- Greer Grammer detailed her 12-year estrangement from her father Kelsey Grammer, which she said lasted from age four to 16.
- The Awkward actress said that she “grew up as an only child” despite having seven half-siblings.
- She also said that she repeatedly rewatched her dad’s song in Anastasia and tried to contact him via fan mail.
Greer Grammer is detailing her childhood without her father, Kelsey Grammer.
The Awkward actress discussed growing up with no contact from the Frasier star during an episode of the Pretty Basic podcast.
“I didn’t know my dad until I was 16,” Greer Grammer said on the episode. “People have misconceptions about me when they hear my last name because they’re like, ‘Oh, well, that’s Kelsey Grammer’s daughter. Clearly, she grew up in this way.’ And that makes so much sense. I’d think that too. But yeah, I think that’s the biggest misconception about me is: my dad left when I was four and then I didn’t meet him again until I was 16.”
The actress said that she has a few memories of her father from her early childhood, including watching him film an episode of Frasier and him watching her in a preschool production of The Wizard of Oz. “I can see them when I think about them,” she said of her early memories of her dad. “But after that, I don’t know. And of course, my therapist was like, ‘Do you remember when you knew that your dad wasn’t a part of your life anymore?’, and I was like, ‘No.'”
Although Grammer has seven half-siblings, she said that she was “grew up as an only child” because her mother, makeup artist Barrie Buckner, didn’t have any other children, and she had no contact with the Cheers star or his subsequent sons and daughters.
“I have so much respect for my mother now as an adult because that must have been so hard to see somebody that you loved on a billboard that broke your heart and left you with a kid that looks exactly like you, and you have to see them everywhere” the actress reflected.
Grammer also recalled a vivid memory of witnessing an entertainment news segment about her father while doing homework as a child. “There was something about him buying a Hamptons house and going through the house and all this stuff, and it was like, ‘There’s going to be plenty of room for their baby Mason,’ my little sister, to run around in,” she remembered. “My mom was like, ‘Are you okay?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah,’ and didn’t really think about it.”
After watching the news segment that included her half-sister, the actress remembered thinking, “That wasn’t my life.”
Grammer said that she tried alternative methods of getting in contact with her father. “I went on the Internet and found his fan mail address,” she said. “[I wrote] ‘Do you ever miss me? Do you think about me on my birthday?'”
Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic; Randy Shropshire/Getty
The Deadly Illusions actress said that she repeatedly revisited one of her dad’s projects as a child. “My dad was a voice in Anastasia,” she said, noting that her father portrayed “the fat funny Russian” sidekick Vlad in the film. “Before Anastasia came out, they released a VHS sing-along and I used to watch that all the time. And there was a song from the movie that he sang in it. And I remember hearing it. I was at my grandma’s and I was like, ‘That sounds like my dad!’ And she was like, ‘Oh, like that is your dad. ‘And I was like, ‘That’s my dad?’ I thought it was so cool. And then I used to watch the movie all the time, but I don’t remember being like, ‘Where is my dad? I miss my dad.'”
Grammer said that she sometimes “got made fun of” in elementary school “for not having a dad,” but reiterated that she didn’t remember a specific moment when she became aware of her father leaving. “It was just like, he just wasn’t there,” she explained. “I have gaps in my memory, I guess, from that time.”
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The actress noted that her father paid mandatory child support to her mother, and also footed the bill for her private school education, including her time at USC.
“He did pay for college, which was amazing, for tuition,” she said. “Anything extra, I had to pay for on my own. So housing, books, sorority, like all that stuff. So thank God I was on Awkward.”
Eventually, Grammer reconnected with her father. “When I was 16, I ran into him at a Christmas tree lot and he came up to me and he said, ‘Are you Greer?'” she remembered. “I said, ‘Yes, I am. Then he went, ‘I am—’ I was like, ‘I know who you are, duh.’”
That meeting led to a father-daughter lunch the following week. “That’s what started our relationship,” the actress said.
Listen to Grammer’s full episode of Pretty Basic above.