Kelsey Grammer
Appearances
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Did you leave anything sort of in the background? Did you skip something? Because we got just this set of time, whatever it is. And that was the only question that came with it. But why haven't you had the balls to go out and Start a music career. You know, that's because I love music, and that's the first thing that got me into this. Why did you step away from it?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Why did you not just say, oh, I'm going to go be a composer now? So I've still got this still dancing in there, and I don't want to leave anything undone. So there is that other thing. But maybe that's when I started thinking, so why don't I write a song with my kids?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Why don't I do music with them? So I don't know. Would that be the courageous thing to do? I mean, maybe I should chuck all this and then go do, spend my life in the studio with the kids. I don't know. These things just crop up because it's, to do what he's given unto you, it's like, well, I've got something there that I still think, well, maybe I should be doing that.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I've written a bunch of songs and maybe somebody should hear them, you know? I don't know. I wish I had the true courage, but I've always talked myself out of it thinking it wasn't quite good enough.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And there's that old bugaboo.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah. You know, maybe it's supposed to be sort of just a hobby. Yeah, I don't know. But it was the first thing that called to me when I was a kid, so that was the first thing. That was...
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Pretty much I have, yeah. There's the one thing that maybe it's just too personal. I don't know. There's still that part that doesn't like to be told it wasn't good enough. Yeah. I don't know. So we'll see. Yeah.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And then, yeah.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I think our, I think our, it'd be, well, yeah, it'd be neat to find that sort of family mission. That'd be kind of fun. But I, I'm okay. I feel like I'm doing all right. There's still more to try, more to explore, and to cherish your children. I mean, I do cherish them. They're quite wonderful, even in moments when I think, how can I help them? I'm at a loss a lot of the time.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
How can I actually help them without doing damage? I'm thinking of the movie Patton now. George C. Scott standing in the middle of a, there's a battle scene and he says, war. compared to all other human endeavors, shrinks to insignificance. I mean, all other human endeavors shrink to insignificance in the face of war. And I thought, boy, that's certainly a warrior's way of looking at things.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
But there is something to be said about it, something to be said for that. And, of course, war is Satan's invention. And we're born here. We're born into, I mean, I've learned this lately, but we are born into a kind of warfare. And we have to fight for the good.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
It's a realm in which we are assigned to come here and fight for our identity, fight for our freedoms, fight for our faith. It's not supposed to be for the faint of heart, even though Jesus tells us the meek shall inherit the earth. It's a hostile environment sometimes.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And just another one of those sermons I heard where it said, you know, Jesus doesn't promise us an easy journey, just a safe landing. Yeah, I get it. Because it's, you know, you got to do your part too.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I don't tend to hide a lot. But there are certain things I won't just share with people because it's like too much information. If I'm trying to impart something that's honest, it has to be from me, it has to be the truth. What I've observed, what I've thought about. I love the idea that, and this took years to finally figure out, but lying is so uncomfortable.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And once you start to lie, you have to remember it. And I don't like having to be, what did I say exactly? So now I know that if I tell the truth in the moment, if anybody ever wants to call me up again, well, it was the truth, so it's gonna be the same story. And so it's a great way of sort of discarding the misery of trying to cover your, whatever, cover your tracks.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah, and then you don't have to, so that somebody's like, oh yeah, yeah, that's what you said 10 years ago.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah, because I'm honest. Writing truth in the book was very important to me, to make sure that every bit was true. And as people do offer interrogatories to me about the book or a certain section or something, I'll say, oh, that reminds me of something that's a little bit different. But then they'll say, yeah, that's what you said. Yeah. So I like not having to cover up. It's okay.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And the acting question is, it was always a great gift to know it was the place where you didn't have to lie at all. Acting is, you know, the misconception being that actors are good liars. They aren't actually. They're only good if it sounds like they're telling the truth, which means they are telling the truth. It's just with somebody else's mask. It was given you by a writer.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
or given you by a great playwright or whatever. So you've got this veneer that allows you to tell the truth, the absolute truth, to be completely uncovered. Because if you aren't, then it's going to feel like you're not doing a very good job.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Oh, yeah, yeah. We went down and it was a fundraiser for dogs.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah. Okay. Kimberly Guilfoyle was there, though, and she's sort of the chair of it for this particular event. So we took the kids, and we had a nice time. It was lovely. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I've been a conservative. I've been a conservative for a long time in Hollywood.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
You know, it's just my core values are basically are live and let live. And I think that's what the conservative message is. And, you know, some people might disagree with me, but the other guys lately, it tends to be, you know, you will live as you're told. And that just closes out of town for me.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah. There was a part of me that thought maybe I'm supposed to do something in that world. Maybe that's coming up. Maybe I'm old enough now to kind of maybe handle that and do it without too much ego and really try to do the world some good. Maybe that's the place that I'm being pulled. I don't know.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I have in my past.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
But it's a big commitment.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
But you want to do the world some good and you want to save people. And this is all about saving people in the end. And I think that might be a direction. I don't know.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I don't know. It's circling back. I rejected it 20 years ago. Maybe.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Maybe. We'll see.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah, I did, yeah. A lot of what Donald Trump was saying just aligned more with what I think about the direction a government should take, that it should be for the people. I do believe he means that. And so that's... In demonstration, I've seen that... That's what a lot of politicians say, but... The people yelling and screaming about money and stuff like that tend to be politicians.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And I'm thinking, why are you so upset? What is it you're losing? Why are you a rich person in Congress? I have real issues about that. I think if you can go to Washington rich, fine. But if you got rich being in Washington, you should be out. Adios. It was designed to be, you go for one term as a congressman, one.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Some guy from the neighborhood goes for two years and comes back and some other guy goes. Or gal, whatever, whomever. And you don't stay there. And you go be a senator, great, go for six years. Maybe you're a little wiser, maybe a little bit older. You know, the energy of Congress, of the House of Representatives is immediate in the moment and what people need right then.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And the senators are meant to say, well, let's slow down a little bit. Let's think about it. And maybe that's a good idea. Maybe it isn't. Maybe we need to balance it with this. Okay. That made sense to me. You get to stay for one term. And George Washington stayed for two. That was it. Executive branch. A little guidance.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah, you can appoint judges for a lifetime because that's what they're good at. Okay. And they balance it in terms of squaring things with the originalist vision of what it is. And that's all for the people. I walked into Washington, D.C. recently for the dedication of the World War I monument. And it's a beautiful, beautiful piece. It took them over 100 years to do it, to get one there.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And they've done other monuments for other wars that I was celebrating the sacrifice. But when I walked, I took five minutes to walk from the hotel I was in to go over to where the presentation was being made. Three people in five minutes walked up to me and handed me a card and said, hi, I'm a lobbyist. And I just thought, you do not belong here. I mean, I have some real issues about it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I don't like it. Whenever the car turns off and I'm standing still at a red light, I'm thinking, what congressman got this passed? What guy is making money on this? Because somebody got paid to do this. Because when I grew up, they said if your car stops and restarts all the time, you're just spending more fuel. So I thought, who conned them into thinking this is saving money?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Why do we have 10% corn fuel in our gasoline? Who from the Corn Belt made some money on that? So I look on big government with a real jauntest eye.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's... I think there's definitely an older man's game in Washington, D.C. that I think needs to be played well, wisdom being the important asset that you would bring. But if you're worried about, yeah, if there's something on the table, if there's a kickback coming, I mean, we are finding out, of course, now through a lot of people that there's some
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
There's some stuff been going on that isn't good. And I'm very glad that Donald Trump is there at this point, sort of engineering at least an uncovering of that. Whether or not we're going to cover it all back up and go back to it, I fear that that might happen. But I do fear that that's the end of the U.S. And I don't want that to happen.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
We can't afford what we're doing. Nobody can be that corrupt and continue. We are not meant to. If that's what we're doing with the money we're making, if that's what we're doing, and it's actually coming back to the government, if it's actually feeding those guys, no. It's supposed to be selfless. Selfless and to volunteer to make sure we're saving the people.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Save the people of the United States, not Washington, D.C. That's my two cents.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Well, only FDR thought he was worth it. And everybody else just voluntarily just said no. Which two? Because Washington set the precedent. George Washington was pretty much the greatest American who ever lived. There's still no question about it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And it was always about, like, when he gave up his sword, when he resigned his commission in the military, when he said, no, the leader of the country should not be a member of the military. That's inappropriate. These things that came from his sense of conviction were passed on to us as a country, and that was a great, great gift.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Absolutely.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Fresh blood.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I was in shock. I mean, I'm still in shock that Franklin Roosevelt was elected for a third term. I guess it was a wartime thing. I don't know. I thought that was really irresponsible.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I still look at it. It's like, what were you doing? What did you think about yourself that you thought that was something you should do? I still have questions for him. I'd like to ask him one day. Maybe I will.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Honestly, I don't know. When I was a little boy, I wanted to be the president. When I was a kid, I used to say to my mom, I want to grow up to be president. But I was taught that's the kind of country we live in. Any kid can become president if they believe in it. And I still believe that's basically true. When we were talking earlier, I was talking about the American dream.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
The American dream is a given. It's there. What I don't like hearing from my politicians is it's over. The American dream's over. I said, well... How did we get to that place? Why would you want to lower our expectations that much that you're now saying to me, well, we can't give you that, but what we can give you is we can make sure that somebody else's dream is smaller. I don't care for that.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
When I was 18, uh, I just didn't think I had any rights. I didn't think I had any right to say anything. And that's concurrent with a lot of the way people think a lot today. But if two people are involved in creating a child, then I think maybe two people should be involved in whether or not they're going to make that choice to take the life, to end it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
or to embrace it and say, okay, we're gonna do this, we made this together. I think all things, the most important thing about connecting sexually with someone is to understand that you have consequences. that you can either avoid or not avoid, but you need to know going in that you're making a decision that might actually have life-changing consequences. And I think we should tease her.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
