Kelsey Grammer: How Hollywood’s Woke Ways Lost America | KMP Ep.49

4:40Kelsey Grammer:Every time. There's always something. But no, actually she trusts me pretty much. What's the number one thing you get wrong? I let him chew things that I shouldn't. It's mostly, you know, like a playing card or a baseball card or this piece of plastic's wrong for him. You know, there's a number of things that could be wrong that are just sitting out in the kitchen that he's interested in. He's interested in everything now.

5:04Katie Miller:This morning, my husband rocked the baby for too long and then let him fall asleep on him instead of transferring him to the crib.

5:09Kelsey Grammer:Oh, see, yeah, the contact sleep thing. Yeah. We're bad with that. We like contact sleep. That's fun. We do the thing where you hold the baby's face down on the arm. And so their spine is all straight and beautiful. He just hangs it. I feel him. But you have other kids too, right? I don't know.

5:24Katie Miller:I have four.

5:26Kelsey Grammer:You have four. I have four.

5:27Katie Miller:So I have a five, four, three newborn.

5:32Kelsey Grammer:God bless you.

5:32Katie Miller:So they're 15 months apart, 18 months apart. And then I have seven weeks.

5:38Kelsey Grammer:They used to call Irish twins. Right.

5:40Katie Miller:I feel like we'll do one more right behind this one as like an Irish twin. and then be done. But I don't think you can convince me to six. I think you can convince me to five.

5:49Kelsey Grammer:Five will do it.

5:50Katie Miller:Yeah, I think it's very hard.

5:51Kelsey Grammer:That's pretty impressive, though. We are talking about another one.

5:54Katie Miller:Babies are... When you have a baby, you think babies are the best thing in the world. Yeah. And I think if more young women held babies, more young women would have babies. But there aren't enough babies currently in our country for women to know what it's like to have a newborn. Most people who I've turned the baby over to, even in the workplace around the West Wing, I brought the baby in a few times, women say it's the first time they've held a newborn.

6:17Kelsey Grammer:Wow. That's, yeah, no, it's, that big family thing would be great. Contact with a baby is one of the most wonderful things in the world.

6:28Katie Miller:So, you don't know this, but Frasier was the number one thing that Stephen and I watched when we were dating. I had never seen an episode of Frasier. He had made me watch it as, like, the inaugural to our relationship all the way through.

6:41Kelsey Grammer:No kidding.

6:42Katie Miller:Swear to God.

6:43Kelsey Grammer:Well, it's my pleasure.

6:44Katie Miller:Do you miss filming like that in a continuous basis for a show that was that popular?

6:50Kelsey Grammer:Yeah, I mean, that was a great lifestyle. I mean, there's nothing like that. I mean, everybody in Hollywood will always say, hold on, sitcom. Well, that's the best lifestyle in the world. Because once you get it sort of figured out after the first year or so, you can do anything in your life that you want to do. You can go take three weeks off. You can take a month off if you feel like it. You do three or four shows and you get a break. It's it's made you take the whole summer off. It was just like having being a professional student forever You do a season from September to like late May and then the rest of the time was off So it was it's fantastic and the only work the way we got it finally on Fraser was You went to work on Wednesday You spend one hour you read the script going to work on Thursday morning You read through the script and then you rehearse the script You put it on its feet, and you do a run-through around 1 o 'clock in the afternoon.

7:45So that's three or four hours.

7:48Kelsey Grammer:Friday you do, if you think the script's in good shape, you don't bother with a run-through, you just kind of do it together. You rehearse it twice, and then you're done in two hours.

7:57Katie Miller:Do you miss the predictability?

7:59Kelsey Grammer:Yeah. Yeah, it's a really nice lifestyle. Nice lifestyle.

8:03Katie Miller:Do you think you became more like Frasier, or do you think he became more like you?

8:09Kelsey Grammer:Interesting question. I think I always had something like Frasier in me, but I'm also kind of crazy and a little wicked, so it's not exactly Frasier. But he would come out, I would come out sometimes in Frasier. I would sneak out sometimes.

8:26Katie Miller:Do you think sitcoms are funny these days? No. Or do you think Frasier is like the last funny sitcom?

8:31Kelsey Grammer:I'd hate to think it was the last one. I'd like to make sure that there's some more coming. but as a format it's struggling again for the right writers and for trust in the human experience. They don't trust their audience anymore and the key to Frazier's success was that it trusted the audience. It thought it was smart enough and we thought they were intelligent enough to enjoy discovering that we had a family and lives and things we cared about as well as being funny and they've lost that again.

8:59Katie Miller:Do you think it's because they are out of touch with the audience, that they're too politically correct, too insular into their own social lives in Hollywood or wherever they're writing from?

