Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson (sometimes) - George Wendt

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

It’s Cheers’ most loyal patron, NORM! Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson are stoked to be joined by Cheers colleague George Wendt as they reminisce about their on-set misadventures, how George got cast as Norm Peterson, their chaotic televised send-off—even the infamous time they got caught in a storm while playing hooky (mushrooms were involved). Bonus: George reveals that he once recommended Woody for an iconic role.  Like watching your podcasts? Visit http://youtube.com/teamcoco to see full episodes.

But so, like, in the first year, people are starting to recognize you and— Eh, not really. More like America caught on second, third year, sort of. I think it was the year that Woody came in. Welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name. Not to oversell it, but this episode was kind of a big deal for me and Woody. So far on this young podcast, you've met some great folks, but this was our first time speaking with one of our Cheers colleagues,

the actor and comedian George Wendt. You know George as the barfly Norm Peterson, or simply Norm. It was so much fun to catch up and reminisce with George about the shenanigans we all got up to on Cheers, and George's time doing improv in Chicago, even that infamous time when we all got on a boat and did some mushrooms.

Actually, in the middle of a storm, we did mushrooms. Anyhoo. So, without further ado, here's someone whose name everybody truly does know. The great George Wendt. The incredible George Wendt, who did all 275 episodes of Cheers. Did anyone else do that, all of them? Or was it just you? I can't remember. I don't think so. It was you guys and Rhea. Rhea had a couple of babies.

Babies. You, Rhea, and Teddy. But on the night, we had to shoot around Teddy when he went to Africa for a movie. That's and then. Oh, so he didn't really do. No, and nor did Rhea because she had a couple of kids. Well, she had three, but only two.

So it was you. Period. Production. Say what? It was me. It was you. Your three kids never interfered with your ability to get there and shoot the episode. I think the heading is reminiscing at the moment.

Okay. And then catching up with anything you want to catch up with. Right. But I love this combination because you and I, roughly the same age, right? We were like 37 or something when Woody at age 25 showed up and immediately there was this sense of kind of a pissing contest you know and let's let's show the young buck who we are the new boy and i remember taking him out to play

basketball do you remember uh yeah and he kicked our ass yeah basically well that's the thing about wood he's a gamer you know like uh he would kick your ass in basketball, and then he would beat you in chess, and then he would beat you in arm wrestling, and then he would beat you in a water fight, and then he would beat you in poker. You know what I mean? It's like he likes to win. It's true to the point where if we had a good practical joke,

it would be a waste to do on anyone except Woody. Woody was the focal point of the, you know. I remember also you'd come in on Monday. Eventually. Yeah, eventually. He'd be late. He'd come in and we'd both go, come on, come on, Sherry, tell us what you did this weekend. I know.

You know, what was funny is you're saying it from your perspective. From my perspective, I was like so scared. Like, God, these guys, you know, like I just looked at you guys as just these walking gods. And like, I just was, I was i was very nervous hey hand on a bible is this true or is this no no this is doing a bit this is true and but i mean i'm saying you know this is at first eventually you guys made me feel so welcome and at home and then there was also the thing of coach being you know that's true you were stepping into someone else's strange yeah remember like the first day like i remember we were all like we were still reading

from the script at that point and and i remember we're all like you know getting our blocking and just the very first first doing it and then shelly goes oh god it's so strange you know oh remember that not to have nick there yeah it's that nick isn't here and there's this new face so you didn't but you hadn't seen the night i met you you had not seen cheers yet oh when we met at the store yeah we were at gelson's that's right and uh i see these two young guys giggling and faces turning red and pointing at me and and uh we'd been on the air for like two years maybe three two and a half, three, three. And, uh, and so I was sort of used to it. And eventually one boy prevailed and pushed the other over to me and he, it was wood. And he goes, uh, I just wanted to say hello. My friend told me, uh, you know, uh, I'm auditioning for your

show tomorrow. Uh, and I said, Oh, Oh, that's great, man. Well, tell you what, good luck with that. And hey, what's your name anyway, Woody? Oh, no, no, not the character's name. What's your name? He goes, Woody. I go, I think I might be seeing you tomorrow. Yeah, so, yeah, that was, I forget who I was with that at that time but i do remember clint clint oh or clem clem no no it's clint it's clint yeah anyway yeah yeah he said he's on

cheer because i hadn't seen it yet yeah you know because i was a television addict already by then i was a television addict and then i quit television star already by then, right? I was a television addict. And then I quit television, cold turkey, when I went to college and I didn't watch it again, which Cheers, you know, started while I was in college. It was 82, I believe. And then, uh, so, and I, and I didn't want to do television. I wanted to do theater. Yeah. And I had been on a sabbatical from the play to go do this movie with Goldie Hawn. And then that happened while I was finishing it up and I was in L.A. And I ran into Leo Jeter, who's from our college, and he said,

you know, I just auditioned for this show, Cheers. You should audition. The part is they're calling the part Woody, and just auditioned for this show. Cheers. You should audition. The part is they're calling the part Woody and you should audition for it. And I said, well, I don't really want to do TV. He says, well, this is a pretty special TV. Well, after I've met you and then that next day I did the audition. And then I'm like, at the end of the audition, then they're like, you know, we're going to bring you in for the, what do you call it? The thing where the last thing where you got to sign the network audition. Network, yeah.