There was a great special on years ago that I saw. It was a documentary about Three boys were set in a room and they played recordings of the same thing that eight girls were seeing. And they just listened to them. And the question was, who's the most attractive girl? And the three boys identified almost all. And there were, I think, two girls that were the most attractive girls to them.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Those two girls were ovulating. No one could quite figure that out. But that's a very powerful thing about life and the way this whole thing was designed. So a girl who was ready to be impregnated was, to them, sounded like the most attractive person.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yes. This is that radical forgiveness thing that I think plays into it. Kate turned me on to it more than I'd been aware of it. But I was always aware that I might get hanged dog once in a while. I get some bad advice from somebody and go, never going to do this. Never, never going to happen. Sort of, you know, shoot myself down there. But there was always that thing in me that goes like.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
That's a power that a young man needs to be advised about to understand that you are in the dance as this energy that's responding to the imperative to procreate. That's saying you want to procreate. If you don't want to... Do not have sex. Now, we've gone against that. We've gone against that a lot in terms of, you know, the society as we've played it out these days. Kids should have sex.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
You go out and have it. But there's a consequence there. And so I just think we should teach our boys that, well, maybe you should be responsible about it. You know, we don't. But it has changed a bit. Now it's, well, you can always just go take care of it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
after the fact rather than be a gentleman before the fact, which is either you don't do certain things, you experiment with other things, you put on a condom, you behave like a gentleman, and you don't put yourself in that position. A lot of people don't seem to think that's worth teaching anymore, and I don't know why. Look, you know, everybody's entitled to their way of thinking about it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
But I just think, why would you make a series of choices that has to end that way when you know you can actually make better choices? I guess my advice would be to make better choices. You know, I mean, who wants to have to have that on their head? Who actually goes through life thinking, oh, that's what I want to do?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah, I wrote about it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah, no, I wrote about it. I mean, I'm sitting there and it came from Karen. We were sitting there and I was writing about being in Gordon's hospital room. And then Karen came and said, you have to take care of something. You need to clean something up, purge something. She said, leave us together with Gordon for now and go back to New York with Jill.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
It's all in there.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah. Yeah.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
It's been on my mind. It's been on my heart. It's been on my heart for a long time. Yeah.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
get up, cut it out, you know, get up and get on with it. And so wherever that comes from, maybe that's, but that's the kind of hairpin I am as well. This is the guy that says, okay, I'm going to show you something then. So God bless you. Thank you for, you know, for messing with me.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
It is my hope that when people read what I've written and exposed and uncovered about my own life, I wanted to actually... comfort any woman, any mother who's lost a child, anyone who's lost a child. Everybody that's been through what we're talking about here has experienced a loss.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Whether or not they want to acknowledge it or fight it or they're angry about it or angry that someone would say, you know, I don't look down my nose at anybody that's had an abortion. I don't. I feel sad about it for people. Where before I used to think, well, yeah, of course you have the right to do whatever you want to do with your body. I do believe that.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
The consequences of another body being stopped from living is always, you know, consequence, war, warfare, abortion. They all ask the same question. Did I do the right thing? And I think a lot of people struggle with it, and my heart goes out to them. I mean, this is not a condemnation book either. It's not a grief book. It's also not a condemnation book. We are left with it sometimes.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
We wrestle with it as a society. And I wouldn't give us much of a chance at all if we weren't wrestling with it. I haven't talked about this. The moment I went with Jill, this is some time ago, of course. There were four guys sitting in there. And nobody was happy. No guy was happy there.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And then one of the girls came out who had just finished her procedure, and she sort of hopped out and said, well, that's taken care of. And it was just, there was like a collective moment of what seemed like deep sadness between these four young men. who were on a journey that they didn't mean to be on. Nobody feels good about ending a life. I don't think they do. That's where I come from.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
The consequence of, you know, what we do to ourselves, what we haunt ourselves with these ideas that maybe all my action took my sister's life. That was horrible. I did go through that for a while. And I dismissed it. You know, because like I said in the book, I said, God doesn't do it tit for tat that way. It doesn't actually work that way. Only man would think of that.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And that's, you know, that's the enemy. It's, you know. Always out there too. And you gotta remember that the enemy is present to invade our thoughts, to invade our lives, to kill our minds with doubt and fear. And you mentioned, you know, so much fear going on. I'm reading a book right now, Power Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale, published in 51, 52, something like that.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And there's a whole, I just came upon a section where it said, the primary thing right now is to keep people in fear. 1950 whatever. It's been going on for a long time. This is the warfare that we're born into. Fear. And fear is the mind killer. Fear is the soul killer. That's how you get in there.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
That other guy is. That's reminding me of another thing. This is the way life goes for me. I see these things. That Twilight Zone thing where the guy is walking along. He's died. He goes to the pearly gates. And he's got his dog with him. And he says, is this it? And St. Peter says, yeah. Yeah, come on in. He says, my dog can come? He says, no. He says, oh, Ellen. Oh, that's OK then.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I think I'll just keep walking a bit. So he keeps walking. He takes his dog with him and comes along another set of gates. What's this? He says, St. Peter says, well, welcome. Really? I can come on? You want a dog, too? He says, yeah, of course. He said, well, a fellow down the road. He said, he was St. Peter. He said, I couldn't bring my dog. And he said, oh, that's the other place.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
So, yeah, that's the other guy, doesn't it?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
There's a, there's a guy, there was a, There was a critic, John Simon was his name. He began writing maybe in the mid 70s and through maybe 2000. And he was so mean, personally mean to people, actors that he didn't like. He just called them fat or you're disgusting. And it became entertaining to see what nastiness he would conjure up in his next review. But it became stylish to write that way.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
He set a new kind of style that maybe was born out of the 70s, maybe was born out of what was going on in the 80s. I don't really know what happened. But it became the norm. It became the norm to be mean to people. And I thought that's, it was just such a wrong turn, I think. And I do sort of put it at his feet.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I mean, you know, theater critics are known for being sort of, you know, no turn unstoned. You know, that was sort of one of their things, yeah. But to do it charmingly, the British are a little bit better about doing it charmingly. This guy was directly personal and nasty. And I thought, boy, that really changed things. To dial back on one thing,
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
about a year and a half ago, somebody said, if you were president, what would you do differently? What would you want to do? I said, I would ask that we become a nation of good manners again. I just think we need to treat each other better, speak better to one another, honorifically, respect each other, whether we come from different sides, and just reinstate mannerly behavior.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Even in our kids, you know, shoes off the couch. My wife always points out, she says, she watches Disney shows where the kids jump up and down on a bed with their shoes on. I'm thinking, yeah, you're right. That's awful. How did we let that happen? But it's like there was a whole generation that was sort of broken into this idea that you just treat everything you have with disrespect.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
But if you respect nothing, you certainly won't respect yourself.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Love them for the opposition, yeah.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Well, I'll circle back to the book. I talk about that thing. There was a restaurant nearby, one of the places I live, that said, hate is not welcome here. I thought, well, you just said to people, you don't welcome hate, but you've written it all over your restaurant. How about... Love is invited. Love is welcome here. Instead of this hate thing. And I thought, well, okay, whatever your reason is.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
But if you're in the thrall of hatred, if you are in its charming way, you will never do anything but pave yourself the road to destruction. Hate will kill you.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Can't be a nice way to live. Yeah.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Kids. Kate. That's kind of it. That's it. Maybe that's why I said living in true courage would be just to live my life with them. I have to live my life, too, though. You've got to do one or the other. Put the mask on yourself first before you put it on the kid. Yeah.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And so... I'm off on another track all of a sudden. Kirstie Alley, when I was going to do my first appearance on The Tonight Show, Kirstie Alley said, oh, just go on and play a character. Just make up something and just have fun. And I thought... Okay, I get it. And she was kind of like that. She was always sort of entertaining.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Kirstie was, you know, keep a lot of hats in the air and say you can't spot you. She was such a wonderful person and so funny. But when she said that, I thought to myself, I don't think I have the energy to be able to do that. I think I just have to be able to be honest. So that's what I've always been. I've been as honest as I can be.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Once in a while I'll watch an appearance and think, oh, well, did I do that right? It doesn't really matter because I didn't do it I didn't dissemble, at least. You know, I didn't have to cover myself in any way. So it's easier. If there's some specific question I'm not comfortable with, I won't answer it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Then you're okay. Okay, that was it. I'm sorry.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
What are they, what are they falling in love with? If you're, if you're misrepresenting who you are, you know, if you're, if you're playing out something that you think is more attractive, I mean, we all try to be attractive. I get that. But what do you get? What are you offering?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
you know is it a is it a sham so you don't really want it to be yeah but you know i think i think what's interesting is there's a willingness now to open up to the idea that yeah you represent who you are and you and you are if you have a conservative bent you're you're okay that that that seems to be circulating more now than ever before and that's kind of a nice thing
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And I would never close the door on another person's gifts or talents because I think they might not agree with me on something.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
That's pathetic.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah. It doesn't even cross my mind.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
If someone has exposed themselves as being a narrow-minded person, I might find that unattractive and say, I'd rather work with somebody else. But that's a whole different thing. That's a very specific thing.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Oh. I mean, when I did Beast 20 years ago, I had three and a half hours to get into it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And I'd sit around a long time, you know, sort of like this. I'd watch golf, whatever, and then finally I'd get called to set and they were throwing, flying, you know, burning cars across the scene. It was a lot of fun, but I love the character. I love his... He is a stalwart, upright... serious-minded, decent man. And that's what I love about him.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Well, that came from a specific conversation I had with one of my kids about what it's like to be my daughter. She actually had said at one point, she said, you know, I just always wanted to be known as something other than just your daughter. And I said, well, you are. You are known for that. And I recognized in that a sort of a plea about one's own identity. You know, like, I'm this person.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I think of him as being the Martin Luther King of the mutants. He's just got a dignity and a dream and is willing to fight for it. But slow to action in terms of fighting. He will always fight every way he can not to have to fight. And then when it's the last possible response, then it's swift and severe. Give no quarter, expect none. And I like that about him. I feel like it's who I am.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And so when I got the chance to play Beast the first time, I thought, wow, this is really... I love this guy. And so I want to play... I've always wanted to play him again. We did a cameo appearance in The Marvels about... I guess it came out almost two years ago now. And the response was pretty big, pretty...