9:11Kelsey Grammer:Yeah, interesting. The idea of being too politically correct is probably killing the process, I think. It's not necessarily destroyed funny for everyone. It's just they've eliminated funny based upon human behavior. They've made it just on people that don't actually behave that way. So I think it may have made a big wrong turn in terms of what people think is funny. It's mostly slapstick, and you have to earn slapstick to make it believable. If it's not believable, it's just a terrible joke. And I think that's where they've gone mostly.

9:48Katie Miller:If Frasier were a real person today, what would he think of the world?

9:52Kelsey Grammer:Frasier was an eternal optimist, sort of like me. So I think he'd think the world was doing just fine. It just needs to go through some changes and some shifts and some nuanced behavior and maybe get to know each other again. Somebody asked me a while ago if I were president, what would I do first? I'd say I'd reintroduce good manners to the whole country. I believe in civility. I believe in kindness. I believe in please, may I, thank you, that kind of behavior between people. And I think we'd go a long way to be in a better country right away.

10:25Katie Miller:Do you think kids get away with too much these days? Absolutely. That the gentle parenting has ruined children?

10:30Kelsey Grammer:Yeah, no, I think I would fall on the side of the gentle parenting, but with steadiness. There has to be a place where firmness is what they deal with. Because you have to be able to obey a few things, like just common sense things. Don't step out on the street. Look both ways before you cross. There's just simple rules about survival that you need to pass on to your little humans.

10:58Katie Miller:Yeah.

10:59Kelsey Grammer:Or they won't stay that way for long. No.

11:02Katie Miller:You've won six Emmys, three Golden Globes, a Tony and a SAG Award. Do you think the awards are worth now what they used to be worth? Or have they diluted those?

11:13Kelsey Grammer:Well, you know what? There's always been sort of a popularity contest with awards anyway. You surprise them a little bit. you do something good once in a while, that might get attention. But there's so many overlays of what people will vote for and not vote for. I mean, politically, I'm kind of on the fringe of Hollywood. It's okay, I don't mind, because I'm a conservative. I've been a conservative in Hollywood for 40 years. I declared early. So it's been okay. They're kind of used to it with me. But there are other concerns that actually probably shouldn't enter into it. It shouldn't be politics.

11:48Kelsey Grammer:It shouldn't be performance. Well, you know.

11:51Katie Miller:Do other actors approach you who are conservative and discuss that and still stay in the closet, so to speak?

11:56Kelsey Grammer:There are several of us in the closet. There are several of us who aren't in the closet. Some of us who left the acting profession entirely. I had a dinner with some friends, and James Woods was there a while ago. He's happily out, but he's writing music, and he's a gambler.

12:14Katie Miller:Is there a performance that you're most proud of that nobody talks about?

12:18Kelsey Grammer:Well, actually, you know, there's a film coming out But today, I think, on Pay-Per-View or Amazon somewhere, called Lars Schreik Walks the Night. It's a science fiction movie about a man sort of trying to find his meaning, which I'm pretty proud of. There's another one called The Space Between, which was shot during COVID, where I played an old rocker. It was really fun. I played music in it and stuff. So I had a great time doing it. But we opened that. That was the formative. You'd have to find a theater somewhere to open. So we found three theaters in Detroit that opened up and we sold out. But for the weekend we made$5 ,000, I think.

13:00Kelsey Grammer:It was horrible. It did okay on Apple. It did okay on streaming a little bit. But still, I wish more people had seen it.

13:08Katie Miller:You built a legendary career playing fictional characters. But you're now investing your time in telling America's real story. The American Revelation Foundation, which is a civics-led education program, is celebrating America's 250th birthday. If you could make every American spend one hour learning about a single moment in history, which hour would you choose?

13:29Kelsey Grammer:Hmm. If we're really up to that, it would be one hour around 4 a.m. during the bombardment at Fort McHenry

13:40Katie Miller:when all those guys died holding up that flag.

13:44Kelsey Grammer:That'd be it.

13:46Katie Miller:Why that specific one?

13:47Kelsey Grammer:Because so much, so few people really understand what it meant that it was still there in the morning. It meant that there was a life connected to probably every three minutes of time bombarding. And that someone replaced another man and held the flag up. It was a very, very powerful thing. And I think if most people understood it, if children understood it, if human beings really got that that was why the flag was still there, they might not be ready so quick to burn it.

14:17Katie Miller:Do you think cannons should come back into use in the American military?

14:22Kelsey Grammer:Well.

14:23Katie Miller:We don't use cannons anymore.

14:25Kelsey Grammer:Yeah. Seems a shame.

14:28Katie Miller:I've confirmed this recently.

