Kelsey Grammer

Kelsey Grammer, an actor transformed by tragedy… this week on Firing Line. 

 

GRAMMER: I wanted to reacquaint myself with all the beauty that we had known together, all the love we shared. And it was a magnificent love, this brotherly, sisterly love that we had. 

 

Kelsey Grammer’s sister Karen was viciously murdered just before her 19th birthday – raped and stabbed 42 times.

 

GRAMMER: I was defined as the man that was gonna look after his sister. And of course, that was taken away from me. 

 

Fifty years later, he explores guilt, grief, and also gratitude in a new book: “Karen, A Brother Remembers.”

 

FRASIER: This couch is an exact replica of the one Coco Chanel had in her Paris atelier.

 

He says it was his work that gave him some respite from the pain.

GRAMMER: So I had this almost miraculous outlet that made me a whole person. I was whole in that moment when I was working. 

Looking back on a life of both tragedy and triumph…what does Kelsey Grammer say now?

 

INTERVIEW

HOOVER: Kelsey Grammer, welcome to Firing Line. 

GRAMMER: Thank you, Margaret. 

HOOVER: Your new book, “Karen, A Brother Remembers,” is a reflection on the life, the legacy, and the murder of your sister Karen, who was taken just weeks before her 19th birthday, almost 50 years ago. You write that the book is a life book, not a grief book. Why?

GRAMMER: It’s actually kind of an inside baseball response I have for you. When I first started to write I had been sort of told, given a mission, that I should tell my sister’s story.  So about six weeks after that had come across, and I decided I would try to like sort of pick up the mantle of that obligation I started to jot down notes. As I proceeded it turned into about eight pages of stuff that was kind of just stream of consciousness. And then Karen’s voice came into my head and I started thinking well this is, I think I’m writing a book now. 

HOOVER: You were 20 years old when Karen died. She still has had an enormous influence on your life. 

GRAMMER: Yeah.

HOOVER: Who was Karen Elisa Grammer? 

GRAMMER: She was my, you know, North Star. She was my girl. She was my younger sister. 

HOOVER: You felt very protective of her. 

GRAMMER: Well I’m a big brother you know that’s– at least in the usual sort of karmic energy way of being a big brother you look after your sister. You protect her.

HOOVER: That’s, you write about that being one of the major struggles that you had to contend with, was that you felt that you weren’t able to protect her from that fate. 

GRAMMER: Yeah, and I kicked myself for a long time about that. And I still can, if I, you know, if I really let it go. 

HOOVER: If you—

GRAMMER: Yeah, It’s this thing you’re just supposed to do. And I know we all started with all this you know, what’s the traditional male role and all that, what role does it play now? But for me, it’s our definition. And I was defined as the man that was gonna look after his sister. And of course, that was taken away from me. 

HOOVER: You write, and you’ve alluded to it so far in our conversation, that a medium named Esther, told you it was time to write Karen’s story.

GRAMMER: Mmhm.

HOOVER:  For the uninitiated, just explain, like, what is a medium? 

GRAMMER: Right, well I tried to do it in the book as well. Mediumship is interesting, something I’ve explored for a long time. Probably because of Karen, but also because I like knowing about what’s going on, on every possible level. Mediumship is, as I’ve discovered through many different sources, a way of healing. It is offered and given to people who have this gift, I think, to bring comfort and solace to people who are in pain. 

HOOVER: And a medium is a person who is able to communicate with people who have died.

GRAMMER: Who is able to communicate with the other side. Who have crossed over. Yeah.

HOOVER: And this is, Karen’s tragic death is not and was not your first experience with loss. 

GRAMMER: No. 

HOOVER: And you write about this pretty extensively in your book. I mean, you lost the person who played the role of your father, your grandfather when you were 12. Your father was also murdered. You have two half-brothers who were killed…

GRAMMER: Shark attack, yeah. 

HOOVER: …tragically in an apparent shark attack. How has mediumship helped you heal? 