That's what they call it. And so you got to sign your life away at that point. So I'm like, well, I better watch this show. And then I watched it. I'm like, oh, my my god this is a good and you know the way it was so different qualitatively just cinematically because it was like filmed yeah yeah so you look at other television and it was and even the set was pretty amazing richard yeah that's right and the lighting the way he could light so you could be anywhere on the set and it kind of worked

for it was it really was a big character the set itself and the show because it was like doing theater you you had to be everyone on in the bar had to be live at all times because you'd be in the background you know i won't have almost every shot yeah Yeah. And, you know, for the audience, it is theater. And, you know, so you think about it, theater is a master, you know? Yeah. And, like, honest to God, I was, you know, like a theater, well, improv, but still it was stage work. Right. You know, I didn't know.

I had no idea where the cameras were ever. I was only playing to the house. Right. Oh, you mean playing to the house. Right. Oh, you mean during Cheers? Yeah. I mean, the first couple of years. Right, right, right. Afterwards, I was like, wait a minute, I'm not drinking this piss.

Like, the camera's way over there. Right. The only thing I realized about cameras was if you had, because we were all live and you would be crossing in behind the bar, Ria would be crossing behind, you know, we were, you were in your corner, but there was lots of crossing and everything. And I noticed that when I had a great joke, Ria, Woody, everyone would be crossing right behind me. If I had a crappy joke, it was like, you know, tumbleweeds, no one could be found in the shot.

I was like, no, no, stay away from that. There is, let me, this, we're bouncing all around. This is not urban legend, though, that when we would be in the middle of the week rehearsing and we would notice that one of us was having trouble with a pretty hefty speech or something or a moment we would get glints in our eyes and we we would go oh we'll be there for you on the night and then we had those those those little short straws bar straws yeah and there was actually i think a shot or at least this is the legend, where you can see a spitball in your hairline where one of us had managed to land one while you were trying to do your. Well, I'll never forget.

I hit you right in the uvula. Yes. Seriously, you were laughing like that. Your mouth was that open. And I saw it, and it was a zen moment. It was a ding, and it landed on your uvula. But that led to realizing that this is a great new version of the game, and we would actually do that.

We would open our mouth and stand back and see if anyone could. Yeah. God, that was fun we remember we did that even on the at the the thing with jay leno at the very end we were doing spitballs we were so drunk by the time that came around they had brought us in this was the this we had finished shooting and we hadn't seen each other for two or three months. And this was the final goodbye. The episode was airing and Jay Leno was going to have this after final episode episode. And they brought us into the bar to do interviews at like two in the afternoon.

And we were in the bar at Cheers, Bull and Finch. What do you do in a bar? You start drinking and then later you start smoking and so by the time literally that jay leno he he looked up from his notes and they were going five four three and he looked up and saw us all really for the first time and his eyes started to spin going oh my we got a lot of shit for that remember well not you not only sorry i'm put it back on jay but not only was he uh uh green i think it was his first live episode probably he may have never done it live again after that i wouldn't blame him yeah it was we were we were

in poor shape to be doing an interview. I think actually the only sober person was Kelsey. Everyone else. Because he was kind of mandatorily. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. But I remember the rest of us. Ironic. Okay, go back to casting.

How did you get cast? What was that process for you? Yeah. did you get cast what was that process for you yeah um i uh my agent called and said you know uh honey they want you to do this uh cheers now you're not available because i had this other show at paramount right it was for cbs and uh then they go but uh they want you to come in anyway. And it's really small, though. I go, oh, okay. Well, I like those guys. You know, you remember them from Taxi.

Yeah, yeah. And how small? Well, it's really just one line. I go, oh, okay. Actually, you know, it's one word. I'm like, oh, really? Well, you know, come to think of it, it's one word. I'm like, oh, really? Well, you know, come to think of it, it's one syllable. What's the syllable?

She goes, beer. And the bit was Shelly, it was to be a tag, which didn't really exist on our show afterwards. And Shelly was the end of the pilot. And Shelley was going to go, hi, I'm Diane. I'll be your waitress. Well, I'm not really a waitress. I'm an academic. And she goes into a page-long recap of her, you know, as she did.

And then she goes, oh, I'm sorry. I should be taking your order. What can I get you? And I go, beer. And she goes, beer, perfect. And that was the end of the episode. But they said that Colzac, Stephen Colzac said, that's, you know, it's too small.

