‘Cheers’ Stars Skipped Work to Do Magic Mushrooms

Lauren Novak August 15, 9:17 am

Cheers from left: Ted Danson, Woody Harrelson, (19821993) — NBC/Everett Collection

Apparently, it wasn’t all booze for the Cheers gang despite being set in a Boston bar. Several of the iconic sitcom stars including Ted Danson, Woody Harrelson and George Wendt opened up on the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast about the time that they played hooky from work and got high on mushrooms.

The men reminisced about a day of shooting that was more focused on the female characters, so they decided to skip out and head out on costar John Ratzenberger‘s new boat. Danson said, “So, we get on the boat. Kelsey [Grammer] immediately had been up all night playing cards, went down to the lower bunk and fell asleep the whole way. He was sound asleep. Woody turns to me and goes, ‘Have you ever had mushrooms?’ And I go, ‘No. No, I haven’t.’ And he said, ‘Well, this will be a good time. We have nothing to do. We’ll be out on a boat.’ We hadn’t had breakfast, so I was fairly hungry and ate I think an extraordinary amount of mushrooms, and then I’m thinking, ‘Oh, this is all right.'”

Cheers from left, Ted Danson, Woody Harrelson, 198293 (1987 photo)

NBC/Everett Collection

Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned as the weather turned angry with waves from a hurricane in Mexico. Although it sounds like it may have worked out for some of the men, including Danson and Harrelson who took the mushrooms, because they said they didn’t get seasick, unlike Wendt who opted out of the “trip.”

Cheers Nicholas Colasanto, Ted Danson, George Wendt, Shelley Long, John Ratzenberger, Rhea Perlman, 1982-1993, Season 1

Everett Collection

Danson explained, “So people not on mushrooms would be seasick pretty much. But I sat there getting more and more and more freaked out and whatever it is — you get stoned or whatever it is on mushrooms — and I look at you, Woody, and you stretched out on a bunk, and I think, ‘Oh, he’s so used to this that he’s just cooling it and relaxing. I am panicking. I’m having trouble breathing. I’ll go up top.'”

Danson added that Wendt kept him calm and said, “You spent the next 45 minutes poking me about every minute or two and said, ‘Breathe,’ because I would literally forget to breathe and feel like I was dying, and then you’d poke me.'” While Danson said it was actually an awful experience, he would be open to trying mushrooms again in another situation, preferably not on a rocking boat.