What Happened to Niles Crane Actor David Hyde Pierce After Frasier?

Although he had been acting on stage and screen beforehand, most people were first introduced to David Hyde Pierce through his role as Niles Crane on the NBC sitcom “Frasier.” Pierce, in the long run, was the secret sauce that helped differentiate “Frasier” from “Cheers,” as Niles quickly became a fan favorite and was one half of the show’s long-running “will they/won’t they” romance. leading to marriage and a baby between him and his father’s home healthcare worker Daphne Moon. Aside from the way audiences loved Pierce as Niles, it was clear the industry did too: He was nominated 11 times for the Best Supporting Actor Emmy, winning four times, including for season the last of the show in 2004. But unlike Kelsey Grammer continuing to ply his trade in the world of sitcoms with a number of (and much less successful) sequels, Pierce chose to step away mostly (but not entirely) from the prominence screen after the show ended over 20 years ago.

Although “Frasier” itself went through a necessary reboot on Paramount+, with several of the show’s original cast members appearing for at least one episode, Niles has been conspicuously absent. (Oddly enough, when it was he asked about the likelihood of such a reboot years ago, Pierce assumed one would never happen.) Although his character’s son is a regular on the new show, guaranteeing that Niles and Daphne are mentioned in dialogue, we don’t have seen Pierce again. And the actor has publicly acknowledged that he has chosen not to appear in the show. So it makes the question even more important: What happened to Pierce after “Frasier” ended? Well, the short version is simple: For the most part, he chose to act on stage.

In some ways, it makes perfect sense. Pierce is far from the only member of the cast on “Frasier” to act on stage; even Grammer did a post-“Frasier” turn in a Tony-nominated Broadway revival of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.” But shortly after “Frasier” ended in 2004, Pierce jumped to another famous comic property in the world of Monty Python. He portrayed Sir Robin, among other characters, in the original Broadway version of “Spamalot,” alongside cast members such as Tim Curry as King Arthur and Hank Azaria as Sir Lancelot. Certainly, the presence of well-known film and television actors on the stage is not new, but Pierce had come from 11 years of doing a kind of live play (when you think of the kind of humor and storytelling in “Frasier”) to experiencing his acting and singing chops on stage in a hugely popular and much loved stage musical. (It’s also to Pierce’s credit that you could easily see him playing King Arthur now that he’s older; he wouldn’t just be typecast as the more cowardly character type.) And differently for some famous actors and actresses who make a stage show almost like a lark, for Pierce, it became almost a second life for him. He received his first Tony Award not for “Spamalot,” but for the next Broadway show in which he starred, “Curtains.”

While you might not recognize “Curtains” as immediately as you will “Spamalot” from its origins in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” the 2006 musical had a pretty impressive cast alongside Pierce, including the composition team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, best known for writing the music for the Broadway musical “Chicago.” In “Curtains,” Pierce played a detective on the case to solve a murder at the center of a musical set in Boston, while also indulging his own passion for musical theater.

Pierce would continue to work on Broadway afterwards in shows such as “La Bete” and the recent revival of “Hello, Dolly!”, co-starring Bette Midler in the title role. And what’s more, Pierce returns to the stage this year in a new version of the iconic comic operetta “The Pirates of Penzance.”

David Hyde Pierce has not completely avoided appearing in film and television since the end of “Frasier,” but his choices have been few and they clearly speak to his own interests more than the need to work and collect a paycheck. Perhaps his most notable post-“Frasier” work was on the recent Max series “Julia,” where he played Julia Child’s husband Paul as she began her distinguished career as a celebrity TV chef in the mid-1960s. (“Frasier” fans may recall that one of the show’s other regular cast members, Bebe Neuwirth, played Frasier Crane’s ex-wife Lilith.) Although Pierce looks the same, if a little older , on “Julia,” the kind of character he played (a husband who has to deal with the fact that his wife is becoming famous while his own artwork is ignored) allowed to him a level of complexity that he did not have always present in his excellent artwork. work on “Frasier.” Although the series was canceled after two seasons, it felt distinctly like a breath of fresh air for audiences who may not have caught it in its few other appearances. (Most notable among those would be a recurring role on CBS’s “The Good Wife.”) Of course, the other breath of fresh air in itself was a reboot, as Pierce returned to one of her larger roles famous in the Netflix reboot “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp” for a couple of episodes, as well as the sequel “Ten Years Later” briefly.

David Hyde Pierce made himself a star as Niles Crane on “Frasier,” and the fact that his Emmy-winning work feels like such an impossible standard for other actors to live up to speaks to his quality as an actor. . It’s great to be one of the people who have seen him flourish on the Broadway stage during the last two decades, because the success of “Frasier” has enabled him to flex his muscles wherever he wants. If you haven’t caught him in quick TV appearances over the years, or the indie thriller “The Perfect Host” (where he plays something of a more murderous version of Niles), just know he hasn’t fallen off on the map completely and consider yourself lucky when it decides to pop up on the big or small screen again.