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
pretty positive and like oh my god it's beast you know it's they they did the you know they had the younger guy come on and play beast for a couple and uh i was i was a little little crestfallen over that i thought oh gee whiz but this is i'm really looking forward to it because i i think he's a man of uh real stature and that's what i intend to bring to him of uh
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
It's a great thing to be able to play someone you like. It's cool. I think he's a standout character.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah, he's the guy you'd want working for you. He's the guy you'd want to be in the position he's in.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
You know, goodness is the key to life. Love is the way.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yes, I would say you will discover yourself again, I think, because I think the things I learned as a boy are pretty universal. And you will discover a magnificent young woman that you wish you'd known, but now you do.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I loved cocktail onions.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely perfect.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Very cool. I did read the book aloud. I've recorded it now.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Kate actually said, I said, honey, are you going to read the book? And she said, I'm really excited to read it as soon as you record it. I think that's why she's going to enjoy it. But I realized as I read it that you'll fill in more blanks if you don't listen to me reading it. And I don't want to influence people not to. But I'd really like them to read it. Mm-hmm.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
as well as maybe listen to it, because you're gonna have a more personalized journey with me out of the way than the recording will give you. I hate to say that about myself, but I really think the words are, they just are so, words are so interesting that they work inside your head. And when I say them, I've sort of forced you to think of them a certain way.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah. So I would recommend doing both.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
There's a chemistry that happens with you and the written word. Yeah. It's just deeply personal.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And yes, I bear your name. But I want to be known for what I am. And I get that. That's OK. I even applaud it. It's an interesting mix to be involved in a relationship with one who has gone before, who happens to be your father, who has a reputation. And a reputation can cut in several ways. But it doesn't need to eclipse the person.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I didn't know what to say to her, but if she does know I'm proud of her, then she can at least read it here. It was really quite a specific say. You'll be able to say... You'll be able to look at this in the writing and go, oh, oh, he does understand this was difficult. Oh, he does know that that's a challenge.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Oh, and he is saying thank you for wanting to be in this business and doing the things that, you know, following in your footsteps. It came out of that idea that, you know, it can't be easy. And so it was just a it was just a nod to saying, I get it. I'm still your dad. I love you. And, you know. off you go.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
You've still got to get pushed out of the nest and say, you know, you're on your own anyway and you've done a good job.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Absolutely. Absolutely. I've had moments when I've thought, well, you know, we all can shine a light on a few things and say, you know, maybe you're going to empower yourself more if you don't allow this thing to keep, you know, giving you hiccups. Because we all stub our toes and I've stubbed mine several times. But
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
It's nice if you have a relationship with someone who has actually gathered some wisdom beforehand to trust it I used to say to another one of my children I used to say all the time say You don't always have to learn by experience. You can learn by example.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I said just think about it I don't know if that's ever worked out, but I still think there's value in that and
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah, that's not the truth.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
No. I mean, some things might be easy. Maybe you grew up, you know, well cared for. Maybe you didn't. Maybe they're, you know, maybe they're self-involved, you know, self-involved people. I was going to so-and-so's, I was going to say a nastier word, but it's like, and that wasn't an easy ride. Maybe it was really a nightmare.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
You know, there's a lot of kids have been through stuff with big egos, people who have been through a lot. I mean, cause you know, No matter how much success a certain person has had, there's going to be moments when that slides. I mean, unless you're maybe Paul McCartney. I just think everyone just adores him because there's a reason.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
But in so many cases, the bloom leaves the rose, whatever, and people are not so enchanted with what they do anymore. that's a hard thing to slam into one day. And if they don't have real character, they can take it out on the people around them. And I mean, I've been tempted to do that. I mean, there have been moments when I thought, why isn't this working out?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And I do my best not to visit my children with it. It may be that I'm not available a little bit sometimes when things aren't going so well. I'm not really sure. I try to be. But I think it's foolish for us to judge what we think is privilege or someone's good fortune and not realize that, you know what?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Maybe they deserve a little bit of good fortune in their lives, and I'm sure it came at quite a price sometimes. I think everybody gets there with their own nuance of damage, and that should be just respected. Everybody got here for a reason. Everybody who's done well deserves it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Well, I think most of my kids would say, you know, that I gave it a good try. I think that's what they'd say. I think my latest batch would probably say, my latest batch, my children with Kate. We have three. Faith, Gabe, and James. I think they would say, Dad's in it. Dad's in it with his whole heart. And I'm mostly fun. They are scared of me, which is interesting.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I'll blow my top once in a while, and it's pretty interesting to see a young person just go, But that's usually kind of what you need them to do in that moment. Something has to be suspended. I was given the gift of a great voice. I don't have to go slam a door too hard or do anything else to get attention. I've got a voice that is arresting. And that can usually stop people in their tracks.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And a young person sometimes needs to be. My older kids... My eldest, Spencer, when she was born, I remember looking at her, looking at her little bassinet, thinking, oh, she's her own person already. She kind of has something in mind. So I'm not sure what Spencer would say about that.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I know we've been in and out of one another's lives, but there's a profound love there, and that's what I can rely on. There's a profound love in the book that's... That's what I did it for. That's what I've done all this for. And so hopefully it will bear some fruit.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Delusional if you did, but.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Well, that's a really interesting thing. This is as recent as I flew home from Texas after the first time I actually celebrated the book with a group of other people. It was two nights ago. And on the flight back, I thought, I wonder what it would be like to throw it all away now. and choose the most courageous life I've ever lived and just be with my children. So that's, it's still ongoing.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
It's still there. Cause I mean, yeah, they say, you know, I'm, I'm starting this beer company. I gotta go away a lot for that. And I don't like going away, but I feel I'm drawn to do this. I'm feeling I'm supposed to do that and make that happen. But to live in true courage, I don't know. Maybe it would just be, we're leaving LA. We're going to go do something else.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
I don't know what that might be, but it would be to experience this life with them as a constant thing. I don't know if it's the right life example, though, either. I don't know if that would be the right thing to show them. So Dad gave it all up for us. And then six years later, they're going to go, I'm out. But that's what I want them to do. They need to do that. They need to find their thing.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
And they're already working on it. I mean, that's... We shepherd them some, but also we're kind of just, we're there to help them have as safe a launch as possible.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All (Pt 2): Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering
Yeah.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I think the message that came through was Karen saying, it's time.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And we'll talk about you doing it there. And that was it. And I knew my life was changing. I thought, it's changing. And then I met Kate. And recently, we went to... It was one of the, there was just an invited screening of a couple of the Chosen series, and we saw our friends there, and a guy walks up to me and says, hey, you remember me?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And I was, you know, loathe to say no, because I don't like to hurt anybody's feelings, but I did not really remember him. But then he said, I was on that flight when you and Kate met.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I started thinking, I remember sort of chatting a bit with some guys like, you know, by the bar. Kate was in and out a bit. She was doing her job. But he told me that I said to him, I think I'm going to marry that girl.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I didn't really remember saying that to him, but it did make sense to me. I remember thinking it at one point. So maybe that's what happened. So I got to London. These are all off-glides, but they're fun. I was staying at the Mandarin Oriental. And it used to be the Hyde Park Hotel, I think. Maybe I shouldn't mention anything else, except I walked in. I stopped at the concierge.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
The concierge said, hello. Oh, hello, Mr. Grandma. And there was a girl. She was like 10 feet tall and with a Russian accent. And I thought, whoa. And he looked at me as she walked away. And he said, anything at all you need, Mr. Grandma, anything. Oh.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
always that's what he's saying okay well thank you thank you nonetheless and then uh kate and i connected uh by phone and decided we would meet for a drink and uh i said well let's have a drink in the in the bar at uh
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
the hotel, and as I walked downstairs at the appointed hour, I looked in and I saw a bunch of the same kind of people, and I thought, that is not the place to take a girl on a first date.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
So I walked down the street, and I stood in the little meridian right opposite Harvey Nichols, and she came up out of the tube stop, and I saw her reapply her lipstick, and I sort of smiled, and then she looked up and saw me looking at her, and we took a walk. I said, let's go take a walk, and I'm going to go in there for a drink. And so we went toward Hyde Park.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
It was close to Christmas, so Winter Wonderland was up and running. And so I saw all the lights. It was a little cool. And then snowflakes started to fall. And I thought, pretty perfect. And we shared a kiss 20 minutes later.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
It was.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Well, what it meant was that she was along for the ride, that she'd been there all that time, that she was... Now, I'm not going to say she's perfect on this, because there were moments when she'd say, you know what, I could use a little attention over here, please, thank you. But she was willing to let me take the ride.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
She was willing to let me fall into the grief, as I did a few times, and re-experience the loss and go so deep into a sort of a... because the grief was revivified too, you know what I mean? Yes. I went back in time, back in moments, back in time, moments of my childhood that I hadn't remembered for a long time.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And I was fully in them, so she was missing me during that time, but willing to accept that and allow me to take the journey. And that's what was remarkable.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Remember is my favorite word. That is the most powerful word in the English language. The idea that you were once a member of something, you were once close to another person in their membership, and when you remember them, they're no longer gone.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I didn't know how I was going to do it when I started. But I did have this sense that as it became a book, in the first couple of days of doing writing, the first day I wrote, I wrote about just a page and a half. And I realized then, I thought, oh, I think this is a book. This is a real book. And then I thought that I...