14:29Kelsey Grammer:They make such a great noise.

14:31Katie Miller:I do.

14:32Kelsey Grammer:Yeah. But do we still have, do we still have howitzers and stuff or not? It's all just missiles now. It's all missiles. It's all missiles. Well, the missile's a pretty cool thing. You know, I made a little missile thing when I was a kid, a rocket. So I thought that was pretty impressive.

14:46Katie Miller:In recent history, it feels like we've gone from celebrating American history to apologizing for it. Do you think younger generations are getting a balanced education about America's founding?

14:55Kelsey Grammer:Well, that's the reason we started the American Revelation, actually, was because I think the educational community has really dropped the ball. Probably deliberately in a lot of ways, but because they don't like the idea that we are a great country. something in our education system decided to think that we aren't and to teach our children that and of course if you're learning that from your teachers we believe our teachers, we do and if they say things like you come from a crap country well you know you start to think well maybe they're right, I wonder why I'm why I come from a crap place so that you end up searching your soul for why you're not a good person, why you aren't good anymore, why our country isn't good So that means mom and dad aren't very good either, are they?

15:42Kelsey Grammer:And there's a whole series of questions that come into it that are, it's basically child abuse, what we're doing with our children. So I wanted to change that.

15:51Katie Miller:Why does education seem to self-select those type of educators?

15:57Kelsey Grammer:Well, I'd hate to say it in any way that isn't a little bit, you know, like paranoid, I guess. But it does, it was a plot.

16:10Katie Miller:You think this is a conspiracy theory? Absolutely.

16:12Kelsey Grammer:It's not a theory. It's a conspiracy. Someone conspired to introduce the idea that we aren't a good country through our educational system. And you can call it whoever you want to, an enemy somewhere, but it is an inimical energy to what we believe is a good projection of our highest desires and goals in life. We want a good community. We want to serve others. We want to actually sacrifice ourselves for others. That's sort of in the American DNA. It's what we do. The same pulse of freedom that beat in the heart of George Washington beats in our hearts, I believe, and even across the whole world.

16:50Kelsey Grammer:And we're all yearning for freedom, that kind of freedom. And that comes at a price. And it doesn't come when you think you're doing something wrong.

17:01Katie Miller:Why is preserving our history just as important to you as creating great entertainment?

17:05Kelsey Grammer:Right. Well, great entertainment is relief. Supporting our history is understanding who you are. If you don't know who you are, how can you laugh at anything anyway? Certainly, if you don't know where you came from, you can't know who you are. If you don't know who you are, you don't know what to vote for or what you can stand up for or what's important in life. These are things. If you don't know who you are, you can be controlled. You can be told what's good for you.

17:31Katie Miller:My theory on this is that when Hollywood stopped producing great entertainment, when politics and culture started seeping into this escapism that entertainment was, is when entertainment stopped being entertainment. It's when it stopped being funny. It's when it stopped drawing people to the movie theaters because you felt like you were just living your life in repeat and didn't experience this great escapism.

17:54Kelsey Grammer:I think, I believe that Hollywood has actually still continued to provide pretty great entertainment I put on Star Wars the other day I from other night for my kids

18:07Katie Miller:they'd never seen it the woke one or no the old one okay

18:13Kelsey Grammer:I don't even know what that was our track okay but so as we were going through I suddenly realized you know it was so funny when Alec Guinness person I haven't heard that name, Obi-Wan, could have been since whatever it is. But it's me. I saw that scene again and I thought, ah, so wonderful. And then we started to talk about the force. And then I always said to my friends, I said, you know what the force is, right? God.

18:46Katie Miller:And we're like, huh?

18:48Kelsey Grammer:So we made a big mistake about somehow divorcing ourselves from the idea of God in Hollywood. The force became what the God was. Okay, fine. I kind of get that. As long as it's with you, okay, it is. But that separation that they started to kind of harvest then in film just got worse and metastasized, basically. So that we lost God. We've got people in, I have a beer company called Faith American Brewing Company, right? Faith in America. My daughter's name is Faith as well. So there's a few things that justify the idea. But I believe in America that is for all Americans. I've never believed in parties necessarily, although I'm conservative.

19:30Kelsey Grammer:It's a frame of thinking. But I was going to sell it in California a while ago. And I was speaking at one of the distributors. He actually said out loud, he said, I wouldn't sell anything with the word faith on it. So you don't believe in anything? No. Okay. Great. More power to you. I hope the lights come on today.

19:56Katie Miller:Have a great day, sir. Have you ever lost a role because of your political views?

20:01Kelsey Grammer:I have no idea. I suspect I may have. But I suspect I may be in that category where they just don't even think about me. That's okay. Oh, we wouldn't work with him. He's a conservative. I hope that's not the case because I'm actually pretty good at what I do.

