So he does it, and about a year later, there's a big magazine article about his mistress, who lived out in Anaheim. She talks about how he called her and said, "Good news: I got a free trip to L.A., I'm going to do this Cheers show. And they're going to pay me." So that's why he did it. Then he said, apparently, "Can I borrow a pair of your panties?" and she said, "Why?" And he said, "I promised the guys on the team I could bring back Kirstie Alley's panties."

Andy Ackerman (editor-director): The city held a big parade for us for our 200th-episode anniversary [in 1990]. We were treated like royalty. The governor, Michael Dukakis, was there. They named an alley after Kirstie, and gave us the keys to the city. Everywhere we went: Free food, free drinks. I remember going out to this nightclub and dancing with all the Boston Massachusetts luminaries and having a drink with Ethel Kennedy. It was wild.

**Alley: **One time, I brought Prince to the set. He's a friend of mine, and he asked to come. There were VIP rooms behind the audience, where a lot of the ecs would sit, so I had Prince sitting up there. Everyone wanted to meet him, but he's a little shy. I think Woody went in and shook hands with him, and came down and said, "He isn't even talking to me!" But Jackie Swanson—she had a relationship with Prince, too.

**Swanson: **I've known Prince for many years—I worked on the "Raspberry Beret" video—and Kirstie and I used to fight about him. He once sent a card [saying] he had penned a song about me, called "Palomino Pleasure Ride." I remember bringing this card to work one time and showing Kirstie and saying: "See? Now who's the better friend?" It was so ridiculous. But Prince thought the writing on _Cheers _was smart. And he loved Kelly's headbands.

Harrelson: The thing I remember most was, after taping, we'd all head upstairs, and me, Kelsey, Teddy and George would play foosball. We got into tournaments. It was mind-blowing how aggressive and loud it was—it was foosball, you know? But God, it was fun.

**Grammer: **That all ended as soon as Frasier began. No one from that crowd was really interested. I finally moved the table out to my house, and it ended up being sold with the house. So it's now in the hands of somebody who may not know its intrinsic value.

···

By the time Cheers_ headed into the '90s, the challenge for everyone was how do you keep the show fresh?_

Danson: The first few years, the adrenaline pump is: "Can I do this? Will I be good? Will they love us? Did we rehearse enough?" You know, from about eight years on, that adrenaline pump is gone, but you need adrenaline to perform or you're fucked. So the way people at _Cheers _got pumped was to rehearse less and less, to be less certain.

As the years went on, it got crazier and crazier: "Where's Woody?" "Oh, he called this morning; he's in Berlin because the Wall's coming down." Well, that would piss off John, who would then fly to Seattle to harvest his apples—literally.

Harrelson: I did have a problem with tardiness. Me and John Ratznenberger butted heads a few times, and I think me and Bebe Neuwirth [clashed] a couple of times.

Isaacs: [By the last few seasons] they'd do a reading, and at the end, you'd go around the table, and George would say, "I'll miss Friday and Monday. I'm on SNL this weekend." And Kirstie would say, "I'll miss Friday, I'm going to look at some property in Oregon." So when you [later] did a run-through, you'd have Ted as Sam, you'd have the first A.D. [assistant director] as Norm, the second A.D. as Woody, and you'd have the script girl as Rebecca. If you went behind the bar after the show was over, you'd find all the lines were taped [up everywhere]; they were more interested in the foosball tournament upstairs. But you knew what they could do, and you knew that if something wasn't working, you could fix it during the dress [rehearsal]. Any show is like that. They say the first year they work for you; the second year you work together, and then you work for them.