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I had to take people with me, that they had to be invited along for the ride. And my obligation to them was to point the way back to things that I had known and learned and that would hopefully agitate their imagination enough to say, oh, yeah, I've lived that way. I've had that moment. So that we were on the trip together. So instead of holding just Karen's hand, I was holding the reader's hand.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
At one point in the book, I even write a letter to the reader. With the sort of the understanding that they might actually not want to finish the journey. But, you know, so far this is where we've gone. I hope you're with me still. If you want to put the book down now, that's okay. But I said, we have some things to do still. I have some places I have to go. And I have you now. I have you with me.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And so it was a very direct address kind of thing. There's a conceit about Henry Fielding who wrote Tom Jones. When I read Tom Jones, I was 18 years old. I was riding the subway all the time and I was laughing out loud at it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And I thought, what a wonderful gift from 200 years previous from this guy who had the arrogance or just the confidence to say, this is probably the best book you'll ever read in your life. He says it right there, right out. And I thought, that's what I want to have. I want to establish that kind of a relationship with whoever might be reading the book at the time and say, it's us together.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I know you're there. And I'm with you. You're with me. Let's go do this. And that arrived, I don't know, 60, 70 pages into the book when I suddenly thought, OK, I got to explain this about Henry Fielding. So he's in there. You can blame him if you want to.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
It was a nice device, but it also, it sort of, it got rid of the idea that there was any distance between us, between my telling of the story and the reader. And it will always be in an immediate sense. The time collapses into the book, and there is no time in it. There is no chronology, but there is the sort of, but whatever, you bounce from one place to the next. Like life is just a bauble.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
She said, I've missed you.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
You can just say, I'm going from here to there. I'm going to South America right now. I'm going to go back to Southern California. And you just take them with you.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Yeah, I think it is.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
So it's a reflected sort of word puzzle, I guess, that sort of indicates where my brain's been.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Esther's pretty gifted. I've known a few gifted people. I mean, I produced a show called Medium. And I guess that was part of it. I was always kind of in that community a little bit. And I found out, of course, everybody who's a medium actually wants a television show. So it was like a lot of people contacted me for a while. And you do find out that some are really gifted.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Some are, you know, okay, yeah, maybe they're getting hits. Maybe they are accurate some of the time. who doesn't know you, who's accurate about your life 70% of the time, pulls names out of the air, you may as well pay attention.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Whatever your point is, or whatever jaundiced view you may have of the whole mediumship issue, because Greg Laurie's a pal of mine, and he's not particularly happy about being sort of on the evangelical scale. He's sort of more toward conservative and they're not so crazy about this idea of channeling.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
However, I always think to myself, well, isn't Ecclesiastes, not Ecclesiastes, but Revelation, isn't that a channeled book? I mean, didn't John sit there and didn't Jesus come and visit him and talk to him? And so there are examples in the Bible, but I suppose they just want you to deal with the fact that they're in the Bible, not necessarily in your life.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And I think that may distance a lot of people from the revelation that takes place every day in our lives on this planet today. I think that revelation is unfolding and it comes to all of us if we have the good fortune to be open at the moment.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Well, you have a relationship with God if you have one and you're listening. You don't need to doubt it. It's really there. And we'll mess with ourselves a lot because we've been told we should. We've been told we shouldn't have faith in faith. But nonetheless, it still keeps coming up. There's a great story about Barabbas. One of the guys, when the people of Jerusalem said...
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Give us Barabbas instead of Jesus. Pilate said, you can have this guy or you can let Jesus go. You can take this guy. He'll die instead. And they said, give us Barabbas instead. And basically sort of sealing Jesus' death. And there was a great movie. Anthony Quinn did it. And somewhere in the middle of it, I saw it when I was 10, something like that. He's having a terrible life.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
But all he can think about is Jesus. And then somebody says to him, well, if all you're doing is thinking about him, isn't that some indication that it might be real? And so he became one of his ardent followers, one of his first devoted followers, Barabbas. Anyway, I've gone off path a little bit. Esther. Esther. Journeys, plant medicine. I think my plant medicine is actually writing.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I didn't realize it at the time, but it just takes me in deep red, sort of like I'm in some sort of an altered state. And it's been extraordinary. And in those moments, that's when the book was most alive, you know, and it would come to me.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I said, we got to put a bullet in this thing. I mean, we have to kill this show. He said, I can't. I can't kill it. And I knew my life was changing. I thought, it's changing. And then I met Kate. And he said, I was on that flight when you and Kate met. He told me that I said to him, I think I'm going to marry that girl.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
There are scenes I mentioned in the book where I was just sort of contemplating and sitting in a dark room and I felt surrounded by hundreds of voices, people who were gone and still present in my life, some of them. But they were as clear as a bell, saying, you don't need to suffer so much. You've done enough. You've done enough of that. And those were wonderful moments.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
So Esther came into my life through a friend who knew that I was You know, a person on the path, sort of trying to figure out what we all mean, why we're here and all that stuff. Yeah. He said... He's not really an active friend of mine. It was just a guy that I'd met a couple of times who said, you need to talk to this gal, Esther. She's amazing. And if you do...
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
if you do like a zoom meeting with her, she can sort of read what's going on with your body health wise and stuff. She'll say, you know, Oh, you need to have a look at that part of your stomach or something or whatever. But that wasn't our relationship. That wasn't the way I encountered her. We had a phone conversation and, uh,
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I describe it in the book a little bit, but it was very funny for me because I'm a little bit, I look at this with a slightly skeptical energy. So she's from South America. She's got a bit of an accent. And Esther said, all right, give me a minute. Okay.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
are you relaxed yeah i'm sort of lying on the floor in one of our bedrooms in palm springs and um she said um okay i hear a little rattle some shaking of sticks i thought oh boy here we go and uh then it was just a couple minutes later she said uh Oh, your sister wants you to tell her story. Okay. Yes, Karen. Karen wants you to tell her story. So that was kind of it, really.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And I have a picture of it in the book. The notepad I was writing. It's an envelope turned sideways. It was the back of the envelope where I just was jotting down what she was saying. And if you want to tell her story, tell Karen's story on it. So there's a picture of that in the book.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Yeah, yeah. Now, I've had several mediums, of course. As I said, I produced this show who said that Karen came through. And, yeah, I believed at least half the time I believed that they were having some sort of connection because I know she's with me. So if they have a gift, then they're seeing her, hearing her. I'm not so good at doing that.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
But through the writing, I sort of felt like I was closer to her that way and understood that she's been there, right there.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
You have a relationship with God. If you have one and you're listening, you don't need to doubt it. It's really there. I was in a conversation with Jesus. And I thought, boy, this is really, really interesting, but it's as clear and vivid as anything I've ever done. I was like, hey, you don't need to keep carrying this. I've got it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
It's sort of like prayer. Well, the same kind of thing happened a few weeks before. I'm trying to put it right timing-wise, but I think I do. A few weeks before, I just had one of those moments when I thought, I want to do something worthwhile, something important. And I just sort of gave up and said, you know, help me out here.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And the very next day, the script came to the door for Jesus Revolution, which was one of the great successes of my life. I loved playing that role. I called my agent an hour and a half later after reading the script and said, I'm doing this. So, you know, these things happen.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Yeah. I guess I just know, but... Years ago, people would say to me things like, you know, well, she's here, you know. She's here. And I'd sort of, you know, get skeptical or whatever. But then it became overwhelmingly clear that Karen and I hadn't, like, left each other. We stayed together. And I almost...
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I said, what do you mean I got it? I mean, I'm fine. I can handle it. It's all right. He said, no, no, this is not for you. That's why I came. You don't need to carry this.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
From the moment she was gone, or the moment she was killed, I sensed that I was living with her, that she was along for the ride, always there. I know she was with my mom sometimes. One guy I was meeting a while back said something to me. He said, oh, and did one of those things. And then he said, yeah. And she said, she's sorry. She didn't realize that the grief would be so, so hard.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
It's interesting. Yeah. So I've had reminders from a lot of people. You get your own taste for this stuff. Yeah, Karen's real. She's there. It happens. She has spoken to Kate, I think, a few times. I'm not going to pull her in too much on that. She's been available because I think she's been really attracted to life, you know, really like a flame. You know, it's like you want to be near life.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
You want to be near love. It's like my version of heaven is I can't imagine God would take us to a place where we would not remember our love or where suddenly we don't get to be with our loved ones or, oh, you guys are done. You'll never see each other again. That's nonsense. Okay.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
It's a good thing.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
We had a great moment when Kate and I were having a fight when we were in our early, our first year together, basically, living at my mom's old house. We'd had a bit of a tussle and climbed into bed kind of mad with each other and thought, you know, and I heard this huge bang in the living room and thought, what the heck? So I reached out of the bed, and I grabbed a golf club.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I kept there for that reason. And Kate said she was going to go.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Kate went back to bed. I walked in. The TV was on. And I thought, well, I know I turned that off. So it was weird. Looked around a little bit. turn it off, and thought, thanks, Mom. Don't go to bed angry with each other. So I went into the room, and then Kate said, what did your mom smell like?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
It was really something. Really something. I thought, well, this is real. This is not some heretical thing going on. And when you mentioned that people object to discussing faith or not discussing it enough... I'm not a proselytizer. I don't try to convince people they should think the way I think or see God the way I see God or experience this universe the way I experience it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
But I will not deny my faith. I will not say, you know, to make someone else comfortable to say, oh, no, I don't believe any of that. I'm not going to try to force you to think the way I think or feel what I feel, but I'm not going to deny it. So I have this relationship with Jesus, with God. It's an open conduit. It just exists. And I did question it for a long time.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
So believe me, I fought my way to get here and realized after all this time, oh, you were always there? Oh, what was wrong with me? Well, there was nothing wrong with me. Just I wasn't ready to listen.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Grief is a heavy weight to continue to carry. It's very hard. And you suffer with this idea that, oh, by letting go of the grief, you're somehow letting go of them. But I learned through this book that that isn't the case. By hanging on to the things that are good, actually, I'm I'm closer to her as I was when I was with her, when she was with us. And so she is with us again. That's the key.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Um, well, there are a few things along the way that came by, you know, it's, I had a reading with one of these people that does this sort of thing.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And I was doubting, you know, how did I get to this place? And it just came out. It said, do you think you could have done this without, if God didn't love you?