GRAMMER: Well, mediumship has just brought me information. The healing part is kind of up to me, and coming to terms with some of it, and understanding that I’m actually really still intimate with the people I loved who are gone. That’s taken a long time, which is probably why it took me so long to write the book, because I just wasn’t in the right place. I could not get off the grief part. And so it almost ruined my ability to remember Karen in a good way, in a loving way. And I wanted to get off on a journey that would actually reacquaint myself with all the beauty that we had known together, all the love we shared. And it was a magnificent love, this brotherly, sisterly love that we had. And it was pure and innocent. And I had forgotten it. And I was really happy that I got to meet her again, to see her again, to see your smile again, to know some parts about her life that I hadn’t known, like when she went off to college. And it was a remarkable, almost a detective journey that I took to uncover certain people that could help me find Karen in her days that I didn’t know her, which was the last year of her life, basically. 

HOOVER: You, in the process of writing the book, returned to Colorado Springs and to the specific sites of her abduction and of her murder. What compelled you to go there? 

GRAMMER: Yeah, I thought that the book needed to be authentic and needed to experiential. So that what I felt for Karen and what I did in terms of the book was to take people by the hand, the reader by the hand and say, come take this trip with me, come take this walk with me in Karen’s footsteps and in her final moments. And I guess in the end it was because I want to actually try to help people heal who have been through the same kind of thing. And it’s just. It’s to give the credible telling of the tale so that people can say, yeah, that’s how it is. Yeah that happened to mine. That happened with the person I loved. That’s different, but it’s, that how it is. So that they can actually stand, you know, in my story with me and carry theirs. And so that I can actually console from a place of authority on it, you know, so they can recognize we are twinned in grief. 

HOOVER: Grief of course is a theme. You write about how grief has kept you, over the last fifty years, in many cases from living.

GRAMMER: Yeah.

HOOVER: You even just referenced that.

GRAMMER: Yeah

HOOVER: How?

GRAMMER: In projecting my affection on anybody new. I always corrupted my affection for them with the loss I had known elsewhere and anticipated the loss, the possible loss of them. And that kept me from going fully into almost anything because I just didn’t want to lose like that again. And of course, I realized that loving is really important. You’ve got to do it fully and go for it. And you may know that you’re setting yourself up for extraordinary pain, but it’s worth it. 

HOOVER: You write in the book that you also had a lot of destructive behaviors. You write about addictions, abuse of alcohol, drugs. And you say that your destructive behavior was, quote, my way of burying myself along with Karen.

GRAMMER: Yeah.

HOOVER:  How did you ultimately confront and overcome? 

GRAMMER: Well, it’s interesting. That was— That’s like one lens through which you can look at it, and one that I did look at. But also, there’s the dichotomy of, like, I really had a huge life force that I would not surrender. And so, you know, as— And that was probably the more righteous part of me. The soul energy that I have comes from that desire to live life fully and be strong in it. And so I didn’t surrender that. I just, sometimes I just couldn’t. I fell in love with being a little numb. I thought, you know, this is really hard. I don’t really like it. So I have to just take a break once in a while. And so I got a little pulled in. I mean I really enjoyed some of it in the beginning. I, like, really enjoyed it. And so it became kind of seductive. And the good times stopped being good, that’s all. And eventually – I mean it’s 30 years ago now so— But I mean, I thank God that I was able to kind of like change all that. 

HOOVER: Well, you write in your first book, “So Far,” you wrote that, quote, when life fails you, art can be salvation. 

GRAMMER: Yeah.

HOOVER: Did your acting help you through- 

GRAMMER: Thanks for checking that out. Yeah, that actually is true. 

HOOVER: Did your acting help you through your grief? 

GRAMMER: Well, I always lived a full life as an actor. I mean, my imagination, my skills, my physical abilities to move or to feel and to express were always fully engaged by acting. So I had this almost miraculous outlet that made me a whole person. I was whole in that moment and when I was working. 

HOOVER: And yet, I mean, you reflected on some of your times when the country came to know you and you were one of the— you know your characters just permeated the popular culture. And yet in those moments when you were, you know, Dr. Crane, at the height of your success and your fame, you were also struggling with your own demons in a very dark way. That paradox really strikes me. How do you reflect on that now? 

GRAMMER: In reflection, I look at it, it’s just, uh, I lived a balanced life of a man that was staggering on one side and completely competent on the other. 

HOOVER: Yeah. 

GRAMMER: And we were just like this. 

HOOVER: How, what is this experience, writing about Karen, spending three years or returning to piecing together her murder, her life, what has the experience taught you about grief? 