20:19Katie Miller:Hollywood seems determined to reinvent nearly every classic like the Odyssey and distort it just a little bit to fit their views. Have you watched the Odyssey?

20:29Kelsey Grammer:I haven't seen the Odyssey, so I'm not really too aware of that. I mean, sometimes it hits me over the head. Okay. I mean, it's a little exhausting, actually. Because, I mean, I think old England is probably full of white people.

20:46Katie Miller:I'd imagine so.

20:47Kelsey Grammer:You know, I mean, Henry VIII is probably a white guy. I mean, I know who he was, you know, I mean, I'm even related to him. So he was red hair, you know, and, you know, it was kind of butch for a while and they got kind of fat.

21:00Katie Miller:So when he got gout, but it was an extraordinary character.

21:03Kelsey Grammer:I mean, the Henry VIII is he wrote the theme green sleeves for Anne Boleyn. It's one of the greatest melodies ever written. He actually was the one responsible for changing liturgical music to the mass. You couldn't sing anymore. You wanted each note to be a syllable. Each syllable had its own note. So we go and da-da-da-da. That's Henry VIII. And we don't credit him with enough. But he was just, I think historical significance should be respected a little bit culturally.

21:40Katie Miller:Do you think Hollywood will ever get back there? Yeah.

21:44Kelsey Grammer:Yeah, I think good entertainment, We've found a whole bunch more ways to entertain now. Of course, there's Angel Studios. There's a couple of other outlets that are working with a similar model. There's crowdfunding now, which is helping make movies that they want to see, that the crowd wants to see. And so they get to choose. And it always comes down to that in the end, I think. Hollywood isn't very good at telling people what they have to see, because then they flop.

22:13Katie Miller:But they've had successive years of just flops. Yeah, they're finally figuring it out.

22:19Kelsey Grammer:I think eventually flopping doesn't work so well. We're not shooting a lot of movies these days. I mean, I'm glad they made the Odyssey. I mean, I don't know if they've pitched it too far into our particular culture to divorce you from the idea of what actually happened. I mean, I read the Iliad and the Odyssey and I know that Homer was probably not really a fan of the Greeks. When you read through the stuff, you realize, Why the hell did they go kill that whole race of people for?

22:46Katie Miller:What did they go destroy Troy for?

22:50Kelsey Grammer:I mean, for some part that wanted to take Paris? I mean, I guess she was cute, but is that really a reason to go to war? I don't know. All those men who died? It's a very weird thing, but you can definitely tell by his tone when he writes it. The Homeric tone is one of like, isn't this kind of ridiculous?

23:10Katie Miller:Do you think it's a good thing that Paramount is buying Warner Brothers?

23:14Kelsey Grammer:I have no idea. I've worked at Paramount for 30, 40 years almost. And our relationship is not particularly great right now. I don't work there. So a lot of friends of mine don't work there either. I think David Ellison is actually a pretty good filmmaker. I think he likes movies. I loved I loved the last two Mission Impossible movies. I thought they were fantastic Well-spirited and they even had they even had a bit of a nod to what you might call woke as a minute and I thought I thought they were great. I thought they handled everything really well They they pitched it just right then what are they doing wrong right now?

23:56Kelsey Grammer:Well not making any movies I mean they're supposed to make movies. I don't I don't I know the states but California may have been partially responsible for this there's a dearth of making film because California doesn't really support the film industry anymore and I don't know why but it's much more attractive to make films elsewhere I mean I recently did a film last year in England doomsday is coming out Christmas one of the AG said to me you know we haven't shot a film in that and LA in America for three years. We're not going back. I think Democrats in California have made it so not monetizable and have made it hurtful

24:43Katie Miller:financially.

24:44Kelsey Grammer:There's a number of reasons, yeah, that it could be. I mean, I think the Democrats have made it very impossible to live in California.

24:50Katie Miller:Just live there.

24:52Kelsey Grammer:I mean, it's hard. It's hard to do well in California and not pay a ridiculous price I Mean I'm for instance our kids are all homeschooled. We don't you know enter the school system because it's not good We we graduate 30 35 percent reading proficiency What kind of statistic is that? I mean America should teach its children 99 % should be able to read when they leave high school.

25:20Katie Miller:The San Francisco Unified School District just spent$7 million on a new ethnic class that all of these students had to be taught pretty much to hate themselves and hate our country when they're sitting$100 million in debt this school year.

25:34Kelsey Grammer:It's extraordinary. Nice waste of time. Yeah. Perfect. Just a way to lift those kids up. Yeah.

25:41Katie Miller:Are you concerned about AI and it's changing the film industry?