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Oh, maybe. Maybe not. So that was a great sort of just frank reminder that this has been along for the ride the whole time. Some other medium years ago, Clairvoyant, whatever you want to call him, when I was a very young man, said, oh, you're a sun worshiper. Well, I was actually. I mean, I believe that when I went to
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
When I went to New York City for the first time, knowing that I was going to never leave there again, that I was in for the long haul, having come from Florida and surfing, I was going to go try to be an actor. I was 18, and I just got this message, just swallow the sun. Swallow the sun. Have it shine within you for your whole life. Oh, that'll help. Okay, that's a good idea. Yeah.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
So wherever that came from. And that reminded me, oh, yeah, I am sort of a sun worshiper. That light, that golden light that exists in us and outside of us at all times is one of those gifts that just says, I'm right over here.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
My wife has a saying. She says, always declare God your partner. And I like that idea a lot. Whether I consciously did that in my previous lifetimes, I don't know. But I think there is an alignment that occurs if you're... Having luck is considered, by W.H. Auden, having luck is considered alignment with providence, meaning God. And I like that idea.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
But if you have the wherewithal, the time, the good fortune to hear what your calling is, what your mission is, because it comes up a lot. All of a sudden, somebody's saying, I want you to do a play for me. That's what happened to me. They said, I think you'd be good in this role. And suddenly I'm standing there thinking, oh, I'm going to go be an actor.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
So these things that sort of bookmark our lives or landmark our lives are... indications of where we can go. Like somebody said recently, I heard somebody say, I guess it's from Robert Frost, if you see a fork in the road, take it. Oh no, I think it was Yogi Berra. Yogi Berra. I think he said it. If you see a fork in the road, take it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
You have these things that come and hit you on the head, and if you don't hear them, you know, there was a moment in my life when I was walking up the street to go move in with a girlfriend. It was a bad decision. It was a temporary stopover, let's say. Oh, we've all had them. It turned out poorly. But as I walked toward this moment when I'd be moving in,
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I heard more fire engines and more sirens than I'd ever heard in my life, to the point where my dog, who was my greatest friend at the time, was howling uncontrollably. And I kept thinking, oh, wait a minute. I thought of Carlos Castaneda and how the universe attempts to inform your choices. am I making a mistake? And then I shook it off and said, no, that's crazy to think that.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
But at least it crossed my mind. I've never forgotten it as a result. It just was like everything in the universe was saying, you don't need to do this. But I did it anyway. So sometimes we listen, sometimes we don't. If you have the good fortune to hear it in the nick of time and take that course, God is with you. Jesus is with you, whatever.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And the book I turned in after all this time, I was in a conversation with Jesus. And I thought, boy, this is really, really interesting, but it's as clear and vivid as anything I've ever done. And, uh, yeah, I was like, Hey, you don't need to keep carrying this. I've got it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
what do you mean? I got it. I mean, I'm fine. I can handle it. It's all right. He said, no, this is not for you. That's why I came. You don't need to carry this.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
It's a good thing.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Yeah, well, you're a very, very successful person. You have all those habits of people who are. We do think we're supposed to do it. We forget how often someone else is doing it for us. And that the burden need not be ours. I heard this a while ago. There was one of those radio guys talking a sermon. I dial in once in a while in the car. I go between news and religious channels.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
the guy said take my yoke upon take my yoke upon thee and I thought I always thought that meant oh I'm supposed to carry something for Jesus like I'm supposed to take that yoke and you know be responsible for it and the guy said don't you get it he's saying We'll do this together. It's a two oxen yoke. It's a double. You got it on you. I've got it on me. Take mine on you, and I'll do the pulling.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
You don't have to. I'd never heard it put quite that simply, but that's exactly what I did here at that one point finally.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I think it's just practice, honestly. I think you just have to acquaint yourself with the possibility that stepping into this universe, which is a causal universe, there is a cause and an effect. You're on some path. There is something else with you. There is an energy that's here. We came to... to bask in it, to be part of it, to feel it sort of around us all the time.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And it is around us all the time. We can close our ears to it. We can close our eyes to it. We can fight it. And all those things are probably the right choice at this time, which is pretty interesting because you discover yourself and then you realize, oh, you're still there. Oh, still there. Okay, well then... Maybe I should relax about it a little bit. It doesn't mean surrender.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I don't believe you should surrender to certain things. I think there is that moment in life when you realize, oh, here it comes. I'm just going to let this happen and see what comes next. But mostly, we are given authorship. We are entitled to be the author of what we want to do. We either buck what we've been told or we buck other people. A lot of people tell us, oh, you'll never make it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
That's a gauntlet for me. That's, oh, yeah, well, just watch this. But the other still small voice that is always there is if you just take a minute to ask. Matthew, again, I go back to Matthew. It's the first book of the Bible I read that I started to really pay attention to when I was pretty young. But, you know, knock and it shall be opened unto you. Ask and ye shall receive.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
It's pretty powerful. So all you really have to do is enumerate a question, a desire, a longing, whatever it might be. And the universe, God, will do everything he can to make it happen for you.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And seek and you shall find.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
It's a double-edged sword, though, the grief book comment. Because when I first spoke to the people who represent me, I was about 50 pages in. And I said, I'm writing this book about my sister. They made assumptions about it.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I said, well, a grief book's, you know, maybe 100 pages long, and, you know, they're usually sort of little pamphlets, and, oh, we do this and that, and then maybe we get a publisher. And I thought, boy, that is just the most sort of dismissive, unresponsive, irresponsible relationship I've ever been in with an agent.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Why would I have someone represent me who just assumed whatever I was doing was like... could be reduced into something that they would just say, well, this is what we do with that kind of thing. So I was a little pissed off about that, honestly. So when I wrote, this is not a grief book, it's a life book. That was my feeling at the time. So I thought I better get that down on paper. That's all.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
That's why it's in there. But, um, It gathered more steam and more value for me as I finished the process and realized that this really was about a life and the life I'm still living and the life that Karen now lives. I mean, it's an extraordinary thing. I mean, Kate had this vision a year and a half ago and she said, it's really amazing what you're doing.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
It's like you're putting her in a library. She's going to be in a library. Your sister will live forever. And that was really great. She said, it's a great gift you're giving her. And I realized that I didn't know that at the time, but she's giving me a gift in this writing. But also there is this, I want people to know my sister. I want them to know what a great girl she was.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And I want her to have what I've had, this amazing gift I've had of approbation and applause and success and love. And yeah, and self-torture and all that nonsense. But that's my own sort of my wrestling with the why me thing, the survivor's guilt stuff you go through. But I wanted to give her her due. She is due this. My success... Couldn't have been possible if it hadn't been for Karen.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Wouldn't have happened. Knowing her, loving her, and the remarks that she said, you know, you're going to do it all, those were important things. And I did live for her in a lot of ways. So I wanted people to know about her, just to celebrate her.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Yeah.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
It's like the first time I saw one of these, it's in there somewhere that it says it's registered in the Library of Congress. And it has a number. And I thought, yeah, good. That's pretty great.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Thank you. Thanks, Jamie. That was lovely.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Yeah.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Oh, that was another reading with Esther. That was great. Because... That was when Karen said, remember. Karen actually said the word remember. And what she wanted me to remember was something so glorious. It was fantastic from our youth that we shared that she saw. And I'd never seen it. She just told me it was fantastic. But at this time, I got to see it through her eyes.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Yeah, well, you got it. That's why I wrote it. It just turned out to be that was the mission. I didn't know it at first because I got a very strange...
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And that was an amazing regression, basically. So Esther said, so you're going down into a cave. There are two children with you. I said, oh, there were. Two Chinese kids, it looked like. They were about five and seven years old. And they were... either Chinese or Japanese. I mean, I wasn't sure, but I was holding hands with them. And she said, they're going to take you into the cave.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
So we went into the cave. And then she said, take a look at them now. And it was Karen and me when we were younger. I said, oh. Well, how did you guys do that? And then, so I thought maybe we were past lives together. But then, as she said, she's going to give you something. The girl's going to give you something. Okay, she handed me a surfboard.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Surfboard, surfing was very important to me in my life, really important. And then she said, okay, what is it? I said, it's a surfboard. And then I said, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, it's changing. It's actually a slalom ski, a slalom water ski. And then suddenly it was this ski that I got at Sears. I bought myself when I started a water ski. I was, I think, 14, 15.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
um imperative saying you know write this well didn't say right actually just said tell tell tell my story uh through my sister from my sister through esther somebody we were working with at the time and so it's it's just turned into the book yeah it was a wonderful exp it was wonderful exploration and discovery all at the same time because i rediscovered my life with karen
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And it took me to that day when we were on the water. and Karen and William was driving, Karen was sitting there watching, because somebody always has to look backward at the skier to make sure that they're, you know, okay, still, you know, haven't fallen off. And as we went, Karen was going like this to me, So in that moment, when I realized what was going on, she showed me what it looked like.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I looked like an angel. I was going back and forth across the lake, kicking 20-foot walls of water up off the ski, and right behind me was the setting sun. So basically, it was just a glowing angel wings of water, and a young boy skipping through life. It was pretty great. And she told me, she said, just remember that. So I walked out after the session.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I said to my wife, I said, I'm a water angel. I know who I am now. So if I ever buy another boat, I'm naming it that. Oh, when you said, when I said, yeah, there's a specific reason for saying it's not a grief book, I just realized, and I haven't really put this together before, that is the guy I am. You tell me I'm not going to do this, and I will do it. So God bless him.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Thanks for saying that because you made it so much more. You helped me to make it so much more. And God bless the people who told me you'll never make it as an actor because it's the same response. It was exactly the same response. I've never quite gotten that until now.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I discovered a purpose for writing the book while writing it and really just wanted to help people find some peace, like the word solace. Some understand that we are not alone. We're with God and one another. that that person, when remembered, is no longer distant or lost in the moment of memory. They're reinvigorated.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
They're revivified and are brought back to life in our minds, in our memories, in our extension of thought to them. They live again. So that's kind of what I wanted to say to people.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Yeah, my first understanding, remember is my favorite word, and my first comprehension of that was when I was 18, I was asked by one of the girls at the dance school that was on the same floor at Juilliard as I was, the drama department at the dance school was on the same floor, so we would all sort of co-mingle, and one of the girls said, I want to set a new piece I'm working on, she was choreographing,
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
to music but I want the music to be the spoken word and I have this poem that I'd like you to read for me while I do these dancing moves and I said sure so and the poem had the word remember in it and at which point I thought boy that is the most powerful word in the English language it has remained that way for me I mean I like a lot of other words as well but
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Remember is the one that gives me the most pleasure because of the idea that you were once a member of something. You were once close to another person in their membership. And when you remember them, they're no longer gone. They're there. They're there with you. And so that's when I first sort of really fell in love with the word itself. And then...
