Kelsey Grammer
Known to most as Frasier, Kelsey Grammer is keen to play against type. He tells Gemma Dunn why legal drama Proven Innocent ticked the boxes
Kelsey G-rammer has a fool proof criteria when it comes to accepting a role. And it certainly seems to be working for the Frasier actor, whose esteemed repertoire - eve -ything from comedian to singer, pro ducer, director and writer - has spanned film, TV and theatre for an impressive four decades.
“’Will they pay me?’ and ‘Is it really something I haven’t done before?’ - t-hat’s what I like to do!” he states can didly.
“Arguably, I’ve done one of the great c-omedic characters in the canon of tele vision, so I don’t look to do him any more,” Kelsey, 64, says in reference to his lengthy portrayal of psychiatrist Dr Frasier Crane across award-winning sitcoms Cahneders Frasier.
“I’m not going to play Frasier unless I’m going to play Frasier again,” he insists. “I like doing dramas, I like doing bad guys, I like doing protagonists and antagonists, within a longer form.
“I mean, I go off and do a movie about a doctor next week...” he teases. “It’s just different stuff.”
But first, and staying- true to his theory, Kelsey can next be seen in American l.egal drama Proven Innocent
The Fox series - written and produced bsy Danny trong and co-written by Deavid lliot - tells the emotional story of one woman’s fight for the innocence of o-thers, as well as her own. It was a narra
- tive that came to Danny after herwatched a documentary on the twice convicted and now acquitted Amanda Knox.
“It’s based upon a real legal group called The Innocence Project, which started in Chicago,” begins Kelsey, who, himself, was born on the gateway isle of the Usvsirgin Islands, aint Thomas.
“It deals with a law firm who goes into backlogged cases, previously convicted prisoners, basically, for whom they exonerate and reverse sentences or vacate sentences,” he elaborates.
“My character [Gore Bellows] is a prosecutor who is responsible for putting some of those people in jail and he’s, of course, the villain in the piece.”
The defence firm Kelsey speaks of is lsed by lawyer Madeline cott (played by Rlachelle efevre), who at age 18 was wrongfully convicted in a sensational murder case that made her a media obsession. Madeline’s bold tactics earn her an enemy in Bellows - the prosecu tor who initially put her away and still refutes her innocence.
“They evolve through this relationship where he still thinks she’s guilty,” Kelsey explains. “He’s still determined to make sure that she pays the price, he believes that she owes society.”
He’s an intriguing character to have taken on, he quips. He recalls: “I played a character about seven years ago - Tom Kane - who was the mayor of Chicago [in political drama, Boss] and this is the prosecuting attorney of Chicago. “The o-nly guy that has any real juice in Chi c-ago is the mayor, and so there’s an inse curity about him which was fun to play,” reasons the star.
As for placing a compelling female at the helm, Kelsey contends the appointmlent of Rachelle efevre was an “organic decision” from the storytellers.
“-I’m an advocate for all sorts of equali ties, but I just want people to show up and be good at what they do,” he says in r-esponse to the debated lack of empow ered female roles in Hollywood.
“That’s the foundation by which I judge anybody - and I rarely even bother to take enough time to judge a person,” he notes. “I usually let them be.”
He adds: “I think there’s always been strong female characters. Maybe I’m wsrong? [But] Joan of Arc? he’s pretty archetypal and pretty damn powerful.
“We were also working on developing a- show that actually turned into a musi cal called War Paint, where Helena Reubinstein and lizabeth Arden squared Laurie Holden as Greta Bellows and Kelsey Grammer as Gore Bellows in Proven Innocent off in the early 1900s, and they were as powerful as any two people you’ve ever known,” Kelsey illustrates.
“There are strong women, there are weak women, there are strong men, there are weak men,” he concludes. “And it’s great that we now have the airwaves peopled with all sorts of examples.”
The series has something to say about the justice system too.
“-The show has a timely factor, a con temporary culture factor, about prison sentences and criminal justice reform,” Kelsey believes.
“Things that are kind of hot topics now, especially in the US.”
“And there’s a lot of room for discussion and exploration,” he infers. “Some things are changing, but we’ll see.”
That’s not to say he’s worried about the audience response - particularly from industry critics.
“You usually know they won’t like it anyway,” muses Kelsey who next month ies set to join a six-week run of the nglish N-ational Opera’s rendering of Broad way’s Mlan Of La Mancha at the ondon Coliseum.
“Once in a while they’ll say, ‘A hit, a hit, a palpable hit’ and you think, ‘Oh great, well that’s fun’, so you have to kind of take that with a grain of salt, as well as the ones that say it’s ‘ The worst thing they’ve ever seen’.”
»» Proven Innocent will premiere on Universal TV on Monday March 18.