Christmas comes early for some people, and this year, Kelsey Grammer is one of them.
The three-time “Frasier” Emmy winner plays the son of Santa Claus in “Mr. St. Nick,” a new comedy-fantasy movie that ABC airs Sunday as a “Wonderful World of Disney” offering. Meant to inherit the duties of his dad (Charles Durning), the younger Claus is living it up incognito in Miami. His Internet site does charitable work for him, but it’s hit by scandal just as Santa is urging him to uphold the family name more traditionally.
Co-produced by Grammer’s wife, Camille, and co-starring Katherine Helmond (“Soap”) and British actor Brian Bedford, “Mr. St. Nick” fills Grammer’s criteria for making a holiday movie. “About four or five years ago, (producer) Robert Halmi Sr. came to me and mentioned he had this script he wanted me to do,” he says. “He believes I’m like Cary Grant, he said, so he thought this was the right role for the right person. That was on the heels of Tim Allen’s Christmas movie (the original `Santa Clause’), and I didn’t really think it was my time.”
Halmi revisited the idea last spring with Grammer, who recalls, “He said, ‘Now that you’ve had a baby, don’t you think you should start building a body of work with things you can show her? This movie is just perfect for that.’ I said, ‘Well, all right, you son of a gun. You’ve got me.’ When he added that I could also be involved in producing it, the deal was done.”
Despite the angle Halmi pitched, Grammer feels he’s mostly done projects for all ages: “I’ve always tried to do what I think is good family entertainment. ‘Frasier’ has always been a show that everyone can watch. We may get into some sexual innuendo, but we never cross the line, and I’ve always been very proud of that. I love Christmas, though, and this just came together in the right way.
“The great thing about having done ‘Frasier’ for so long,” Grammer adds, “is that it’s given me a credential that says, ‘We know him, and it’s fun to watch him.’ The audience comes, and if I’m doing my job right, it takes them only a minute to get through the Frasier screen and they’re into the next (character I’m playing). The series gives me the accessibility to try something else. That’s nice.”
“Mr. St. Nick” was filmed last summer during Grammer’s “Frasier” hiatus, but he maintains it wasn’t hard to tap into yuletide spirit. “I grew up in Florida, so Christmas always meant warm weather to me. I’m one of those people who took Dickens’ advice to heart, trying to keep the spirit of Christmas alive all year. I love the holiday, so with this movie, I was right in pocket.”
Grammer has a lot going on this TV season, since he’s executive-producing two other series — “In-Laws” on NBC and “Girlfriends” on UPN — while still working on “Frasier,” which he occasionally directs (as with the season-opener about the wedding of Daphne and Niles). “It’s a little confusing, but I kind of like it,” he muses. “Since I have so little else in my life that’s chaotic at this point, I try to enforce a certain amount of chaos. I’m just familiar with that feeling. My wife still says, ‘Honey, you’ve got to take a break, you need to relax,’ and she’s right. I try to behave on weekends.”