25:45Kelsey Grammer:No. I think it's going to be great for us.

25:48Katie Miller:Which AI do you use?

25:49Kelsey Grammer:I don't use it. I don't need to. My kids kind of recognize it. But what I find reassuring is all my children look at something and say, oh, that's AI. And they dismiss it almost instantly. They have no interest in it. They say, oh, that's just AI. I love the one, the girl in history one. I think that's really fun. The one who walks into history. She's like walking through, you know, ancient Greece or whatever. Hi, I'm just walking into the Parthenon. Look who's here. And, you know, she's really charming. She's been completely created by an AI bot or whatever. But it's fun because it interacts with what looks like period stuff.

26:28Kelsey Grammer:And it's accurate.

26:31Katie Miller:What are you watching with your kids right now? Star Wars.

26:35Kelsey Grammer:I did do Star Wars, but those are the ones I get. I'll do a nod to my programming, once in a while my programming preference. Mostly it's Minions, Wreck-It Ralph. What else? We watch... What's he doing? Oh, James. James is the one that sort of calls the shots on the entertainment. So he's a 10-year-old. There's one he's been really pushing lately. His first favorite film, though, was Jaws. Huh. Two years old. and his older brother, Gabriel, Jaws. That was there. When Gabriel was three years old, he built a whole storyboard, basically the first five minutes of Jaws, and drew it all out, put a little around the playground.

27:21Katie Miller:So we've been doing, we watched Ghostbusters from the 80s. Oh, Ghostbusters.

27:25Kelsey Grammer:Love Ghostbusters. That's the favorite, yeah.

27:28Katie Miller:We just did Magic School Bus from the 90s. I haven't done that. We do Darkwing Duck.

27:35Kelsey Grammer:Oh, no kidding. Okay, that one's all right.

27:38Katie Miller:It's not bad. My child walks around with a cape and the, what do you call it, face mask and just screams, I'm Darkwing Duck and runs into rooms. That's good. SpongeBob.

27:50Kelsey Grammer:We do a lot of SpongeBob. That's not quite a bit.

27:54Katie Miller:What surprises you, or what part of newborn life most surprised that you didn't remember?

28:00Kelsey Grammer:Well, I've got a pretty good memory.

28:05Kelsey Grammer:How quickly it comes is what surprises me now. Because the memory is a little bit blurred in terms of, well, I remember kids are all grabbing stuff and stuff like that. For the first three or four weeks, he wasn't grabbing anything. He was sitting on my lap and I'm thinking, well, it's kind of easy. Then five minutes later, he started to grab everything in sight. So it's a battle that way a little bit. Now he's moving around quite a bit. I was surprised that separation anxiety occurs when they start to crawl that that this this time I recognized it I thought oh that really is true he wasn't really aware that his mother was leaving the room until he could crawl so how things like connector fascinating but then mom would leave and he'd go what what's going on like some somehow his independent movement was still connected to her being around which I liked there's a lot of I want to say

28:56Katie Miller:like new age parenting, right? There's a lot more because of Instagram and TikTok and social media. Do you find that that's influenced how you've raised a newborn this time versus in the past by how much this content is being pushed at moms?

29:10Kelsey Grammer:Right. We don't spend much time on the internet, yeah. But the kids kind of do. So I had a lot of mixed feelings about it. when Faith was three, she wanted to open a Minecraft. She kept, I don't know, you're three? What the heck? So, but she, I said, okay, sure, try it. And we opened up this Minecraft thing. And she started to do it. And she got really into it. And I thought, well, should I be alarmed by this? And I explained to her. And she was about three and a half, all getting close to four. And I said, you know, there's this world. And there's this one on the computer. on your laptop or your iPad.

29:56Kelsey Grammer:And I said, I just want to make sure you spend some time in this one and know the difference. And she said, I know the difference, Dad, but look, this is what I can do. I just created a world just like this. And see, the beach is here. And I started thinking, so what is my problem? You know, like, why would I object to this? Her creativity was extraordinary. So now she's now a digital artist the age of 14. Wow who is as good as Almost anybody out there and she spends a lot of time Working with her stylist and stuff and then drawn a whole worlds and I think Okay, I mean I've got that's that's powerful and I'm I'm glad for her.

30:43Kelsey Grammer:She's not on social media She's it bumps into some of it a little bit not

30:48Katie Miller:Are you the strict parent or are you the softy?

30:51Kelsey Grammer:Both.

30:52Katie Miller:Is your wife more strict or the softy?

30:55Kelsey Grammer:She's strict about something. She's strict about washing your hands. She's strict about soap and cleanliness. But I'm strict about proper behavior, shake a person in the hand firmly, look them in the eye, that kind of stuff.