We can't get a, don't read that. Here, read this other. And it was George. And so. Read this other, wait, what? This other role, then role of george and uh so i read it and then they decided they were going to try to make a workout where i could do both shows and then the other show got canceled so that making the grade making the grade so i was thinking about

that because you know as i was saying earlier with teddy, you know, as I was saying earlier with Teddy, like, you know, I learned some things just looking through these bios that I didn't know. Like, Making the Grade was 82, and you did six episodes, and then it got canceled, and you must have been so freaking demoralized, and yet, thank God. thank god yeah actually the day that we did not get picked up for making the grade the offer came in for cheers they knew because it was paramount paramount oh so you know now you're you're part in the pilot though got bigger because i can remember what my favorite one of my favorite lines is you trying to make conversation with Shelly. What are you reading? A book? Yeah.

Yeah. Wasn't that in the pilot? Or no? It might have been as the George character, which I didn't really see until later. And then, you know, one day about not too long ago, seven, eight years ago, I was doing a symposium with Glenn and Les and Jimmy at UC Santa Barbara. And they were having a Q&A with this audience. And I was sitting back.

Oh, they meant for me to come on about halfway through the program as a surprise. And so, but I'm watching Glenn unless I'm in the wing, you know, just sitting on a barstool. And they're answering all these questions. Someone said, now, did you have anybody in mind when you were writing Cheers? And they go, oh, God, no. Oh, no. in mind when you were writing uh cheers and they go oh god no oh no oh we saw everybody in hollywood and new york and uh you know we we you know months and months of meticulous casting and chemistry and uh and this is for you know sam and diane and then they go but but Rhea, we did have Rhea in mind.

And George. I'm like, what the fuck? I'm sitting. Now I find out, like, 20 years later? And you think of it, the role was written George. But anyway, I know that other people were considered, but they fessed up to that. That was weird. I didn't know the George part, that there was a character named George.

Yeah. That became Norm? Yeah, they changed it to Norm when they cast me. So when they were writing it, they called it George? In the script, it was George, yeah. Were they involved with making the grade? No, but I had done Taxi. Oh, right.

And did a bit. It was a fun bit. I must have scored. Teddy, you scored on Taxi. I was doing Taxi, kind of a last-minute replacement, to come down and do it. But that was when I was shooting that or rehearsing that. I got called into Les and Glenn and Jimmy's office

to talk about cheers yeah that was the first time i heard about it i remember i talking about auditioning um i met him a couple times and read maybe once or twice and then they at one point they said, okay, great. Do us a favor. Don't take any other work until you check with us. And I went, so does that mean it's my part? And they went, no, no, just check with us before. And I walk out. There were two entrances.

There was an entrance and an exit in their office. It was on the second floor. And I walk out the back door and I see a line of actors coming up. Oh, man. I think for sure, I don't think, I know for a fact that I got the part because of Shelley. That Shelley and I read well together. And Shelley was such a home run for that part. Your chemistry.

Was she already cast at that point or no? No, but she was, I think, everybody's favorite. They knew that she was the one. Sorry. They knew she was the one who was going to play that part. But that's a little disheartening, walking out the wrong door and seeing that long line. Yeah. But actually, this was the first time in my life

i did not do that oh i won't get it oh i won't i just some part of me went don't do that just yeah i think this could be yours kind of thing and it was nice do you ever voice do you ever have that moment where where you go it happened to me, I don't know, probably 10 years ago or a few, but all of a sudden I went, oh, my God, I got to play Sam Malone. You know, it struck me. Wow. Unbelievable. What an amazing character. And I got to play Sam Malone.

But the cool story is Raz. Yes. Oh, yeah. He went in for my role you know for george yeah and uh he sensed it wasn't going well and then he literally in this case had one foot out the door and everybody's well thanks for coming in yeah thanks one foot out the door he pops his head back in do you have a bar know it all they go no what do you mean and he started riffing as uh that character yeah yeah cliff he just started going off a little bit talking and then just they're like holy shit this guy to this day so that that he he had a lot of uh i can't remember the name of his group, but it was like him and another guy. Sales Meat Market.

Right. It was him and this guy, Ray. But where did that, was that in? UK. Yeah. Huh? England. UK. Yeah, he worked street theater and everything, I think, right?

Yeah, like 10 years. And pretty much every war movie ever made out of shot. He was the yank, yeah. He was the yank well just for somebody to be able to turn around and have the wherewithal at after you know you've sunk the odd you're you're bad yeah yeah it's no good chutzpah and then that's chutzpah and you gotta have that 10 years of serious you know street theater under your belt because you had you had second city right i did and how long did you do second city six six years chicago yeah and i didn't

know the thing that was another thing i learned on these notes here that you came in first day they hand you a broom there you go kid yeah yeah new stripes kind of moment yeah no it's like uh i think you're ready this is the workshop teacher right josephine forsberg i think you might be ready for the children's theater i was like oh my god this is amazing because they worked right on the you know the main the main stage at Second City, so I thought that'd be just where all these people were, Joe Flaherty, and Brian Murray, and Harold Ramis, and, and, and so, yeah, come Sunday, come in at 11 o'clock, and I go, oh, I thought the show was at 2 30, yeah, just come in at 11, and I ring the doorbell. Nobody, nobody, nobody. Finally, I get let in, and she hands me the broom and the dustpan. What happens is she wanted me to

sweep up the room, and the night porter didn't come in until a couple hours before the show. So it was, you know, cocktail glasses everywhere, cigarette butts on the floors and in drinks and in Astros, you know, like I had to clean up the room. House. Look at you now. Okay. Some of the things in life are worth bragging about. Like when you finally cut ties with big wireless and switched to consumer cellular. When you switch, you can brag about having the same fast, reliable nationwide coverage as big wireless, but for up to half the cost. You can brag about getting top tier customer service and you can brag about being free.

