’Cheers’ Cast Recalls Playing Hooky, Getting High on Mushrooms
Cheers remains one of the most legendary sitcoms of all time. Considering its lengthy run, there are, of course, numerous legendary moments behind the scenes between the cast. One such moment was discussed recently on Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson’s podcast Where Everybody Knows Your Name.
In this episode, George Wendt (NORM!) was a guest, and the three Cheers castmates talked about a day when all of the male cast members called in sick and played hooky. This day of shooting was described as “very female-heavy,” so the male cast members really didn’t have much to do that day.
So, how did they spend the day? Apparently, John Ratzenberger, who played mailman Cliff Clavin, had just bought a boat, and they went to Catalina. (And no, it wasn’t for the Catalina Wine Mixer, even though Danson’s future wife, Mary Steenburgen, famously was there in the comedy hit Step Brothers.)
For most of this story, Kelsey Grammer is asleep below deck after being up all night playing cards, so he misses when Danson and Harrelson take mushrooms and start tripping.
Danson says, “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 out on a boat.’ 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.'”
Spoiler: Danson’s trip takes a turn for the worse, to the point where he has trouble breathing and forgets to breathe.
Danson then joins Wendt above deck, who could tell Sam Malone wasn’t well and having a bad high. Danson, in telling this story on the podcast, reminds Wendt, “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.'”
As if Danson’s mushroom trip couldn’t get any worse, he recalls seeing Harrelson join him, Wendt and Ratzenberger above deck. He was hallucinating at this point and describes Harrelson as looking “skeletal.”
“He looked like Woody the skeleton in my eyes,” said Danson. “That was my only kind of visual buzz from mushrooms.”
Despite all of this, Danson said he now “might be up to trying the experience again.” We have one word for you, Ted, that you should consider: Microdosing.