31:12Katie Miller:Where are you on Maha? Do you guys do seed oil free? Are you doing sugar?

31:16Kelsey Grammer:We're way, I knew Bobby for years. I had great, great admiration for him and sort of dropping his campaign and saying like, I'm hooking up with this guy because we got to do some of this stuff. And this has to happen now. And I'm really behind that. I'm for him 100%. Been an anti-vaxxer for quite a while.

31:44Kelsey Grammer:I don't want to talk about it too much with my kids, but there were some issues with vaccination. And we're out the other end okay. But we're definitely ma-ha-ha-ha. We really are for it. We've got this thing about folic acid in bread, in all the breads, to make up for the lack of whatever. They put folate in everything. You can't, your body can't absorb it. At least half the people in the world can't absorb it. Yeah. It becomes more of a toxin. We happen to have that little mutation in our family, an MTHFR gene, I think they call it. I just hope I have the letters right. I know it's sort of that, yeah.

32:27Kelsey Grammer:We have that. So we don't eat regular bread. We don't do it. It's, we like bread. We like pasta. We just check that it doesn't have folic acid. And they're passing laws all over the place to make it be an additive, and I don't know why. Somebody told me that it was grown in China mostly.

32:46Katie Miller:No, I think it's partly, it's the same reason why they don't do good education surrounding breastfeeding anymore, is because they speak to the lowest common denominator in the room, not the person who can understand it.

32:59Kelsey Grammer:Right.

33:00Katie Miller:And so what they do is put folate in everything, because they're going to assume for the person who doesn't eat folate, They have to over consume for that one person instead of saying, like, why are they giving every newborn Hep B when 97 or 96 percent of mothers don't have Hep B? Well, I'm still, the Gardasil thing, I think, well, yeah, nobody wants to get ovarian cancer, but you can't get that particular virus unless you're having unprotected sex or sleeping with people who use needles all the time.

33:27Kelsey Grammer:It's like, so my, how old does my daughter have to be to get the first shot? Nine? 11, 13? So we're skipping that one. It's like, I think she's going to be fine. Let's teach our kids to be a little more respectful of their own bodies before they get into a situation where sex is the only answer for them. It just seems wild. Sex education, to me, I think should be about responsible sexual intercourse and interaction, and not necessarily just something inconvenient happens. We can cut it out.

34:01Katie Miller:But that's, to me, the common theme of the medical establishment is that they put full in everything. They give you Hepi when you don't need it. They give you Gardasil when you don't need it instead of teaching someone that. Like, why is the first conversation that a woman has with her doctor postpartum is about getting back on birth control? Why isn't it here's how to maintain your body without needing birth control? It doesn't make any sense to me.

34:26Kelsey Grammer:Also, I think young men should be taught a lot about a woman's body and what happens and what their response is. there was an hour up there was a I've talked about this before there is a it was a documentary done it was a blind documentary there were eight boys and twelve girls whatever and the twelve girls were asked to read exactly the same copy and the boys didn't see them they just heard them and they were asked who do you think the prettiest girl was who do you think was the most attractive girl and all the boys picked the same three girls those three girls were ovulating stop it's more powerful than we have any idea a boy has his urges whatever but the lesson that you need to teach is self-control and respect self-respect as well say well I'm gonna be I'm gonna honor the fact that I'm it is a blessing to be allowed to have an intimacy with another human being boys and girls and you need to be responsible about it and I think if that was what we taught in sex education I think we'd be in a lot better shape be in a lot better shape of society too

35:36Katie Miller:absolutely you and your wife have been married for 15 years you've said she brought stability into your life what's your secret to a happy marriage just shut up and listen

35:46Kelsey Grammer:it's not too it's not too hard you know I mean um Kate's great I mean Kate actually acknowledges that I have an opinion or two and I might have lived long enough to have some respect. We have a pretty good partnership, honestly. But yeah, it's like, it's whatever you want.

36:06Katie Miller:Do you think traditional gender roles help in maintaining that?

36:09Kelsey Grammer:Yeah, I do, actually. I think, yeah, it's a... It's an absolute honor to have anybody, to have a woman pick a man. you know to say you're the guy why do you think so many young men are not getting married now and are not choosing to have children they've been taught to not value any relationship other than the one with themselves and I think that's sort of a sort of narcissism run amok I don't need that I don't need you know interaction with people relational value is important and the more we explore the better off we're gonna be. I'm not foolish enough to think that, oh, it's just one person's fault or one industry's fault.

