John Mahoney died of multiple health complications, including brain disease and lung cancer, earlier this year.

Leeves: People don’t realize how generous John was. It wasn’t until his funeral when people spoke from the foundations he supported that you realized what an incredible, giving spirit he had. He didn’t talk about it. He just did it.

Lloyd: We’d have rehearsal at 12:30 and be off the stage by 1:30. I’d always see John, however, walking to his car at 4:30. I finally asked him what he was doing. He said he was responding to fan letters. He had a rule that if anybody wrote to him, he’d write back.

Gilpin: A few years ago, John took me and my family to dinner in Chicago. While we were driving back, my husband was texting with Chris Lloyd and read Chris’s text out loud: “Please tell the great John Mahoney it was one of the honors of my life to work with him.” I could see a little tear form in John’s eye. Then my daughter says, “Who’s John Mahoney?” John almost fell out of the car laughing. He never took himself too seriously.

Grammer: The last time we had a serious conversation, he said he was going to do Lear in Ireland. I would have loved to see him do it.

Toward the end of the tenth season, Casey, Lee, and Grammer decided to make their next season the show’s last.

Grammer: Cheers did 11 seasons. I didn’t want to outdo it, or come in under. I wanted it to be the same.

Lee: When Niles and Daphne finally got together, there was a certain tension gone that had been sustaining the series in ways we didn’t understand. We also wondered how many more times Frasier could be left heartbroken.

Leeves: They called us into the producer’s office to tell us. It was a lifetime that I couldn’t remember not doing. Peri and I got married and had kids. David’s parents passed. So much life happened. My overriding feeling was, these are my touchstones. What’s going to happen?

Pierce: The richness of our life together and what we all celebrated or helped each other through is the essence of why we remain so close.

How do you wrap up 11 seasons in one episode? The writers opted to stay true to the series’s established rhythms.

Keenan: We knew there’d be a Shakespearean ending of births, deaths, and weddings. Frasier would set off on a new voyage, and come to feel about a woman the way Niles did for Daphne.

Grammer: I told Chris I wanted it to end with Frasier quoting Tennyson’s Ulysses. “Yet there are worlds to conquer. . . .” There’s always some other place to go, some new challenge to meet. Our future’s bright no matter what it might be. It’s something I’ve always carried in my heart, so I thought it was something that might be nice to share with Frasier.

Daily: While Frasier gives his final on-air farewell, people crowd around the window behind him to watch. Most of them were writers, producers, and support staff.

Lloyd: I was three people down from my dad, David, a legendary sitcom writer, for whom this was going to be his last TV episode working on. It’s hard not to get choked up.

Daily: They found the actor from the pilot who moved Martin’s chair into Frasier’s apartment to take it out. It was a beautiful bookend to see it go full circle. Who would have thought a piece of furniture would tug at the heartstrings of everyone?