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Well, I was rocking a solid 2.0 my first two years. And then junior year, I thought it would be cool to move off campus because, you know, I was a big boy. But I didn't have a car, i i just didn't think it through i lived a couple of miles off campus and uh you know south bend in the winter you know like i just i didn't i wasn't going to hitchhike you know i wasn't going to freeze my ass off and take the bus. I had no idea how to get there. I mean, I knew the way, but I wasn't going to get up and walk out at 8 o'clock in the morning. So I just didn't go to any classes or exams. And not shocked that I got a telegram. No U.S. mail. I got a telegram. No U.S. mail.

I got a telegram. Do not come back after first semester junior year. So then what happened? Oh, then I stayed at home for a while, and my parents were like, what are you going to do with your life, life, life? And so I got to get it out of here. So I went to this other college, Rockhurst College and University now.

Rutgers in New Jersey? No, Rockhurst. Oh, Rockhurst. Sorry. Harvard? No. And after that, you know, once again, my parents, what are you going to do, do, do, do with your life, life, life, life?

Get me out of here. And this friend of mine said, oh, you don't know what you're going to do? I go, no idea. And he goes, well, then I know what you do. What? What? You go to Europe. I go, yeah?

You can just do that? He goes, yeah. Just, you know, get some job and, you know, get, you know, it's $165 round trip to Luxembourg City from New York. Yeah. And, really? And so that's what I did. So I honked around Europe for about two years, give or take.

Really? So wait, is that you working? Well, I came home in between and worked at my dad's office for a while. And I was living at home, so it was really easy to save up a few hundred bucks. To go back? Go back, yeah. I think it was really easy to save up a few hundred bucks. To go back? Go back, yeah. I think it was getting cold. I think I went to Spain.

Wow. Yeah. And how did you, because you really had no money. Sleeping on the side of the road, living on lemons and hashish. Yeah. I can attest to the sustaining powers of lemons. So how did you get to Second City? Well, I said, I can't keep doing this.

And so I did the process of elimination. Lemon? Sorry, elimination. Yeah, process of elimination. Lemon? Sorry, elimination. Yeah, process of elimination. I was determined to do a job that I wouldn't hate. Right. So I went through, look at teacher, and I'd hate that.

Sales, I'd hate that. Doctor, out of the question. Policeman, fireman, cop, cowboy, you know, like I thought, no, I hate everything, except for Second City. I'd seen that in college, and I thought, wow, if I could do that, I bet I wouldn't hate that. So, you know, I didn't even think about a career in entertainment, let alone being on a classic hit sitcom. I just wanted to be in Second City.

And so it's something to say for short-term goals. And it wasn't until I was there for a couple years that I go, well, I guess I'm an actor. I think that's the way to go. Oh, sorry. I think, sorry. No, I apologize. No, you, please. No, you go ahead.

Okay, no, I'll ask you. Georgie. God, did we get that on camera? But did you, how did you go from you had the broom to suddenly you're on the stage? Because that's not an easy transition. Well, I just kept working, you know, in the workshops. And, you know, this is the first time I ever applied myself at anything.

And so, you know, it was really fun. And I dug it. You know who my buddy was in the workshop? Brandon Tartikoff. What? Yeah. Isn't that weird amazing brandon who basically is responsible for sheer's thing on the air that first year yeah you know and uh so because we were just pals in workshop and then you know i remember we had this showcase uh for the workshop students like a little you know saturday night here and there in this local church nearby. And Brandon and I were both too green to be involved, but we wanted to be involved, but we couldn't be on stage yet.

So I volunteered to do the chairs, set up the chairs, and break down the chairs, and Brandon was running this coffee concession, coffee and whatever, cupcakes, and after this magnificent show, like, people were blown away, and Brandon and I were just stars in our eyes, and, you know, we were just on the sideline. And, uh, so I'm breaking down the chairs after the show and Brandon's breaking down the coffee table and stuff.

And he says to me, George, one of these days, it's going to be you and me up there. Wow. It was, we have a photo of that somewhere. There's a great photo of you topless, you topless, and Brandon Tartikoff, who was his official. Oh, I saw that. Yeah, yeah. Who released that picture after 30 years or whatever?