36:59Kelsey Grammer:Handheld devices and stuff like that, I think, are responsible in some way. And I think finding that there's an immediate gratification to so many things and that there's a lack of process in so many young people's lives from, how do you get from this step to this step to this step? But then, you know, I see all the kids playing sports. I think it's got to be helpful on some level, you know, because you can't get from there to there without training. And those are good lessons.

37:25Katie Miller:Do you think Hollywood's, and I would say your friends in Hollywood, have they ever been treated differently because of some of your conservative views?

37:35Kelsey Grammer:Gosh, I don't know. I mean, I really don't know. I mean, it's possible.

37:41Katie Miller:We're going to play a game of would you rather.

37:42Kelsey Grammer:Okay.

37:43Katie Miller:Which of your characters would you rather babysit your baby? Sideshow Bob or the Beast from X-Men?

37:51Kelsey Grammer:Beast.

37:52Katie Miller:Would you rather explain looks maxing to Alexander Hamilton or explain AI to Benjamin Franklin?

37:58Kelsey Grammer:I have no idea what looks maxing is. This is a real blessing for me. You're not into the maxing thing? No. I'm blissfully ignorant of most of this stuff. AI, I would be glad to try to explain to him. Yeah, I mean, you know, artificial intelligence. Because my trick is always this. I prefer real intelligence. I mean, I'm okay with the real stuff. You know, artificial is fun. And self-generated artificial intelligence may be where we're going to run into a little bit of trouble. Because its foundation is artificial and it's self-generating, more artificial thinking. Right.

38:36Katie Miller:Would you rather have Frasier psychoanalyze your personal life or let Martha Stewart review your Thanksgiving dinner?

38:44Kelsey Grammer:Interesting. I think they're both nice people. She's a real one. She's sort of not really real. But he was always very kind.

38:54Katie Miller:Would you rather moderate a debate between George Washington and Bill Maher or between John Adams and Elon Musk?

39:00Kelsey Grammer:John Adams and Elon Musk, they're both thinkers. You know, they're silver-tongued. You know, I'm not sure George Washington was silver-tongued. He was deliberate, focused, and he had vision and was willing to stick to an idea. That's the reason that the monuments over there aren't, I don't think it's big enough.

39:22Katie Miller:Would you rather spend one last night at the Cheers bar or one last evening in Fraser's apartment?

39:27Kelsey Grammer:Oh, Cheers bar. Yeah, I mean, because I like bars. Sitting home alone at night is not good. What's your drink of choice? Well, now it's just a nice little ale. It's not a sherry? Never was, yeah, never Sherry. I still like a martini sometimes.

39:46Katie Miller:What's your daily routine?

39:47Kelsey Grammer:Daily routine, get up in the morning, work out, have a little bit of breakfast. Usually it's just a small bite of something. I'm not exactly an intermittent faster, but I do it a little bit. And then just talk with the kids.

40:01Katie Miller:What's your coffee?

40:02Kelsey Grammer:That's a big thing. What is it? It's a half-calf, pretty strong Breve latte, which is made with half and half.

40:11Katie Miller:Do you make it at home? I do.

40:14Kelsey Grammer:I don't, I really don't get coffee out anymore.

40:17Katie Miller:I always find coffee out tastes so much better than no matter what you make at home.

40:20Kelsey Grammer:Oh, interesting, it's the other way at our house now.

40:23Katie Miller:What coffee machine do you have?

40:27Kelsey Grammer:A marzocca, so you know, a little Italian.

40:29Katie Miller:Yeah. People are very deliberate with their coffee machine choices and the coffee beans that they choose to make their coffees with.

40:37Kelsey Grammer:Yeah, some of them are too automated for me. I don't like the ones that are super automatic. I like the ones that I have to do it.

40:43Katie Miller:What's a conspiracy theory that you believe in besides education?

40:47Kelsey Grammer:Oh, yeah. No, I believe in most of them. I mean, I think they're conspiracies for a reason. They want us to forget who we are. I think that is an energy there. I guess some people might call it a conspiracy theory. I believe I'm not a Catholic. I'm Christian. I mean, I believe in Jesus. and I do think there are spiritual enemies that are out to get us. I think that's true. And you can call it what you want. You can call it Satan or evil or whatever, but that's a very powerful thing and there's a lot of people who are kneeling down to the bad one.

41:25Katie Miller:What's the craziest thing you've ever spent money on?

41:29Kelsey Grammer:I guess, honestly, most recently comes bread.

41:35Katie Miller:It's very relatable.

41:37Kelsey Grammer:My wife has found this Japanese milk bread. There's like one small group of people that make it and it goes through, it's like a pop-up, a pop-up sort of outlet. And it's like sometimes it's at a nail salon or a beauty parlor and you pre-order. But it's the best bread we've ever had. And they say, grammar, oh yes, oh you have five loaves. Wow, fantastic. And they're all wrapped in this white wax paper. It's amazing stuff. Everybody's really excited when it gets home. So that's pretty much it.

