“Frasier” and “Cheers” star Kelsey Grammer has made a big move in his career — from comedy to drama — with a new TV series debuting on Starz 10/21. In Boss, he plays a ruthless, power-hungry mayor. Grammer, 56, said on 8/4 he decided to return to his roots: “It has always been in my mind to play a more serious role. I didn’t start out as a comic actor. I started out in classical theater, playing tragedies. That was my first love…This particular role couldn’t have taken place directly after ‘Frasier’. It would have been too big of a jolt.”
Grammer plays Tom Kane, the brooding, manipulative, fictional mayor of Chicago who will do anything to stay in power. But he also has a degenerative brain disease that he is trying to keep secret from family and political foes alike.
Grammer’s more recent TV comedies “Back to You” and “Hank” were flops, and his personal life hit the headlines in 2010 in a messy public divorce from third wife Camille, while she was appearing in the reality show “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”.
Grammer said he personally asked for his 2009 TV comedy “Hank” to be axed in its first season because it was not working. It was “a catalyst for the most extraordinary journey of my life on a personal and professional level.”