Yeah, I don't know. Ken Gottlieb, maybe. Who knows? But that's the way you should start what ends up being the passion of your life, not caring where it leads just knowing you have to be part of it i just was determined not to do something i hated yeah but so it took like a year or many months or how long before you finally got to get on stage there's only a year in the workshops actually and so the first time you're up there and you're improvising for the first time in front of a crowd.

Yeah. What was that like? I sucked. You know, improv really, you know, for as long as I did it, I was never really very good at it. I would get in my head a lot and be self-conscious. Maybe it was the weed. Did you write? Did you have to write, you know what I mean, like Saturday Night Live?

Do the people write the material? You eventually do. I mean, you improvise bits. Yeah. And then the director, the late Del Close. Oh, wow. Yeah. Geez.

He would, you know, essentially be like a head writer. You know, he'd watch the, you know, the improv set and, you know, let you know, you know, there's a chunk of this scene that we could maybe develop into something else, you know, a scene that otherwise didn't really work on its own. But, you know, so, and then you sort of fine-tune. You keep improvising it, and then it gets to a point where this just works

kind of every time we try it, and then you pretty much lock it in so it's scripted at the end. And I was much stronger with the scripted material than i was with the um and and is it word for word scripted or you have no way within that well you don't want to you know the beats you don't want to blow you know the beats and you don't want to blow anybody's uh setup or punch or something you know so you it was pretty tightly scripted and del Del Close was pretty hardcore, though, wasn't he? Like, he could rain some terror down on people. Yeah.

And he was, you know, I'll never forget, you know, he was a notorious substance abuser. Notorious. I mean, and one time he came back. we were in previews, uh, for a new show and he came back stage at intermission and he goes, uh, I've figured out the closer. We're going to do the entire second act as walruses. And we all just kind of looked at each other like, and I saw Danny Breen, my, you know, friend, great friend, walking behind to the payphone backstage. And I see him ding, ding, you know,

with a couple of whatever, dimes or quarters. And he dials Bernie Solins, the producer who lived nearby. Bernie, yes. or quarters and he dials bernie solids the producer who lived nearby uh bernie yes um dell wants us to do the second act as walruses he says i'll be right over so how did you get from there to Los Angeles? Bernadette got a pilot. So wait, how does Bernadette, your wife, fit into this story at Second City? Was she there as well? She was.

She was in the touring company. And I got fired after about a year in the resident company. I had sort of a steady progression. I spent like a year in the workshops, including the children's show. Then a year in the touring company on the road, you know, doing sort of best of material. Then I got invited to join the resident company. And I was in there for about a year and sucking at improv, like I said. And so I basically got fired, but they said, don't go away, just go back in the touring company because we have a bunch of work,

and we want you to continue to whatever. And so that's where I met Bernadette was in the touring company. And then we got married in like two years later. Oh, and then she, then I got back in the resident company and Bernadette gets this pilot in LA. And so she came back after about three weeks in L.A. and said, you know, I think we ought to consider moving. And so I did.

She said we should move. Yeah, yeah. She was getting a lot of attention, you know, managers and agents, and, oh, you got to move out here that kind of thing you can't work out of chicago and for all you cheers watchers bernadette played norm peterson's off screen right correct and wife who we never saw but heard of. And also Cliff Clavin's one-time love interest, Tinkerbell. I forgot that. He was Ponce de Leon, and he got into character

as this great conquistadoro, and he was full of stuff you know, full of stuff. And then once they took the masks off, neither of them could talk. Oh, that's right. Oh, that's right. I remember that. Wow. So jumping forward into when you started doing Cheers,

and then you had a kind of a radical change of lifestyle would you say uh from the the uh going from anonymity to fame and oh that was yeah that was peculiar wasn't it what was it like for you then oh i don't know mind fuck i guess um it took a year or so for that to kind of happen in my case. Yeah. Yeah, no, it took a year. Oh, that's right, because Cheers was dead last in the ratings at first. Hey, hey. I'm just saying it's a great story because what's his name?

You know, decided to keep it on. What's his name? We were just talking about him. Brandon. Brandon, yeah. Brandon Tarkoff said, no, we'reided to keep it on. What's his name? We were just talking about him. Brandon. Brandon, yeah. Brandon Tarkoff said, no, we're going to stick with it. He got credited for saving cheers, but he said later in some interview, oh, I would have replaced them.

We just didn't have anything good enough to replace. Yeah, and Grant Tinker, of course, was the actual boss. But so, like, in the first year, people are starting to recognize you? Eh, not really. More like, you know, when America caught on, second, third year, sort of. Pretty much when you started. One of the highlight shows that we all, it was when Kevin McHale, remember when Kevin Celtics was on the show? Yeah.