42:21Katie Miller:So relatable though.

42:23Kelsey Grammer:It's really good.

42:24Katie Miller:I'm driving through a pop-up tomorrow to go pick up bread. There you go.

42:31Katie Miller:Who's the nicest person in Hollywood?

42:34Kelsey Grammer:Oh, John Voight.

42:36Katie Miller:Oh, he's really nice.

42:37Kelsey Grammer:Yeah, he's a really, really nice guy. I would say. And after John, it's me.

42:45Katie Miller:Who's the rudest?

42:46Kelsey Grammer:He and I say we're the nicest person in the world. We do it all the time.

42:49Katie Miller:Who's the rudest celebrity you've ever met? We like to name names.

42:54Kelsey Grammer:Boy, it's... if you see somebody in a bad moment, it's probably not indicative of how they can be all the time.

43:02Katie Miller:Fair.

43:03Kelsey Grammer:You know, I'd say, so I've met some people in a bad, who were having a bad day, who I met again a couple days later, who were kind of okay. So I'd hate to, I don't even know. The names are so far gone, too. It was a long, long time ago.

43:19Katie Miller:What's next for Kelsey Grammer?

43:22Kelsey Grammer:Well, you know, we're still working on movies. I'm reading another script about a guy that has a fascination for Cher. Seems like a great character thing. He's sort of obsessed with her, which I like. I was always obsessed with her too.

43:38Katie Miller:Do you think he'll ever stop working? No, no.

43:41Kelsey Grammer:Work is wonderful. I have a great job. I write a lot now too, so that's something I'm working on in the book now. It's just, you know, you do things. You just need to be in the game. I like my downtime, but I'm dedicated to that as well. But mostly with the kids, if I can be with the kids, that makes me happy. If I can do a great film, I just don't want to do the same film over and over again. So I won't do that.

44:13Katie Miller:When you started your career, did you ever think you'd get to this arc and be so successful?

44:20Kelsey Grammer:Yeah.

44:24Kelsey Grammer:Yeah, I thought I would work hard and do well. That's what I thought you'd do.

44:32Katie Miller:If you could host a dinner party with three people, dead or alive, who's coming to dinner and what are you eating?

44:40Kelsey Grammer:Very good. Well, I like a lot of the founding fathers. I'd love to sit down with Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Ben Franklin. I think that'd be really fun. What will we have for food? Maybe I'd make escargot.

44:55Katie Miller:You can make escargot? Yeah, I can, yeah. What's the best thing you cook?

44:58Kelsey Grammer:That's probably it. That and popcorn. I'm great at popcorn. It's an odd thing to say. No, no.

45:04Katie Miller:How do you do your popcorn?

45:05Kelsey Grammer:Well, I do it with oil and shake it and do it, sort of time it instead of a certain heat. And then there's quite a bit of butter and there's a certain way of salting. And there's even a little, occasionally if I want to go a little less butter, I'll do this thing that sort of tricks the mind. You sprinkle a little water, like a little mist on it, which makes it grab the salt better.

45:27Katie Miller:On the stove?

45:28Kelsey Grammer:No, no. Do you see that? That's once it's off the stove. Yeah. And then I make popcorn pretty much every night.

45:35Katie Miller:Do you have a microwave in your house? No.

45:37Kelsey Grammer:Oh, oh, have one, yeah. Not really allowed to use it. I use it for one thing. I sometimes like to cook a steak, medium rare on the rarest side, and pop it in there for heat just when I need to. And then I like the way it tastes.

45:50Katie Miller:Does your wife then eat it after it's been in the microwave?

45:52Kelsey Grammer:No, then I'm persona non grata.

45:54Katie Miller:So I threw out the microwave.

45:55Kelsey Grammer:Meat hands.

45:56Katie Miller:Because in my house, if you have a microwave, mail will use it.

46:00Kelsey Grammer:Oh, interesting. Okay.

46:01Katie Miller:So I've thrown out the microwave, so now we don't have one.

46:05Kelsey Grammer:MWUI. Yeah, mail will use it.

46:07Katie Miller:So if you don't want to use a microwave, it's gone from the house. That makes sense.

46:11Kelsey Grammer:We haven't. We've redone a kitchen or two, and those don't have them.

46:15Katie Miller:Yeah. Thank you so much for doing this. It's a pleasure.

46:19Kelsey Grammer:I enjoyed it.

46:20Katie Miller:Thanks so much for watching this episode of the Katie Miller Podcast. We'll catch you next week, 6 p.m. Tuesday night. See you there.