While people get flowers when they join a new workplace, the Cheers cast welcomed Kirstie Alley to the show with a very unusual gift when she joined ‘Cheers’.
Stars of the show reunited at the ATX TV Festival in Austin, TX, where they reflected on how the oddball gift came to be.
Alley, who died at age 71 in December, was remembered for joining the cast as Rebecca Howe, a role she played for nearly 150 episodes.
George Wendt, 74, recalled the funny story during a panel at the Cheers reunion at the ATX TV Festival in Austin, Texas.
Wendt said that he and fellow cast member John Ratzenberger, 76, were asked to get a gift for the actress — who died in December after a battle with cancer — when she joined the show in Season six.
The actors played, respectively, Norm Peterson and Cliff Clavin on the long-running and beloved sitcom.
‘We were having dinner right before the show, and we said, ‘Oh jeez, we should have got her something, right?’ And ‘Yeah, like some flowers or something…’ Wendt said. ‘So, [Ted Danson] says, ‘I can’t, I got a thing I got to do.’ And [Rhea Perlman], “no.”‘
So by process of elimination Wendt and Ratzenberger were tasked with finding a gift, and they decided to drive through a very ‘trendy area’ on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles.
‘Going past all these places and we go past Big 5 Sporting Goods and John goes, ‘you wanna buy her a shotgun?,” Wendt said.
‘And, like you, I laughed for about five minutes,’ he continued. ‘And then immediately pulled into the parking lot, and we bought her a freakin’ shotgun.’
He added: ‘John and I were never tasked with the gifts again.’
Ratzenberger also said that Wendt took the joke the extra mile.
‘I think you even wrote on the card, “You’re gonna have to shoot your way out,”‘ he said.
Wendt and Ratzenberger recently reunited almost 30 years after the series finale to see the bar where everybody knows your name one last time.
The bar went up for auction alongside a plethora of memorabilia from iconic television shows last month in Dallas.
‘It was fantastic, so great to see the bar,’ Wendt told Boston’s WHDH.
Wendt also revealed that he stays in touch with his fellow Cheers cast members.
