just haven't been able to get them yet.
PIERCE: Oh, I knew you hadn't gotten them yet. But now it's too late; it's six o'clock.
GRAMMER: Just calm down, I've made a few well-placed calls, I haven't heard back from a couple of people -- someone will call.
PIERCE: No, someone better call because everyone who's anyone is seeing this play. And you know who you are if you're not anyone? You're no one. And I've been someone much too long to start being no one now.
GROSS: The character of Frasier originated on the show Cheers. I asked David Hyde Pierce if when he was cast in the show Frasier he studied episodes of Cheers to get a sense of the family traits and mannerisms.
PIERCE: Yes, in fact that's specifically what I did. I watched a lot of old episodes of Cheers to get the physical behavior because I felt like when I looked at my own family -- first of all, I look more like Kelsey than I look like any other member of my real family. So, physical resemblance isn't necessarily the key, but what does happen is people have the same kind of speech patterns and the same physical mannerisms. We have all had the experience of looking in the mirror and being horrified to realize we were acting exactly like our mom or our dad. And, that kind of stuff, I thought, was what would let people know that we were really brothers. If we moved in the same way, if we had the same tilt of the head when we spoke, if we hit words and voiced words in a similar way.
GROSS: I know Kelsey Grammer is a big admirer of Jack Benny, and you can kind of see that in some of his gestures. Did you go back to Jack Benny also to kind of better get to know what Kelsey Grammer would be like and register that family trait?
PIERCE: I didn't. That's something else that Kelsey does which was a whole new kind of acting for me which is -- I don't know if you know the term "sampling" which they can do with pieces of sound technology. You can sample the playing of an instrument with a synthesizer, and Kelsey can almost sample famous actors. Like someone who does impressions, except what he does is he will incorporate Jack Benny or Bette Davis or James Mason or whoever into the lines that he is saying as Frasier so that it simultaneously echoes the famous person, but is really still Frasier speaking; and that gives him this enormous range; I even did a scene where he did Daffy Duck in a perfectly believable way.
GROSS: Frasier -- in a way the show is a contrast of two types of masculinity. You have a father who is the retired cop; and loves sports, and his old easy chair, and meat and potatoes. And Frasier and Niles who, you know, are impeccably dressed and are connoisseurs of wine and food and furniture; and in a way -- in a way they're almost like -- they almost embody certain of the traits that are stereotyped as gay traits, including some of their gestures. And I wonder if that's something that's ever discussed on the set of the show?
PIERCE: We don't ever discuss it on the show, although we did address it, actually, in an early episode. There's kind of a famous episode from the first season called 'The Matchmaker' where a new station manager took over Frasier's radio station, and the guy was gay but Frasier didn't know it. And Frasier...
GROSS: That's a very funny episode.
PIERCE: Yeah, well, it was a great episode. Joe Keenan wrote it; one of our very good writers, and there was a whole mix-up where Frasier thought he was setting up this guy to date Daphne and the guy thought it was a setup to date Frasier. And near the end of it, because of a variety of confusing circumstances, this guy also thinks that Frasier's dad is gay. And finally, it all gets straightened out in the end. And he says: "So, your dad's not gay?" And he says: "No, no dad's not gay." And then the guy says: "But, Niles, come on." And it was our away of addressing -- because a lot of people have talked about the fact -- especially with Frasier and Niles - a lot of stuff that they do together that, as you said, is sort of a stereotypical gay relationship in that they like to dress well, they like fine wine, and opera and all that stuff. But there's one critical part of gay relationships which they are not really into, and that seems to me to be the dividing line; and that's more of the anatomical area which is that they both love women. And so, I think that the rest of it, as you say, it really is a stereotype if it necessitates them being gay because they like those things. There's a certain sort of, as you described different kinds of masculinity, there's a very English as opposed to an English peasant, but a kind of an upper class English feeling about them also. Also, a sort of Southern gentlemen feeling -- it's a more of, I guess you could say, a feline masculinity as opposed to dad or Bulldog who's the sportscaster on the show is more of a eating hot dogs and beans and slapping people around kind of guy.