GRAMMER: It really did teach me that you’re never going to get rid of it. And the notion that you can is foolhardy. But I went back and I reacquainted myself with the joy that I had with her. I said, I remember when I read it in the book, when we were recording it, there’s a moment I say, to know joy again, that joy. And that’s when the woman who was sort of directing the reading part, she said, ‘oh my God, I just saw her, I just saw Karen.’ Wonderful.

HOOVER: Wow.

GRAMMER: Yeah.

GRAMMER: So that joy. 

HOOVER: I found some of the parts that were hardest to read, oftentimes sandwiched between lighter musings. 

GRAMMER: Yeah. 

HOOVER: And I wondered if that was because it’s just difficult to spend time in that hardship, and so it was easier to get distracted or to—

GRAMMER: I think the writing reflects exactly what I was going through at the time. It was hard on my family, honestly. I always get emotional about this, but when I finally finished the book, I turned to Kayte and I said— and I typed the last word, and I thought, that’s it. ‘Forever yours, Kelsey.’ I said, I’m finished. And then she looked at me and said, I’ve missed you. But she let me take the journey. She let me take it. And that was really courageous of her. And supportive. I mean, you know, a big deal.

HOOVER: It’s a real partnership… 

GRAMMER: Yeah.

HOOVER: …and real love.

GRAMMER: Yeah.

HOOVER: One of your sister’s killers is still alive. 

GRAMMER: He’s the actual guy who killed her. 

HOOVER: Freddie Glenn, and you have fought for some time to ensure that when he comes up from parole he stays behind bars. In the book you refer to him as a quote, “miserable detestable creature.” But you also spend a lot of time talking about how you have forgiven him. How does one forgive such a horrific crime like this? 

GRAMMER: There is no real value in a vengeful mind. It’s understandable. Hate, however, devours you. It doesn’t take care of the other person. It takes care of you and destroys you. I guess that from a, you know, from God’s-eye point of view is what drew me to the notion that I actually have to forgive him. I mean, he is, after all, my brother on a soul level. And that’s a very hard thing to arrive at, but I did. 

HOOVER: How did you? 

GRAMMER: Because I believe in God. 

HOOVER: So your faith brought you to forgive?

GRAMMER: Yeah, somehow that’s what’s gonna resolve this all for people, you know, and he’s got his stuff to go through and what he did is— It’s not forgivable, but it is, on the spiritual plane it is. So I just have to put that there and understand that whatever evil it was that he decided to join hands with, that’s his journey not mine. 

HOOVER: He’ll come up for parole in 2027. 

GRAMMER: I’ll do my best to keep him in again. He’s found another couple of alleyways to try to explore. The only thing that was interesting about— interesting or torturous, I guess you’d rather say, was the very first time he came up for parole, I thought, what is this? How does this happen? Because he was sentenced to go to the death penalty. He received the death originally. And I thought, how does this kind of thing happen in this, whatever that energy is that is the criminal justice system. Cruel and unusual punishment, I read as, yeah, okay, I get that. That’s why we don’t do certain things, why we don’t punish people the same way they do their own stuff. But I thought, this is cruel and unusual that I now have to relive everything that happened to my sister to try to keep this guy in jail. Why would they do this to me, to family members? And they do it all the time. And that’s when one of the people that was helping me at the Colorado Department of Corrections said, well, they don’t call it the victim’s justice system, do they? They call it the criminal justice system. 

HOOVER: So you’re, just to summarize your view, you’ve forgiven him on a spiritual plane, but you still believe-

GRAMMER: Stay there. 

HOOVER:  –he needs to remain in prison. 

GRAMMER: Absolutely. No, he made his choice.

HOOVER: Yeah.

GRAMMER: It’s about consequences based on choice. He made a decision that that person’s life was worth your taking. So you gave yours up. 

HOOVER: In 1967, Ronald Reagan was the newly elected governor of California and he was on the program with William F Buckley, Jr. that precursor, predecessor to this program, and the death penalty came up.

BUCKLEY: You and I live in a very progressive universe, as far as this is concerned. When we die, we’ll have four or five times as many constitutional rights as when we were born. Now, for instance, recently in California, I understand a federal court told the prison authorities here they couldn’t proceed with some executions that were required under California law. Was there a federal constitutional question involved there? 