And he would go around and say, you know, Woody, you have a shot just like, and he'd name some famous basketball player. The rest of us were incredibly jealous well this this uh sports writer friend of mine and friend of many alan malamud the late alan malamud called me one day and uh said uh yeah ron shelton's doing this movie and yeah he can't find anybody who plays basketball you said you play with woody woody uh can he? And I go, yeah, yeah, he's good. You know, he goes, no, really, because they can't find anybody. And I said, well, how would you describe? I said, well, if you put Woody, like, in a game of, like, a Division II

or III college basketball team, you know, he would not look out of place. He wouldn't go, who's that guy? What's that all about? You know, he didn't fit right in. He goes, hmm, I'll tell Ron. Wow. Okay, say thank you.

So you're responsible basically for my career. And I'm just finding out. Thank you, Coach. I mean, that doesn't seem like enough'm just finding out. Thank you. I mean, that doesn't seem like enough of a word, but thank you. We don't have to talk about Jimmy Burroughs, our director, in detail right now. But that was one of the things that made him so amazing was he let everybody he let you be insane until unless it interfered with no until you were in front of the camera he was he'd say your comedy commandos i don't care how you do what you do during rehearsal

as long as you show up on tuesday yeah on the night. And he would see it once at the read-through or any of the table reads or once in rehearsal, and he'd know, okay, he's got that. And if you start rehearsing stuff too much, a lot of us, this sounds really pretentious, but, you know, it's like we're jazz men. You know, we kind of get bored with our choices after a few times and want to move on. But, you know, there's really one that really just was right. And Jimmy knew that we'd come back to that one on the night i think that there was times

because you how do you stay fresh when you've done a show eight nine ten eleven years and part of the thing was we would not learn it to the point where we were a little scared when we came in like oh i went too far i went too far this time kel Kelsey was really practicing that for a little bit. But Kelsey was insane. Kelsey would be on book, and not just as an affectation. He would have his script, and he'd be reading it right up until, you know, 20 minutes before we shot it. And then he'd come in and be word perfect.

Right. It was unreal. Yeah. It was. After a while while john and i would be sitting there next to each other you know like i'm talking about like a year eight or nine or something and uh uh they go okay uh a scene uh stand uh stand by uh and i'd look at John and say, any idea? He'd go, nope. But then once, so you prayed that the first line wasn't your bit. Yeah.

So somebody started to go, oh, this bit. As long as once it started, we'd know where we were. You guys. George, you remember that time? This is the first time this ever happened to me was when we were doing, this is probably at least several years into it for me, probably six, seven years into it, where we went up and you and I were smoking a joint and thought we were done.

Remember? And then they're like, Woody, come down for your monologue in scene C. And I'm like. And I go down, and what would have taken one time. Yeah. One, two, three attempts. And then Jimmy's like, Woody, you okay? Yeah, I'm fine, fine, fine. Everything's fine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No problem. Let's do it again. It took like 10 times to finally get it, and that was the first time I tried acting while stoned, which I realized that don't mix. Not a good thing. It don't mix.

Don't mind me. I tried it a couple other times. Yeah. But each time I learned the same lesson. Yeah. It's not. It's only go to paranoia. You would after the audience left.

Self-conscious. What? After the audience left, you went from that horrible near beer or whatever it was you had to drink. Yeah. We would drink real beer after the audience left. Yeah. Even sometimes after the audience left yeah even sometimes while the audience was there slip in a beer once in a while you know pretty rare usually after they left yeah it's true professional all the way yeah yeah you uh woody and george and

kirsty were involved with the prank on me i think about six months before I had pantsed you, you were wearing sweatpants and all day long, George and I and John were going, Woody, put on some fucking underwear. My God, you know, because of your sweatpants were slightly revealing. And then we brought in an audience would start watching us when we were in our audience would start watching us when we were

in our eighth or ninth year. They'd bring in an audience to watch dress rehearsal or whatever it was. And there was a moment where you jumped on this table. I'm sitting next to the table and your character jumps up on the table and makes a huge announcement. And I swear to God, I hadn't planned it, but I was looking at your offending member. And so I grabbed your sweatpants and jerked them down to your ankles. And you were rightfully, horribly embarrassed. I thought it was great. And four months passed. Wow. No retribution. I'm clear. This is good. I go in to take a shower right before show. George knocks on the door and says, do you mind if I come in and shave while you're in the shower? I went, no, that's fine. So the door is primed by you to be open. And I can't quite remember. I

think you, you dove in, grabbed the shower door, and swung it open, and Kirstie took a Polaroid of me in all my glory. Confirming your leading man status. Thank you. Thank you. And then it showed up during the rap party. We put it on a rap video. Yeah.

Andy Ackerman put it on there. Yeah. Yeah. That was great. It was embarrassing. Well, I mean, even Steven. So what about the boat ride? Okay.

It was our hooky day, remember? Yeah, it was. As I recall, it was a very female-heavy show. Diane had an old something pal from college i want to say and um and rio was a real big part of it and um and uh we baby yeah yeah yeah it was a girl you know and so we felt like we could maybe john had just bought a boat. Boston Whaler. Yeah.

And he was anxious to show it off. So we cooked up this little getaway. I remember we all met at his boat. Woody and I by then were already stoned. And we got on the phone at a pay phone and called in to Jimmy or called into the show saying, To Brian. Yeah, Brian, you're right. I'm not feeling too good.