GROSS: Right. Now, the writing is so funny on the show. Can you think of an example of lines that you particularly like that kind of exemplify the quality of the writing?
PIERCE: Yes, the one that always pops into my head is there was a scene where the unseen mayoress is having a party at Frasier's apartment, and no one could find her; and I explain that she fell asleep and she's under all the coats on the bed. And my line is that she exhausts easily under the pressure to be interesting. [laughter] What I love about that line is if you look at the actual wording of it; it's a little bit wordy, it's a low bit high-faluting, "she exhausts easily." But what makes it funny is the description of his personality because in some way we've all been there. We've all been at parties and had to put on that face, and we know how you go home and it's supposed to have been a party and you're wiped out from the effort. And she just takes it to the nth degree, so it's a combination of a skillful use of language, but also a skillful depiction of character. And I think most of the humor of the show, as it should, comes out of situations like that as opposed to jokes.
GROSS: Because there's a kind of almost ornate style of speaking that Niles has, I'm sure his cadences are a little bit different than yours. Was it hard to get into that rhythm?
PIERCE: It's a good question. It wasn't difficult, because it's well written it's easy to pick up on the speech pattern. And again, because I was sort of modeling it after the way Kelsey speaks as Frasier I had a role model there. One of the things that we are always playing with, and one of the differences between the writers who write for our show; and sometimes when people send in scripts that they've written in hoping to get hired for the show is that the writers understand that there's a subtle difference between someone who uses language in a certain way and just simply writing a lot of big words because that somehow seems to be what the characters are all about. A lot of times we'll find that you have to tone Niles' language down because in a given situation, a very emotional situation say, or for example he might not fall into those elevated speech patterns that he would have when he's more relaxed and he's talking about the wine club. And I think that's also what keeps him real.
GROSS: Would you compare your voice and style of speaking with Niles?
PIERCE: Well, it's hard -- you know why? Because as soon as I start getting analytical and talking about the show and being philosophical about it then I automatically almost become him. And, I mean, let's see -- there's a certain -- I guess there's a certain other placement in the voice that he speaks almost in a little higher pitch than I do. And the pronunciation of the words is just a little bit archer, and a little bit more enunciated and oh, what's the word -- that sort of thing. And there's little reflections like that creep in. Sometimes I'll be like somewhere else in the country and people will say: oh, you don't have an English accent. Thinking that I do have an English accent because of whatever it is I'm doing as the character it sort of -- it reads that way.
GROSS: Yeah, it's arch and clipped.
PIERCE: Yeah, and a little bit operatic at times. He gets extremely agitated over not very important things. We just had -- he was just invited to a party where he brought a bottle of '81 Chateau aux briant (ph), and he wasn't there two minutes before he heard a pop, looked up and saw it being decantered into a punch bowl of sangria, canned fruit, and erotic ice cubes. So, it's sort of a higher range, I think, when he gets excited.
GROSS: It must be interesting to play a character for so long that you have to, you know, different styles of speech that you know so well; your own and your characters.
PIERCE: Well, and in fact, I think I've played him so long that when you asked me the question about what was the difference between my speech and Niles, I got extremely nervous because I suddenly thought, you know, I'm not sure there is one anymore. I think that the gap has narrowed over the last six years.
GROSS: I know you shoot in front of a live audience which means that there's real laughter that you have to deal with which will effect the timing. You can't talk over the high point of a laugh. The trick is, I think, if the audience is laughing and it's a fairly extended laugh; the camera doesn't pan to the audience it's still on you. So, you have to be doing something while you're not speaking during the laughter.
PIERCE: Yes. Well, we've all become masters of sort of idle fiddling and, you know, stirring coffee during long laughs or you can check your shoelaces and see if they're tied. What it is -- it's just fun, you try to find behavior that the character would actually be doing in the moment. But what your also doing is you're feeding the laughter because it just makes people laugh more when they see you riding that wave of laughter, however you choose to ride it out. If Kelsey and I are in a scene together then we can do a good ten minutes of just making faces at each other until eventually we both laugh and then it's over.