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
When we were discussing the title for the book, it was like, you've got to remember, it's got to be in there somewhere. And it's about Karen, so it became My Brother Remembers. But in reading it, you learn the value of the work to me, and hopefully to another group of people who will read it and say, Yeah, I feel that. Because once that starts, it's like channeling almost.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
You take one step into it, the first sentence, the first word, and you're suddenly, you've broken through every time barrier in the world. You've pulled people out of the grave. You've re-embraced them again. And it's a wonderful thing.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Sure. Um, for a long time, it was very hard for me to think about Karen. And, uh, But I was excavating the tragedy. I was unearthing that a lot of the time. When I would reflect on her, I would reflect on what she suffered and what took place in her life and the people who were responsible.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And there were so many other things that sort of echoed through my mind that were not honorific, that didn't... celebrator that just sort of mourned her and I was sort of lost in a kind of a loop of mourning that was not uh it wasn't healthy it was it was it was but it was what I had to do I mean it's not that it was unhealthy it was just it's what I was given at the time and you know I was
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
I always loved the book of Matthew, you know, do what is given unto you. I was stuck in that. And it took me this book to actually find my way out into saying, oh, God, I'm so happy I knew you. Yeah, it was a great moment to understand that.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
in the writing of it, that I was going to have this chance to be with my sister again and to hold her and to love her and to hold her hand and laugh at things together again. And it was a really extraordinary thing. It was a great, great life we had together, which is why it was so tragic to me. It was so hard for me for a long time to kind of wrestle out of that.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And I really didn't do it for a long time. And I think the message that came through was Karen saying, it's time. You need to... remember and live your life.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Well, I feel a lot lighter. I did actually get to drop a lot of grief. Grief is a heavy weight to continue to carry. It's very hard. And you suffer with this idea that, oh, by letting go of the grief, you're somehow letting go of them. But I learned through this book that that isn't the case.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
By hanging on to the things that are good, actually, I'm closer to her as I was when I was with her, when she was with us. And so she is with us again. That's the key. So it's been great. And she's with my family now. I'm with Kate. And Kate, you know, dealt with me writing this for two and a half years. And...
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
When I finally turned to Kate, and this always chokes me up a little bit, but I'm getting more used to saying it, but she's such an extraordinary woman. When I said, I finished it, I turned and said, it's done. And she said, I've missed you.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
But it's a very rewarding life to care this much about things. So it's okay.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
Well, Kate and I met in what is one of the great fantasy meetings of all time. I mean, almost every guy I meet says, wow, you lived the dream. So we met on a flight to London. She was working for Virgin Atlantic, and she was part of the cabin crew. She looked good in red.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
We struck up a nice conversation, and I was at a very big crossroads in my life. I knew my life was changing. I'd gotten this—I'd just finished doing this show called Hank, which was—and we always say this now. This is for the next book. This is the story. Stuff like this is for the next book. So I'd finished filming this show called Hank. which was a terrible show. It wasn't funny.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
It was supposed to be funny. It was just ghastly. And I had actually called Peter over to Warner Brothers, and I said, Peter, we've got to put a bullet in this thing. I mean, we have to kill this show. He said, I can't. I can't kill it. We've got obligations to foreign sales and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I thought, please, please.
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Kelsey Grammer Reveals All: Lessons on Love, Loss, Healing & Remembering (Pt 1)
And sure enough, the next day, Steve from ABC called and said, I'm putting a bullet in this show. It's got to go. I was like, thank God. And 35 minutes later, I got a call from Barry Weisler in New York City saying, I got this show. We're going to bring it over to Broadway. I want you to be in it. Fly to London. Can you get on a plane in a couple of days and go see it?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Yeah, good question. A pal of mine once said, he said, the cause of addiction, he says, is unresolved grief.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Kind of holds up. If you really examine almost any situation where someone's stuck in something, it's grief for whatever was enough for them. I've had some people look at me and say, you know, you haven't been through so much. And I thought to myself, Yeah, okay. That may be true.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
It was enough for me to mess me up.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
You fall in love with people who just know how to say terrible things.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
You actually said that. Wow. I know. But I got through that one. It's fine. I think what I was really trying to do was just feel as much as I could feel. And I mean, I did some wonderful, crazy stuff. I loved the things I was doing on a big bender or out one night with a bunch of guys doing a lot of blow, whatever it was you were doing. We were having fun and then it just stopped being fun.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Yeah. But I would never take it away. People said, how could you do that to yourself? You know what? I was still working. Sometimes people were annoyed that I seemed so messed up, but I always showed up for work. Maybe a little tired, maybe a little bleary-eyed.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Yeah, Dan, yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Yeah, there were a couple of moments like that, which were great. I would usually take that to heart and give it my best shot. Sometime in the middle of Frasier, the same kind of thing came up in the show Frasier after Cheers. And I dedicated myself to actually staying clean for quite a while. And I've never gone back to certain things, but I do still enjoy a cocktail now.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
But my big one was cocaine. I haven't been near that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
He's uncomfortable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
There's a reason you do it. It makes you feel like a god. And you are having fun. And you're having fun with other people. So it has its own allure and its own fascination and appeal. And maybe that's part of the dark thing. I don't know. But always... In the back of my mind was that God thing. I grew up as a kid who believed in Jesus, and it would always come in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
They would say, hey, calm down, relax a little bit. You're okay. We got this. And so it helped.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Yeah, at least that helped. What is it? There's a great poem by Auden's poem. I think it's called Moon Landing. It talks about how although these three are maybe no less brave or braver than Hector, at least Hector was spared the indignity of being covered on television. That's kind of how it is. That's like I found out my sister was raped in a National Enquirer article. Oh, that's horrible.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
And that was horrible. And I never would have been there or even have it been written about if I weren't on television.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
You sacrifice your privacy once you become famous. Even minimally famous. Getting on Cheers was not making me famous. It's surviving Cheers. Maybe a little famous. I would say so. But staying, getting on, and continuing is what really seals that. But it really hurt. That really hurt that day when I read that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
What happened? It didn't seem to be a momentous thing for me. It was like, okay. I didn't really care for my acting teacher the second year. I was going to the acting school. I was sorry that wasn't going to work out. I took the news as if it were, you know, a graduation in a weird way, like a sign, a talisman, I guess you could call it, that said, you've got to go do something else.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
The ironic connection to, for instance, the man who murdered my dad, his name was Arthur Niles. And then people would say, Niles is your brother on Frasier. I thought, yeah, that is weird. I never even thought about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Even strangers. My son, Frasier's son, is called Freddy, the guy that killed my sister's Freddy. So these are... Whatever you call them, circumstances, coincidences that seem to point at something. But you know what? To me, it doesn't have the same value. That name doesn't mean that to me. Niles is my brother, this idiot, Arthur Niles. He got off for being insane.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
And about five years later, he tried to kill a judge. So he went back to jail.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
He belongs in jail. There was something else going on. Sure. This was so funny. I was talking about when I did the film Jesus Revolution, I was promoting it in England. And I started to talk about faith and why it was still important to me. And it was going really well. And somebody said, oh, we've got to go. We've got to cut. We've got to go to there's some breaking news.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
And there was no breaking news.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I was saying something good about faith. And I think they'd freaked out about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Interesting. Yeah. So.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Gosh, probably a little less forgiving, honestly. By virtue of surviving as long as I have, I think there's a gentler wash for me now. It's more of a watercolor than a specific digital photograph. But let's face it, you know, somebody gets accused of something that they did 30 years ago and suddenly they're written off. It's insanity what's been going on. Nobody's human?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I might have misstated that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Oh, and destroyed somebody. Okay. Yeah, it's a funny time. And maybe we should take broader views of things we hear from time to time. We should believe women who are telling the truth. We should believe the possibilities of things, but innocent until proven guilty is really important.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Any thought, yeah. We're in a difficult time that way. I hope we move through that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Well, great pictures. You know what's great about my kids? The latest round, 12, 10, and 8, they always go, oh, that's AI.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I know. And they dismiss it almost immediately, which is really smart. They understand people are going to try to put out things that aren't true. And they already tuned into that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
AI so far, I know we're getting to AGI, which is self-generated, I guess, but AI is programmed by people. And so what they know basically is what the people wanted it to know. And so you have to be really careful about that as well because there's certain, there's leanings. Whenever you program something, that person has ideas that they want engendered in other people. So you got to be careful.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
It didn't mean I was going to do something other than acting. I just thought I wasn't going to be at Juilliard anymore. And so that's the way I always took it. My girlfriend wasn't in really good shape after. That was challenging.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
But I am careful. And what's funny is it doesn't make me feel old. It makes me just feel – I'm trying to think because I like being a dinosaur. I mean, I like it because I know that the brain I've got was actually generated by the toil that I've put in. I haven't been just plugged into something and then told this is what you need to think.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I actually arrived at a lot of this stuff by virtue of hard work.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
So I like being over here.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I got through the plasticine all on my own.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
No, I think it's a devotion to healing. I got to live my healing. I got to focus on things. Having the personal sort of Remember there's a book called Stranger in a Strange Land? I think Elon's done it. He's got the company called G-R-O-K. It's called grokking. You would grok something. You got something in a profound way.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
And that was coined in that book, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. Very popular in the 70s. Really popular. There are songs about it. We don't really remember it, but I do. But that communion with tragedy that I had, that familiarity with my grandfather dying young, my father getting shot, my sister being murdered in the horrible way she was.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
