11 Revelations from the Live ‘Cheers’ Reunion with Ted Danson, George Wendt and John Ratzenberger

In the 30 years since Cheers aired its series finale, the show became a massive syndication hit; spun off Frasier, another juggernaut soon to launch a sequel series; and found a whole new audience who’ve watched it on streaming platforms. By now, a lot of the lore around the show is well-known — ratings loser to Emmy mega-winner in its first season, Fred Dryer and William Devane were in contention to play Sam when he was going to be an ex-football player, etc. — but when a show airs 271 episodes, there are still going to be some stories viewers have never heard.

Yesterday, the ATX TV Festival (on now until June 4th) assembled several key Cheers personnel for a reunion panel: co-creators James Burrows, Glen Charles and Les Charles; and stars Ted Danson (Sam), John Ratzenberger (Cliff) and George Wendt (Norm); with Variety TV editor Michael Schneider moderating.

Here are the funniest, most touching and surprising stories you missed…

Before the panel proper, several stars in town for their own panels performed in a table read of the pilot script, including Cassidy Freeman (The Righteous Gemstones) as Diane, Harold Perrineau (From) as Norm and Christina Vidal (Primo) as Carla. At the end, when each performer was introduced, by far the biggest applause break was for Ronald Gladden, the unwitting star of Jury Duty, who played a tertiary character named, what else, Ron. (Did we sing along to the theme song and scream "NORM" for Perrineau's entrance? Of course we did.)