GROSS: If you're just joining us my guest is David Hyde Pierce, and he's the star of Frasier. He plays Niles, Frasier's brother.
Let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more.
This is FRESH AIR.
BREAK
GROSS: My guest is David Hyde Pierce, and he plays Niles on the series Frasier. Now, the story goes that, you know, no one knew that Frasier had a brother when Frasier was a character on Cheers, and I don't think Frasier knew he had a brother. And then when he was given a new series he still wasn't supposed to have a brother, but the story goes that the creators of the show were given a picture of you; saw this incredible facial similarity then watched tapes of you; loved your performance and thought: well, let's write him in as the brother.
Did you see the similarity when you looked at Kelsey Grammer?
PIERCE: My mom, when I first came out to L.A. which was about six or seven years ago, said to me: now, you look like Kelsey Grammer maybe you could be on his show. And that was back on Cheers.
GROSS: Oh, really?
PIERCE: Yeah, and no one else thought that at the time. But then, totally without me having anything to do with it, this casting director, Sheila Guthrie (ph) who was working with Jeff Greenberg (ph) the main casting director for Frasier; she brought them my photo and they didn't know who I was - like most people. And, like you said, she also brought them some tapes from the only other TV show I'd ever done -- the only other sitcom which was called The Powers That Be. It was a Norman Lear political satire where John Forsythe played a Senator -- I played a suicidal congressman, and they looked at those tapes and based on those they actually met with me. And this is the humiliating part because they met with me for about half an hour, and then they went away and wrote Niles. So, I don't know what that says about me, but that's the way it fell out.
GROSS: Right. So, it's funny because although I see certain similarities between you and Kelsey Grammer; you're a much more kind of refined version of it. Smaller, and, you know, more elegant.
PIERCE: Refined is nice. I like refined. He -- you know what? If you see pictures of him -- I saw a shot of him, he was just out of college which was taken in New York, and -- or also he was on a soap opera back then when he was still going to Julliard. And he looks -- it's me, it isn't even he looks like me, it's me. And, so, I think we -- depending on the year of the show, we look more or less alike each other. But there's definitely a familial resemblance kind of thing.
GROSS: David Hyde Pierce is my guest, and he plays Niles on Frasier. I'd like to run through some of the movies that you've been in, and maybe you could just say a few words about your part in each one and what it was like for you. Let's start with your movie premiere debut of Bright Lights, Big City.
PIERCE: Yes, that was my first ever. It cost me more to join the union than they paid me to be in the film. In fact, my agent had to advance me the money so I could do this movie. And I had one line, it was with -- Michael J. Fox was in this movie. If you ever see it, there's a scene where he goes to disrupt a fashion show that Phoebe Cates is doing and I'm standing behind the bar, and I say: "I'm sorry the bar is closed." And that was my first memorable line.
GROSS: Did you practice saying that a thousand different ways before doing it for real?
PIERCE: Well, for one thing, I was a nervous wreck. I mean -- I had been a stage actor for many years; I'd been on Broadway, and off- Broadway, and gone all over the place. I'd never done a movie, and they don't know that, and they treat you as if you're an old pro and they say: OK, now this -- he's going to come up; the camera's going to be here; you're going to hit your mark; you're going to do that and this. And of course, you say: yeah, right I'll be there. And your thinking: what's a mark? Who do I hit? Who's Mark? It was very disturbing, but I got through that and no one was injured. So, I think I did OK.
GROSS: Crossing Delancey.
PIERCE: Oh...
GROSS: Let me guess, you were the non-Jewish character.