It gave me an understanding of something that's the human journey, the human experience is what I'm good at. And because of what I've lived, there's a kind of almost authority to it. So as an actor, I would just uncover that and bring it to it. And I know that was probably helpful. That's what's the irony of it is that the suffering was helpful for making something genuine or authentic.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
You can't fool people as an actor. Maybe AI can almost get there. Eventually. But really great acting is always going to be spontaneous and connected to the human experience. And I was given this breadth and depth of experience that would come through. And I think it gave me a sense of authority.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Time heals all wounds.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Yeah. It's still, you abide with it, but it's not going away.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I do try to spare them too much stuff unless it's just, it's such a poignant moment, such an ironic alignment that I say, I got to tell you this line. So I don't do it too often, but once in a while, I'd all sit them down and read them some Shakespeare.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I mean, it's like, my older kids, I'm still trying to figure out what they actually think of me. My two older daughters, we have a pretty good relationship, and then we don't have a good relationship, and then we have a great relationship. It's just...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
whatever it is i'm not cool no one day you'll be surrounded by family hopefully at a joyous time and they'll go you're not as much of a lame-o as i thought it'll be like the happiest moment of your life right yeah it's my eight-year-old james actually was talking to me by the pool two years ago in upstate and we're sitting having a nice conversation about how to do a certain thing or whatever and he stops her saying he says you're all right i like spending time with you
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
God bless you. You're not as cool as Captain Underpants or whatever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
You're okay. So that was actually, that was a real highlight for me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
That was about two or three years ago. Really? Yeah, yeah. Maybe I'm slow. I mean, you know, I probably am. Okay. But I was sitting somewhere and... somebody, you could tell that their regard for me was genuine. And the guy just said, you're a legend. That's a really weird thing to be told. But when I started to think about it, I thought, I'm good at what I do. And okay, all right, it's time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Maybe I just put away this self-effacing crap and just said, yes, I'm good at what I do and I've earned my place here. And that's a pretty decent feeling. That's okay.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I was thinking the kid that rode a motorcycle was working on a fishing boat. She was like, oh, this is not going well.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
But I probably just would have thought, I'm not there yet. I don't know. Maybe by virtue of the same thing that's fed that myth is it takes a lot of time. It takes a long time to finally say, yeah, okay, I did something.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
No, no, it still doesn't. What's really fun, I'm going to reprise the role of Beast in the next job I do. We're going to London in June to shoot the next Avengers film.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
But to remember somebody in the grace of the good that they left you and the good that you had with them, that's more important than the grief. The grief is forever. It's just there imprinted on you. But it's only a crime if you allow the grief to overwhelm the imprint of the good.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Amazing. I wanted to play that part again for a long time. It was a personal sort of tragedy to me. 20 years ago, I played it in X-Men, The Last Stand, I think it was called. And we went to Cannes Film Festival. I chartered a boat and everything. I'm going to celebrate this moment. And it was really cool. And then they said to me, we've got this whole new direction we're going in the franchise.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
And I'm thinking... This is great. And they said, we're going back in time. You're not in it. Ah. That is so messed up.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
So when recently they released The Marvels, the film The Marvels, I guess it did okay. I mean, I don't know if the response was good. But the response to Beast when he showed up, they called and said... come on down, let's shoot something. Do you mind doing one of those Easter egg things that they do in the credits?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Yeah. So there I am. And the response was really good. They called me in a little while later and said, we want you to do the role again. Nice. So maybe that actually made me feel like I finally made it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
It's right up my alley.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
That's every red Moby Dick.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
They might come out here really ahead with a crab trap.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I think there is kind of a luck function that may be somewhat providential at the same time. This is Auden again. Going back, he always believed in luck, but his definition of luck meant that you were aligned with a spiritual energy that was for you, meaning God. He was a Christian, but most people don't really know that about him.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
He was one of that little group in Oxford who decided they were going to prove that Jesus didn't exist, and then they all became Christians.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Wow. Yeah. It's fascinating. C.S. Lewis being one of them and Tolkien and Auden. And it's fascinating. I read something about C.S. Lewis just recently. He says, you don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body. That is something.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
For faith, yeah. Man. really huge, but this idea of divine providential luck, where you peg away at something, and as he says, peg away at it honestly every day, perhaps by the time death pounces his stumping question, I shall just be beginning to understand the difference between daylight and moonlight.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
The thing that Frasier did, this happened. The first time I read the sides, I went by the Gulf and Western building, which is now the Trump Tower or one of them or whatever. And it has a little globe out in front on Columbus Circle.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
That's where Paramount used to have its offices. They were owned by the Gulf and Western Company at the time. So he went, it's called the Gulf and Western Building. So I went upstairs and they handed me these sides, bits of a scene. And I read them and I went and visited my buddy Stanley. And Stan said, what do you think of this thing?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I used it for the rest of my career because the openness is what I used.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I said, the key to this character is that he loves her completely with his whole heart. And that was the key to Frasier. His love for Diane, such a first for him. And an intellectual guy who was completely in the thrall of love, surrender to it, complete surrender to it, where his own identity was lost as a result.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
And that is what has defined him, that ability to love deeply, wholly, in an instant, and be mistaken, and make a mistake, and watching him unravel. Because watching Fraser unravel is what's been fun. Watching him not be in a relationship was what makes him fun.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
It opened me up at the time, and I discovered that I had this ability to just be in that moment. The exercise is just called an emotional recall, and I had picked my grandfather because I'd never really explored what it meant to me except for the one time I cried when I was a young man when I was 12, which was when he died. So in doing the emotional recall, Gene actually asked me, he said,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
having them not work out but he soldiers on with this optimism which as i described this once to my friend brad who's in the book he finally said well kelse that's you i guess this character is me in a lot of ways sure all the best characters are just a couple degrees to the left or the right of the actual actor like robert downey jr and iron man everyone's like oh he's such a good actor and if you know him in real life he's just maybe not a
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I'm not sure. I always try to encourage them. I never say that you're on a bad path because it's the best thing in the world. It's just not necessarily going to lead to riches or anything else like that. But it's a beautiful way to spend one's life and one's career as an avocation and vocation at the same time. But I always tell them, if you want to be an actor, act. Go act somewhere.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I've always told them, you're not going to get an agent until you don't need one. That's just the truth. That's just the way it is.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Once you're doing good, they're fine. Why would I give you 10% at this point? But that's really important. It means you've got to get in the game. You've got to go to New York or go where you're going to go. Any town has a way to find somewhere to act. Volunteer to play. Be a fireman and go do a play at night. Whatever you have to do, get through it. I did demolition works, construction work.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I mean, I did dozens of things.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I'm so tired of this crap, this guy. But yeah, you must immerse yourself in whatever that is. Hopefully, the universe responds. It will try to.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I think people have always, I know it doesn't fit with the narrative and I hate the word, use the word narrative way too used. There's a compulsion almost at this point to just say anybody that thinks Trump's doing a good job is stupid or a fascist. I don't come across as any of those things. I'm a reasoned, reasonable guy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I think that the movement, the focus, the direction of what Trump is involved in, his ego aside and all the stuff that you want to just latch onto and hate, is more aligned with what I believe America should be doing. And it should be taking care of itself and looking after people and not taxing so much. And there's a whole bunch of stuff that comes along for the ride.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
But prosperity is generated by protecting the homeland. So these are things that I actually align with. And I don't do it in a way that's belligerent or hateful to people, I hope. Are they hateful to some of the things I believe? Maybe they are.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I'm also a guy who's very cautious about abortion and stuff like that because I've had life taken from me, destroyed right in front of me, and had some difficult circumstances. Do I believe that you should outlaw abortion? No, but I do think there should be... some limits, and then some reasonable approach to the idea that this is a life and it's precious.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Because in my experience, the most precious things to me were the things that lived and that life was taken. And so that's where I am.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I don't know. I remember why I said it. At the time, I was actually considering trying to play him.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Who are you dealing with? And I said, it was my grandfather. And that's when he said, tell him you love him. And I'd never told him. It was an amazing outpouring of emotion, which just became a tool in a weird way. It was like integrated instantly. It was programmed into me. I could then loan that part of me to almost anything in any situation. I wouldn't have to pick another situation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Yeah, no, it just seemed like that would be a really interesting guy to play. Anyway... He'd be an interesting guy to play. Fascinating guy to play. 2016, that's when I started thinking... Maybe I would like to play Vladimir Putin. He's a fascinating guy. And what is the quotation?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Yeah, I think he doesn't make apology for who he is. And I think that's an interesting thing to play. I don't think he's a nice guy. I'm not saying, oh, I admire him so much, but I admire someone who is so comfortably in themselves. And he is one of those creatures. Interesting to play a guy like that. I used to love when I'd see him on his horseback with his shirt off.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Yeah. He doesn't look that good. I'm sorry. And I thought, but he obviously must think he does. So somewhere in that, how do you get to that place? And I admire a brain that goes there. It wasn't meant to be, so it's shocking. Alarming alignment with a lunatic. Is he a lunatic? I don't know. Is he a crafty, political, maybe fascistic mindset? I don't know. I think he loves Russia.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I think he wants it to be what it once was. Is he a zealot? Yeah, maybe. Maybe he's a zealot, which is interesting. If you think about zealots can usually be defeated because they don't see clearly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
So anyway, I'm still fascinated by him. I'd be interested in playing him. What he's perpetuating in Ukraine and all that. This whole Ukraine thing is a very dodgy situation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