I can't come in and then hand the phone to the next person. I'm not feeling. So it was clear that we were playing hooky. Somebody said, yeah, I'm seasick. And yeah, i got peer pressure so we get on the boat uh kelsey immediately had been up all night playing cards went down to the lower bunk and fell asleep the whole way the whole way he was sound asleep woody turns to me and goes, have you ever had mushrooms?

And I go, no, no, I haven't. And he said, well, this will be a good time. We have nothing to do. We'll be on a boat and da, da, da. And we hadn't had breakfast, so I was fairly hungry and ate, I think, an extraordinary amount of mushrooms. And then I'm thinking, oh, this is all right. Then off we go, and we're halfway to Catalina. And this is true. There was the leftover waves from a hurricane in Mexico

that was still a huge swell. So people not on mushrooms would be seasick, pretty much. But I sat there getting more and more and more freaked out and whatever it is, you get stoned or whatever it is on mushrooms. And I look at you, Woody, and you stretched out on a bunk. And I think, oh, he's so used to this that he's just cooling and relaxing. I am panicking. I'm having trouble breathing. I'll go up top. And I came and sat down next to you and you looked at me and you went, you're high on something, aren't you? And I kind of nodded sheepishly. And John was like, oh, for crying out loud. But you spent the next 45 minutes poking me about every minute or two and said, breathe. Because I would literally forget to breathe and feel like I was dying.

And then you'd poke me. And then, Woody, you finally came up. Because you were afraid. Well, I should let you speak for yourself. But you said you were afraid you might jump off the back of the boat. So you better come up. And that was my one kind of visual, you know, I looked at you and you looked skeletal. You looked like Woody the Skeleton in my eyes.

That was my only kind of visual buzz from mushrooms. Well, I remember you looked like that too. And also, G was having a bad trip. No, I don't think you were. I think he did. No, on the way back, I was seasick. But didn't you do mushrooms too? No, I did not.

No. Oh, I thought you did. No, he was our lifesaver. No. Well, I just thought how noble it was that you were trying to calm him down when you were tripping, but you weren't. No, I wasn't. But you did look like a hologram of yourself i thought you you really you just weren't breathing at all i think i'm never letting

any air come in because it is a good thing right mushrooms well i i guess it depends on the setting but definitely in the middle of the hurricane in the middle of a hurricane. No, no, no. Pacific Ocean. That was, I mean, the boat was really going, like the mast thing was going. Yeah. It was nasty. It was the worst four hours of my life. Truly. And we were in such trouble.

I thought that, I didn't think anyone would give a shit. They called us in one at a time to give a shit the next day. Well, it was fair. We shouldn't have done that. No, but we'd been perfect for like six, seven years. I thought the hip move, well, it would have been extravagant, but I thought Burroughs should have rented a helicopter with the girls and brought them and meet us on the pier.

And when we got off the boat, go, okay, ACing is up. What? Oh, Jesus. Their complaint was, you should have told us. We would have let you. And it was like, but that's not hooky, Jimmy. That's not hooky. Just calling in the morning was, I thought, pretty noble.

Kels, we had to roust him. He didn't wake up. He came alive when we got to Albana, wherever we were in Catalina. Yeah. Kelsey had two amazing, like, super moves that were his. And one was, remember how he would eat just the tiniest bit of something and chew it like forever? You know, when we'd go eat together,

he'd be three times longer consuming his food than anybody. Oh, I forgot that. He would eat butter. And he'd eat butter remember that he'd just take the knife and he'd take a little piece of the butter wedge and then another little yeah yeah he's got the constitution of a horse so whatever he was doing worked but his other superpower was his ability to just sleep and just go deep into the sleep and restore come back ready to run.

I'll give you one more. He did not wear shoes on stage. Yeah. Oh, he didn't wear shoes, but he would play basketball with us on a – No shoes. Yeah, no shoes, barefoot. Flat-footed. He was flat-footed, man.

Yeah, he still is. I suppose we should give him air time to defend himself. Well, I think we crushed it guys i think we did a whole year's worth of reminiscing not so oh there's more but there is so much more that i know we're not thinking of favorite favorite bits favorite bits that you remember while shooting. Both of my favorite bits are Woody's. And people always ask what's my favorite show. And I say Jumping Jerks when the boys went skydiving and we all chickened out. And then we go, oh, man, I'm not jumping.

Neither am I. Neither am I. And it's like, but we can't tell them back at the bar. We can't say we chickened out. Right. We got to come up with a story. Right. Right.

Right. But we got to be able to stick to it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So it's got to be simple and believable. Simple and believable. Simple and believable.

I got it, says Sam. We jumped, the parachute's open, then we landed. It's simple. It's believable. Right. We jumped, the parachute's open, we landed. Okay, we got it. We go back in the bar.

