Peri Gilpin has revealed details about her unexpected comeback to Frasier as the famous Roz Doyle.
The actress played the stuffy psychiatrist’s radio producer in all 11 seasons of the original run, with Kelsey Grammer, David Hyde Pierce, Jane Leeves, and the late John Mahoney.
Despite the fact that Frasier has been replaced in the Paramount+ revival by a new ensemble that includes Nicholas Lyndhurst and Jack Cutmore-Scott, it was just reported that the 62-year-old would reprise her role in the next series finale.
A teaser from the episode, which will be published on Thursday, sees Roz knocking on Frasier’s door to spend Christmas with his family, before telling her host that he ‘looks like trash’.
Gilpin discussed her return to the Frasier world after nearly two decades away in a recent interview, and how it was ‘bittersweet’ without her former castmates.
‘I just loved getting to do it,’ she told Entertainment Weekly. ‘It was a fantasy come true to play that part again and to go back into that world. And there’s bittersweet things because it makes me so sad when I think about John. I miss him. He was a great friend, but I feel like they dealt with that.
‘They go back to John every chance they can and they refer back. They refer back to Cheers. They refer back to our first Frasier and I feel like we’re kind of a part of it. It felt very comfortable there and wonderful and it was really funny. It’s like a comfort when you watch it.
‘You’re like, “Oh my gosh, I get to see this again. It’s new, it’s fresh, but I am getting the same feelings I got from watching it the first time.”’
Bebe Neuwirth, who played Lilith Sternin in the eighth episode, isn’t the only famous figure to appear in the revival.
Despite just appearing in the forthcoming finale, she indicated that she is eager to reprise her role as Roz ‘if that’s a possibility, if that’s something that happens’.
We must do everything possible to make this happen.
When we last saw her, she had been elevated to KACL station manager, staying in Seattle with Martin, Niles, and Daphne while her old colleague flew to Chicago.
Lifting the lid on where Roz has been since her final scenes, Gilpin added: ‘I think she’s been in radio and the thing I know about the world of radio through my dad’s work is that you kind of bounce around.
‘So I would imagine she was in Seattle a lot of the time at the station, but I imagine she probably did other things. She’s probably been producing and maybe she did a show of her own. That was one of her dreams.
‘I would imagine that Sirius, the world of that radio would be very attractive to her, but she was raising a daughter.
‘So once you sort of settle someplace, you kind of stay put for a while. I think she’s been dating. I think she’s been having a lot of fun, traveling, wearing gorgeous clothes, enjoying herself.’
That definitely sounds like the Roz Doyle we know.
Frasier is available to stream on Paramount+.