On its face, it does seem there's a horrible thing going on. But there's also just the history there of being used as a bank account for deception. It's a really bad thing that was going on there. A lot of money laundering. all kinds of people, all kinds of political people, and all kinds of governments. Maybe that's all part of getting cleaned up now. Maybe that's what's really happening.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
But there's a human price that goes along with it. It's horrible. The devastation is just insane. When Trump does talk about rubble, he gets rubble. He understands construction. He actually really does. Rebuilding that kind of stuff is really hard and yet important. He gets the value of real estate.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
That was actually my understanding of what this thing radical forgiveness is, a concept of radical forgiveness, to see that even in the most tragic set of circumstances or even hostile circumstances, that person may be guiding you to your higher good, to a better person than you are right now. And that's been hard for me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
That's my description of it was basically based on how difficult it was to kind of embrace that. But now there is a kind of wisdom in hindsight that says, well, yeah, maybe that guy lifted me in some way, lifted me to another level and understanding and fulfillment. And in fight, I've been a fighter. I've fought pretty hard through a lot of these things. And actually, I like to fight.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
So it's a weird value. But for instance, the man that came into our house, I speak about him, Bob, when we were still teenagers and my grandmother was spending time with him. He was a real challenge. And he was a real jerk. But maybe he made me strong. And I ended up throwing him out of the house one day. I was 16 years old. I'm lifting a grown man. And I ejected him from our home.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
It would be like that muscle was open now, exercised.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
It was surreal, but it was also like, I had to do that. Would I have done it if he was a great guy?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I'll tell you what I usually answer to this question. It's borrowed from Gregory Peck. I heard him once accept an award, and I loved him. So he said, my ultimate goal, Kelsey, is to say that any time a person spent watching my work was time well spent. I'd like to live for that. But now, having done Karen...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I'd like to think they'd remember my sister and remember Karen and remember the love we had. And I think that'd make me really happy. In fact, I had a dream the other night where I thought to myself, wouldn't it be cool if people remember Karen longer than they remember me?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Oh, it feels amazing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Yeah, I got seven kids. My kids are fascinating. What's funny about being a parent and having been through what happened to my sister and stuff like that, without trying to mark them with it, I'm very cautious about what I project onto my kids, but I do project sometimes a fear, a fear for their well-being that is semi-irrational, but it is programmed based upon what I've experienced.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Yeah, I'm going to. If you can train yourself to look at the drop as it comes in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
It's like, thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
It is fantastic.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
It is exactly that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
And I find myself having these paranoid fantasies, I call them, but they aren't particularly constructive. And I do my best. My wife will say, wipe them off. Just wipe that off. And so I try to do that. But yeah, I just care for them so deeply and hope that they are not visited with the same kind of torment and pain.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
It's interesting. I've integrated a lot with the mediums and mediumship and spiritualists and all sorts of stuff.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Yeah. I produced a show called Medium Years Ago, which is very popular. But it was pretty much an outcropping of my desire to find out more stuff from that part of the existence, whatever we might call it. And so I've had a relationship traffic with different mediums throughout my lifetime. And sometimes they would bring around Karen or they'd mention something and
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I was always a bit askance with it because I thought, do they know about it? Do they historically know about it? Are they really channeling their sister? Is this real? And there's ways to start telling when you're in a sitting if it's really a blind sitting or not, if they've done some research. And it's hard if they've done research for them to really be honest.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
But some folks, and I had a great pal who was a psychometrist. She would hold something and get things out of it. And she said once, if I'm sitting there saying, hi, there's a Will here, a Will, I think, Will, and you're sitting there saying, oh, yeah, it's William in my head, and you're not telling me, then you're being a jerk.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
But if I'm like 70% there, that's pretty high. And that's what my standard became was if somebody is about 70%, that's extraordinary if they don't know you. That's amazing. And so I've had a few remarkable things like that. And this one woman, Esther, that I was dealing with in the middle of a reading that was constructed by a friend who said, oh, you should maybe talk with Esther.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
She's really good with things. Okay. Okay. So we scheduled a meeting, and it was a phone session. And she says, oh, your sister's here. She wants you to tell her story. I thought, wow. Because she didn't know what the story was at the time. And she says, oh. And then she drifted off a bit and said, oh, yeah. She says, tell her story. So that was what generated the idea.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
After so long, and of course, I've spoken to Karen before, and some of the aftermath of dealing with the tragedy and trying to live on and go on and carry her at the same time. But I never really looked at it through her story. And I thought, that's pretty interesting. How am I going to do that? So I sat down a couple months later, finally, and I started to write some notes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
And I wrote about eight or nine pages of stuff, and I thought, oh, I guess I'm writing a book. So that's what it was. Wow. Yeah, it's 50 years later, and I think, you know, if what I'm selling is true, and I think it is, Karen wanted me to unburden this, finally, to be lighter.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Yeah, she was abducted and then murdered, raped and murdered, on July 1st, 1975. And... I think she was with them for about four hours and then was murdered. But I was fairly graphic in the description of what I got from the police report.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I wanted to share some of it with people to have them understand what it was to experience because I wanted to make sure that everything was honest, everything was true. And as I started to write the book, the relationship between me and the reader was felt like I was taking a friend through this with me. And that sort of defined it all.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
At one point in the book, about maybe 60 pages in, I think, I actually wrote a letter to the reader and said, thank you for being here. I've got you now and take this journey with me if you like. You can stop too. I've always wanted people to feel free that they didn't have to continue. But it was a really emotional journey for me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
And it was given more value because I started to realize there are other people who have experienced the same thing. Those of us who share an experience that maybe I can bring some relief to in the fact that I'm finding relief as well and not to carry so much of it. We did struggle for years with guilt about it and grief. That I wasn't there, that I couldn't stop it. And I think we all do that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
We've lost people tragically. It's almost an absurdity, but there's this muscle in us that says, wait a minute, you should have stopped this. You were her older brother. It was a definitive relationship. Yeah, I'm supposed to take care of you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
And it doesn't need rational thinking to exist. It is simply how you feel. It's to be dealt with.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
He's still in jail. The guy that plunged a knife into her is still in jail. One of the other fellas that was involved is gone now. And I think the other one is gone as well, although I had been told he left early. He was gone earlier. So it was really three men who were responsible for her abduction and rape and then murder. But the one, I guess, really wanted to kill her.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
If you go to the framework of basic Christianity, and I'm a Christian, I was raised as a Christian scientist, which is a bit more metaphysical and a bit more esoteric in some ways. There is good and evil. And you just have to recognize that you can get sucked into one or the other. or drawn to one, sucked into another.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I've certainly flirted with dangerous times in my life, times that maybe I was in over my head, stuff that I was better off not knowing I felt I still needed to go through. Maybe that's when you're open to maybe going a little darker and doing some things that hurt people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I feel pretty blessed that I didn't actually get there where I really destroyed anybody else or did something as vicious or violent as that. But you can lose focus. You can lose your life. You can lose your heart. You can lose your soul. You can actually become just a dark player. And I think they went there. I think that's where they were. And in fact, they even craved it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Now, whether or not that's God or Satan, or I've heard some people talk about, you know, where was God during the Holocaust? and others have rebutted it, saying, well, and that makes you think man's a better idea than God? Certainly man was the creator of that particular energy. Was he in Satan's thrall, if you want to reduce it to that kind of metaphor? Yeah, maybe that's what's going on.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I recently did a men's retreat with some guys. It's a Christian-based recovery for warriors, basically. Operation Recovered Warrior. And they allowed me to come because my common ground is not warfare. When you realize what they're talking about is your common ground is warfare because we're born into warfare here. On this plane, it's God and devil stuff, and that's battle.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I never thought about it that way. They encouraged this idea that Christ is the greatest warrior because his weapon is love, and he is not a pussy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I think that's it. That just makes me think of this movie called We Were Soldiers. Mel Gibson's film. It's terrific. But Sam, I'm afraid to say his last name right now, but they have a scene together where Mel Gibson's worried about turning out like Custer. And that's how it ended up like that. The one major difference between Hugh and Custer is Custer was a pussy. It's like.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
It's a wonderful moment. Yeah, Jesus is the power. If you fall into that place, start to understand that maybe there are some things going on here that are not part of you. And I think they were in that place to get back to it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Right. I have been guilty of letting that be the final memory of her. the definitive memory. And I think the book was meant for me to change that. And it did. It brought grief and celebration in line with each other because the grief was so overwhelming and the celebration didn't exist really. I'd lost that. And the book helped me find it again, helped me find Karen again.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
And to remember her, which I talk about, but to remember somebody into the grace of the good that they left you and the good that you had with them, that's more important than the grief. The grief is forever. It's just there imprinted on you. But it's only a crime if you allow the grief to overwhelm the imprint of the good. That's what the book's about.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
Yeah, that was hard. Success has been great. I love my job. I love acting. I love it because it's like a discovery. For me, at least, it's a discovery of truth. It's a character, but it's still universal truth. It's a good play, Shakespeare being one of the best. If you have that opportunity to encounter what is a universal truth, you are supernatural. And that is a drug.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
That's an amazing way to live one's life. And to have it be punctuated by this overwhelming grief that's always lingering. Maybe the book was meant for me to be able to let that go, to diffuse it finally. But it was always there, and it was always hard. And sometimes it would creep into my performances, but only when it was appropriate.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
I mean, I talk about the performance of rehearsing it when Gertrude tells him about his sister's death. And I just... overwhelmed me. It was all Karen. It was all coming in. I didn't choose to do that. It just came. And that's what I mean, I guess, about that being open. And that's when my dog ran up on stage and started to lick my face and kiss me. She was such a wonderful animal.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1157: Kelsey Grammer | Channeling Grief into Artistic Authenticity
But yeah, this book has helped me come to terms with the fact that the grief was overwhelming, but not so that it would overwhelm the beauty of Karen.