Oh, man, I never felt so alive. Woo! That was amazing. What happened? What, are you kidding? It was great. That was amazing. You can't. What happened? What? Are you kidding? It was great. It was amazing.

Wood and Ria. Carla smells a rat. And she goes up to Woody. Woody. What happened? He goes, what? What? We jumped.

The parachute's open and we landed. It was all very simple. Unbelievable. Simple, unbelievable. And my other favorite joke or bit was also Woody. It was one of the Bar Wars episodes. And Gary, you know, we're pranking Gary's Old Town Tavern. And where's Woody? I don't know. And then, oh, my God, Woody's missing.

You don't suppose. And then in the background, you see Woody, like, done up like Houdini, hanging by his heels upside down in a rope, gaffer's tape all over his, you know, body, and he's swinging back and forth, you know, on this back stairs, right? so we go, there he is, there's Woody, we all run, and we open the door, and Woody's going, and we're like, oh my god, he's trying to tell us something, what's he saying, I don't know, He's got the tape. And we take it off. And we rip the gaffer's tape off his mouth. He goes, don't rip the tape off my mouth.

You're the only one that did something. You had a bit that stopped the show. We literally stopped shooting because the audience wouldn't stop laughing. And I can't remember the setup maybe you do but they had they had rigged you uh you know you guys were supposed to be hot and sweating or something i can't remember they had rigged a tube up your shirt and so you you were just pouring from your armpits yeah and water wasn't even playing uh oh so it was glycerin it was oil yeah i think they had to use like three in one or something to make uh uh and i took off my sport coat and

it's like uh am i pitted or what you though but uh yeah jimmy claims this the only time he had ever had to cut the camera on a laugh yeah remember that one time uh rats did a thing where he did a long pause but the laugh was oh oh that's right that he and it was almost a challenge during rehearsal yeah yeah it's going longer and longer and he just as long as he paused he got funnier and funnier remember that i do i forget what the bit was of it it was hysterical man you must have been with us by then maybe Maybe it had to be your first year. Nick Colisanto, who played the coach, had passed away with about four or five shows left in the third season.

And Nicky, we didn't realize, I didn't, I don't know if you did, didn't realize that he had a heart condition, heart disease. And he knew that when he came to the show, but he was getting more and more forgetful. To our eye, he was just getting more and more forgetful, but he wasn't getting the oxygen he needed because of his heart. So he would write down on every surface in the bar, his lines. And he had one line where he had an entrance where the show was about

that he had just lost his friend uh lifelong friend his age and had died and t-bone scarpigioni wow and he had written his line on the uh on the back of where we all enter you know the stairs and it was on the flat side, not the audience side. He had written his line so he wouldn't forget it when he entered the bar. And the line was something like, it's almost as if he's still here with us. Yeah. Right? It's almost as if T-Bone is still here with us.

Yeah. And then the first time we came back, and you had to be there because that was your first show um woody um we noticed it and it was it was so i mean i think we all basically burst into tears because it was how we were all feeling yeah and then we would make a ritual for the next four or five years we as we came down to greet the audience, everyone would touch the, it's almost like he's here with us kind of. That was your ritual.

I got the tongue from Kirstie. But one day, the painters had decided on the off season to paint the flats and painted over that and we all damn near quit we were so angry when we came back that's just bad bad uh who who does that you're gonna cover that stuff up we also went to his dressing room after he died and he had a an old sepia photograph of geronimo it's very famous photograph and we insisted that they hang it in the bar remember that yeah it's the one it's the one you uh flush with uh at the end of the last episode okay we reminisced wow

georgie thank you, buddy. Yeah, thanks, G-Man. Oh, yeah. Appreciate it. The great George Wendt, everybody. That was so much fun. We haven't been together for quite a while, and to reminisce and laugh and giggle like silly people was a great joy. And who knows, you might even hear some more cheers guests in the future. Actually you will for sure.

That's our show for this week. Thank you so much for listening. Even though we are a young podcast, I am so happy to hear that listeners like you are actually tuning in and wanting to hear us chit chat for an hour or more. But really, it's a privilege for me and for Woody to share our friends with you. And thank you for all of those who've left great ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts. It truly means a lot. If you like this episode, be sure and tell a friend and subscribe

on your favorite podcast app to get new episodes whenever they land. Thanks again, everybody. See you right back here next week, where everybody knows your name. harrelson sometimes the show is produced by me nick leal executive producers are adam sacks colin anderson jeff ross and myself sarah federovich is our supervising producer our senior producer is matt apodaca engineering and mixing by joanna samuel with support from eduardo perez research by elissa grahl talent booking by paula davis and gina batista our theme music is by woody harrelson anthony again m Mary Steenburgen, and John Osborne. Special thanks to Willie Navarro.

We'll have more for you next time where everybody knows your name. Consumer Cellular offers the same fast, reliable nationwide coverage without the big wireless cost. Freedom calls. Sign up with Consumer Cellular at consumercellular.com slash TED50 and use promo code TED50 to save $50. Terms and conditions apply.