Why Was Maris Crane Never Shown on ‘Frasier’?

Lauren Novak January 6, 2:19 pm

FRASIER, David Hyde Pierce, Kelsey Grammer, 1993-2004 — NBC/Everett Collection

What To Know

Maris Crane, Niles’s wife on Frasier, was never shown on screen, originally as a nod to the unseen character Vera from Cheers.
The character quickly became so bizarre and exaggerated through jokes and descriptions that the creators found her uncastable and decided to keep her offscreen.
Writers and producers believed that no actress could match the audience’s imagination of Maris, making her continued absence a running gag and a unique aspect of the show.

On Frasier, Maris Crane was always an enigma. Niles Crane’s wife was often referenced and even appeared in obscured form on the show twice, but she never delivered any lines, and no actress was ever cast for the role.

But that wasn’t always the plan. At first, the shows co-creators decided to not show Maris as a nod to Norm’s wife, Vera, in Cheers, who was often mentioned but never actually seen. The creators wanted fans to think that they were doing the same thing with Maris on the spinoff series, then surprise them by eventually revealing the character on-screen. Then, as the show progressed, the creators changed their mind for an unexpected reason: they thought no real-life person could pull off the oddball character they’d created.

Why Maris Crane was considered impossible to cast

Co-creator David Lee explained, according to Yahoo!, “Two or three episodes in, she was already so bizarre, she was uncastable. So we just went, ‘Well, we’re never going to see her.’ Although we did see the shadow of her behind a shower curtain once.”

Everett Collection

Frasier writer/producer Joe Keenan added, “Nobody you could have cast would have been as interesting as the person the audience had envisioned. Suddenly she went from being just this excessively thin, chic, rich woman, to being somebody who routinely defies the laws of physics. You would do jokes about her running off through the snow and leaving no footprints, or going on a wine trip and getting into a vat of grapes and not being able to break any. Some characters just have to be off-screen. The more you talk about them, the more impossible they become to cast.”

Who was considered for the role of Maris Crane?

While they did throw around a few names — including Valerie Mahaffey, Eleanor Bron and Julia Duffy, who had contacted producers about playing the role — they ultimately decided not to cast Maris and to keep her physical descriptions as a running gag. David Hyde Pierce, who played Niles, admitted, “The more we found out about Maris … I don’t think anyone would actually want to work with the person who would be right for that character.”

What do you think? Would you have preferred that they cast Maris or kept the character offscreen? Let us know in the comments and share this article with a fellow Frasier fan!