REAGAN: Well, I think there was a certain violation of something by way of the judicial process. As a matter of fact, I’m breathlessly waiting for that same judge now to pass an edict that there can’t be any more crimes of violence. 

HOOVER: Freddie Glenn was initially sentenced to death. 

GRAMMER: Yes. 

HOOVER: But his sentence was commuted to life in prison when the Colorado Supreme Court overturned the death penalty in Colorado. How did you feel about him not receiving the death penalty? 

GRAMMER: I thought that that was justice. I thought-

HOOVER:  The death penalty would have been justice. 

GRAMMER: Yeah, would’ve been justice. But I’m also glad he wasn’t killed. For my sister’s sake, for my own sake, whatever, I’m also glad he wasn’t killed. But I don’t want to see him in population—

HOOVER: So you wouldn’t have felt better or vengeance-

GRAMMER: No.

HOOVER:  -or fulfillment by him also dying? 

GRAMMER: No. 

BEING CONSERVATIVE IN HOLLYWOOD

HOOVER: I wanted to show you Ronald Reagan because, of course, it’s a rare thing to be a conservative in Hollywood. And, you know, you have not shied away from your views politically. One time you said being a Republican was, quote, the worst thing you could be in Hollywood. 

GRAMMER: Exactly, which also made it appealing to me, cause I am

HOOVER:  Because you’re a contrarian.

GRAMMER: I’m still a rebel. I’m a contrarian.

HOOVER: You’re a contrarian.

GRAMMER: There’s no question.

HOOVER: You’re a contrarian.

GRAMMER:  I always accuse my children of being contrarian, because I recognize it. 

HOOVER: Yeah it takes one to know one. 

GRAMMER: Yeah.

HOOVER: I’ve heard you also sort of refer to yourself as a certain kind of Republican, like a compassionate conservative, along the lines of George W. Bush. 

GRAMMER: Yeah, you know, they keep coming up with— They try to just make up descriptions based upon— it’s in sort of a response of what the enemy try to describe us as, who regard us as their enemies. You cannot actually go down the road of language with people who are trying to define you as evil. There’s no reason to say, but I’m a compassionate conservative. Well, you know what, I’m, I’m a liberal guy. But I believe that is best embraced by the conservative movement. I’ve always believed that.

HOOVER: Liberalism in its classical sense. 

GRAMMER: In its classic sense. You know, live and let live. Instead of which I find to be the most sort of strident tone of the left, which is usually, ‘you will live as you’re told.’

HOOVER: Yeah.

GRAMMER: And that closes out of town for me. 

HOOVER: How have you reflected on this sort of shift? I mean, maybe you don’t see a shift, but I sort of see a shifting. I’m also a lifelong Republican, as viewers know. How do you reflect on the shift in the Republican Party from the days of George W Bush through sort of Romney and McCain and then to President Trump? 

GRAMMER: Right. The heartbeat of America. was not so present in the packaging before. I think we’re too wrapped up in trying to respond to people calling us you know evil and stuff like that. It’s just ridiculous. There is no evil in the movement, there just isn’t. Now I think that the language that we’ve heard of late, which of course has erupted into a cacophony of real hate speech. But from Donald Trump and President Trump at this point, his focus is really on the common man. And it seems alarming that, oh, he’s a billionaire, billionaire friends, whatever,-

HOOVER: Yeah.

GRAMMER: –what’s the other, oligarchy. That’s the big one these days. Well, we have, thank God we have a word from our previous president, Joe Biden, which is “malarkey.” Oligarchy is malarky, but okay. I think the Republican party has made pretty much of a sea change into representing more of the common man. And I think before that, yes there was an alignment with people who’ve done very well and wanted the government to leave their taxes alone. Not because they weren’t willing to pay tax but because it was being wasted.

HOOVER: So it sounds like you’re still, you still are very supportive of sort of the classical modern American conservative tenets, right? 

GRAMMER: Absolutely.

HOOVER: The sort of small government, individual freedom, individual liberty. 