PIERCE: I did once audition for a play in New York they did called O'Shane O'Madle, (ph) and it was for a Jewish character. And I had to say the line "you only love me for my mother's bagels." [laughter] I, you know, I didn't believe me saying it. They were very nice during the audition, no one asked me to leave or anything. But, anyway, no I was a non-Jewish character in Crossing Delancey. I love that movie; by the way, it's a sweet film. And what I most remember about it was I had to learn to play the cello. My character was a cellist and there was a scene where Amy Irving, who was the lead in the movie, was having a birthday and all of us who were worked in this little bookstore with her were singing 'Happy Birthday' to her and I was playing it on the cello. And I, literally -- they paid for lessons. I learned how to play 'Happy Birthday' on the cello. Amy Irving, who had done a movie called The Competition where she had to pretend to play the cello, made endless fun of me because, you know, I was squeaking. But I finally got through the take and did it, it was all perfect. And that scene segued into a scene on a phone from Florida where her parents friends were a barbershop quartet are finishing singing 'Happy Birthday' over the phone. Well, when they put the film together, the guys singing in the barbershop quartet were in a different key. So, they dubbed the cello playing; so what I had slaved for weeks to learn - I never had to do the first-place, they were just going to lay it in anyway. So...
GROSS: Tough luck.
PIERCE: That was hard.
GROSS: Sleepless in Seattle.
PIERCE: That was my first connection with Seattle, and that, you know, of course was a big hit movie. I had a very small part in it, but the funny thing is if you go back and watch it, the little scenes that I have -- I play Meg Ryan's brother. I'm actually married, in a very similar marriage, to the one that Niles has with Maris. The actress who plays my wife is a little on the petite side and she's kind of shrewish the way the character's written, and we have sort of a hate-hate relationship, I think. But, it was sort of foreshadowing of my -- the rest of my life.
GROSS: In Oliver Stone's movie Nixon you played John Dean. What did you do to get in character?
PIERCE: I met with John Dean; had several meetings with him, and did a lot of reading about John and the whole Watergate crisis. And found out that depending on which book you read, John Dean was either a completely innocent victim of this whole thing or the evil mastermind behind the entire Watergate scenario which was a little bit of a of a history lesson. And the other thing I did was watch the tapes of the hearings, and other than that it was just the thrill of, you know, acting scenes with Anthony Hopkins.
GROSS: What'd you do with your voice for John Dean? It's such a familiar voice for people who remember the Watergate hearings.
PIERCE: Yeah, I didn't do a lot. I -- there was some -- a little bit of -- I'm trying think of what it was -- he's from California, and it wasn't that he had a particular accent. I think maybe some of the vowels were a little flatter than mine. Again, I didn't -- none of us were trying to do exact imitations of the people. I mean, Anthony Hopkins is the most obvious example that he -- when he did Nixon he's completely capable of doing a spot-on Rich Little quality Nixon impression. But he didn't want people to watch him do a Nixon impression because the most you get out of that is sitting there thinking: oh, he's really good doing a Nixon impression. So, he kind of split the difference between hinting at Nixon's actual voice and certainly getting the physical mannerisms, but really making it more of a character performance for him. To my taste, I think it was a really smart choice.
GROSS: So, I want to hear about other movies and stuff that you have coming up outside of Frasier.
PIERCE: I'm a voice in this new Disney picture movie A Bug's Life, and that opens -- I think it opens around Thanksgiving time.
GROSS: What's the voice?
PIERCE: The voice is Slim who is a walking stick bug. It's one of those bugs that's sort of tall and has a couple sets of hands, and kind of bug-eyed -- I guess they're all bug-eyed come to think of it. But he's particularly bug-eyed, and its got a great cast. It's a -- technologically, it's awe inspiring. You just can't believe how beautiful it is. But that's not the point of the movie, it's a really good story and it's very well told -- oh, and then I did a -- over the past hiatus, I was in Montreal shooting a movie which is a biography of Jacqueline Susann. That stars Bette Midler as Jackie, and Nathan Lane as her husband and manager, Irving Mansfield). And John Cleese is in it; Stockard Channing, Amanda Peet. It's a great cast, and it's a terrific script by Paul Rudnick) who wrote In and Out, and Jeffrey, and The Addams Family movies, and stuff like that.
GROSS: David Hyde Pierce, it's been a real pleasure to talk with you. I really want to thank you.
PIERCE: Well, thanks Terry.
GROSS: David Hyde Pierce plays Niles on Frasier. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
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