GRAMMER: Fleet of foot, effective, small government. You know, give me the freedom to embody and to achieve what my imagination can take me to, and I’ll give back when I can, and I’d be delighted to. I think it’s an honor to do so. But I don’t want people taking my money or stealing from me in the name of something that’s a noble cause and then finding out that they’re actually wasting it. that’s just not right, that’s just  not fair. 

TARIFF ON FOREIGN FILMS

HOOVER: Just this week, President Trump has called for 100% tariffs on all films made outside…

GRAMMER: Yeah I heard that.

HOOVER: …the United States. And he claims Hollywood is, quote, “dying a very fast death,” and that other nations who are luring our film productions abroad constitute a national security threat. As a conservative, it strikes me that perhaps you could incentivize through rebates and you could do what other countries do that make it so attractive to go make movies in other places. Is tariffs the right way to go about this? 

GRAMMER: Well, I don’t really know about tariffs per se, but I do think they’re a good idea in the interim. In terms of the film industry, I think we are, we have been dealing with a shrinking amount of film work going on in Hollywood. 

HOOVER: Mm hmm,

GRAMMER: It’s because it’s cheaper to make a movie elsewhere. It’s that simple.

HOOVER: Right.

GRAMMER: The solution of saying we’re going to put a hundred percent tariff on a film that’s shot in England or shot elsewhere would possibly bring filming back to California. Might help guys work more there. I don’t know, because if it was made that much more expensive. But it was made really expensive by a series of arrangements we’ve made and by a lack of focus by our government in California at least, and a lack I think of respect for the film industry. They’ve gotten around lately to where it’s, they’re disincentivizing filmmaking in Hollywood…

HOOVER: Right.

GRAMMER: …which seems like a mistake. Now is his idea of going back and attacking people who are making films elsewhere?… Well, you went where the least resistance was. 

HOOVER: So, Jon Voight has been chosen by Trump to be his ambassador to Hollywood. 

GRAMMER: Right.

HOOVER: This is not an official position.

GRAMMER: No, I know.

HOOVER: Not Senate confirmed. But Jon Voigt even released a statement saying that the proper policy that would be most productive would include incentives…

GRAMMER: Yeah.

HOOVER: …subsidies, changes of the tax code to make domestic production more attractive. And that he said only in a very limited and restrained way, in certain circumstances, would tariffs be recommended. And the fear is that tariffs would just choke off the remaining life out of the business. Like, the volume would drop. 

GRAMMER: It may be true. I don’t know. We might just make fewer movies. Who knows, maybe that would be a blessing. I actually don’t know. Film work is a funny, funny gig. 

HOOVER: Is filming The Avengers: Doomsday in England a national security threat? 

GRAMMER: I don’t know. Yeah, I’m shooting in London.

HOOVER: That’s why I asked. Because that was what, I mean that’s what President Trump said. He said, you know, filming abroad is a national security threat. So I want to know, is filming Avengers: Doomsday in England a national security threat? 

GRAMMER: I think that may be a little exaggerated for effect, you know. 

HOOVER: Well, the bully public will do that. 

GRAMMER: First you have to try to sell an idea. It’s okay. Jon is a very good friend of mine, and we actually sit on the couch from time to time together. He has actually looked at me and said, well, you know, you and I, we’re blackballed. And now, see, I’ve never really thought that. But on some level, there’s some people we don’t work with. And there is, it’s anathema to have a C next to your name, or an R. But that’s okay. 

HOOVER: You’ve written in your book, this is the final question, about how Karen was once discussing with a friend about your future, and she said— her prediction for you was that, quote, ‘Kelsey is going to do it all.’ You’ve starred in two of the most beloved sitcoms in modern American history. You have won six Emmys. You have three Golden Globes, one Tony, seven children. Do you still have more to do? 

GRAMMER: Oh yeah, because I’m not quitting. There’s tons more to do. And for Karen, yeah, there was this to do, but there’s more to do. And I intend to do some more stuff. And the major thing that’s been so wonderful is that I’ve received texts from people saying, oh, I just read about Karen. I’ve seen her name in print now. I’ve seen her, I’ve heard her name on the lips of people. And that has made me joyful.

HOOVER: Kelsey Grammer, for your honest and authentic sharing, 

GRAMMER: Thank you.

HOOVER: And for the book, thank you for joining me on Firing Line.

GRAMMER: It’s a pleasure. Thank you.