Daphne on the Couch

How did an ex-ballerina and Benny Hill bit-player from Sussex become one of American TV’s most gifted comic actresses? Ross Jones talks pooches and pronunciation with Frasier’s Jane Leeves.

Admit it: at first, you hated Jane Leeves. Think back to April 1994, when British reviews of Frasier- the Cheers spin-off that seems to have considerably more longevity than, say, Joanie Loves Chachi – mirrored the show’s rapturous American reception with one crucial difference: “Why,” they cried, “is this American woman claiming to be from Manchester?”

When it transpired that Jane Leeves, aka live-in health-care worker Daphne Moon, was actually English and from East Grinstead, it only seemed to make matters worse. After all, an American with a questionable Brit accent is one thing, but a Southerner impersonating a Northerner…? Not round these parts.

Whether Northern England approves of her vowels or not, Jane Leeves is an integral part of one of the sharpest sitcom ensembles in history. By now, even the most brutal accent Nazi has to admit that Frasier just wouldn’t be the same without Daphne’s childhood recollections (“As soon as she came out of the kitchen with no eyebrows, we knew dessert was ready”), her “psychic headaches”, her tart put downs (“As far as I’m concerned you can lay in those sweaty sheets until you’re one giant bedsore!”), or the way Leeves has her constantly walking the tightrope between aloof and grounded, even when the hopelessly smitten Niles is peering down her blouse.

Leeves has been calling Los Angeles home for 13 years now, having arrived in 1984 with just $1,000 and a brief stint on The Benny Hill Show to her name. The inevitable run of dead-end jobs (camp counselling, babysitting, that sort of thing) ended when she snagged the part of Blue, resident trollop on the punk-rock sitcom Throb. After the show’s cancellation there followed a high-profile recurring role on George Bush’s favourite TV show, Murphy Brown. Then came her watershed role as Jerry’s virgin girlfriend in the now-classic masturbation episode of Seinfeld. She wound up losing it to John F Kennedy Jr, and has hardly looked back since.

Now she’s spending her summer break from Frasier in London, filming the romantic comedy Us Begins With You with ER’s Anthony Edwards, and smoking, which is apparently still frowned upon back home (that’s LA, not East Grinstead).

“Nobody over here can quite place my accent,” Leeves explains from her trailer, her posh trans- Atlantic tones illustrating the point perfectly. For the record, here’s how she really talks:

Did you always plan to carve out a career in America?
In the back of my mind, yes.
I started out as a dancer, and the career of a dancer is always short- lived, so I always said, well, when I’m done with that I’ll act. I packed up my bags when I was 21, and thought, I’ll go to Los Angeles and become an actress. People always say it was very brave, but you know, when you’re that age your naivety sees you through. At the time it didn’t feel brave at all.

Were you always a fan of American sitcoms?
Not particularly. I remember just before I left watching Cheers, Mork & Mindy, Bewitched, those sort of things. But what really inspired me to become an actor was when I was about nine I saw Lawrence Of Arabia on television and thought, “Oh, I’ll do that. That looks cool.”

Benny Hill’s huge in America. Did working with him open a lot of doors for you?
It wasn’t like, “Oh wow, you did Benny Hill.” People just thought it was funny and asked what he was like. But yes, it helped a lot at the time. It was my first TV experience. I didn’t actually do a show, he hired me to just do a bunch of sketches with him.

I’d never been in front of a camera, I’d never acted. They’d throw me into wardrobe, put me in an outfit and I’d say, “What do you want me to do with this?” I’d have to make up all these characters on the spot.

In my very first sketch I was a secretary in some sort of factory, and I think it was something to do with a letter he’d given me that was marked “personal”, and I had to say, “Oh, I thought it said ‘Personnel’ and I’ve been showing it around the office.” I spent a week doing stupid things like that, but it was great experience.

Most British actors who go to America start out on daytime soaps. How did you avoid that?
When I first got there everybody thought that was what would happen, but I don’t really know how I avoided it. I just had that thing where I didn’t take myself too seriously, and I was able to deliver a line in a funny way. Over there, if you’re a woman who’s reasonably funny and who doesn’t mind making a fool of herself, you’re quite a rarity. That was my key in the door.

Everyone in American TV seems to have at least one awful, unmade pilot in their closet. What’s yours?
Well, I did a pilot every year from the end of Throb until I got Frasier. One I did that was really strange was an hour-long drama that was sort of a dark Fantasy Island. It starred me and Joel Grey -I mean, there’s a pair right there. I’m five foot nine and a half and he’s four foot something. I was the Tattoo character, believe it or not. People who had done terrible things would come and stay at our resort, and we’d get revenge on them, like avenging angels.

It wasn’t that bad, but you could just see it turning into one of these things where they wheel on old actors from years ago each week. Fortunately, it didn’t get picked up. That was kind of a lucky escape, but that’s how a lot of us keep going. You’re paid a big sum of money to hold you to that pilot, so that keeps you going for the year, along with your guest spots and what have you.

How scary was it to audition for Seinfeld?
Not very, because they were so nice. At that time I’d become quite in demand, and I’d already had an offer to do something else when I wanted to do Seinfeld. Before I accepted that offer I thought I’d give it a shot, because Seinfeld was just beginning to come into its own. I went in, Jerry was there with [co-creator] Larry David, I read the scene and they liked it.

My mother loves that one. She was proud that I played a virgin. It wasn’t the best part or anything, but it was certainly a lot of fun, and it was very memorable. Plus, it won the Emmy that year, and then the following year Frasier won the Emmy, then the year after that Frasier won the Emmy again, and again, and again. So I’ve been in the Emmy award- winning episode of a show for four years running now.

Is it true they tried to get the real JFK Jr to appear with you?
Yes, they did. That was for the season finale, when George and Jerry’s pilot was being shown and they wanted all the memorable characters from that year to be watching it at home. I was supposed to be in bed with John F Kennedy Jr. In the end it was just somebody’s arm, with Larry David going [Kennedy voice] “Is that that, er, Seinfeld guy you, er…”

So is that where the Frasier people spotted you?
I couldn’t tell you. I’d done a pilot for NBC [Frasier’s network] the year before called Red Dwarf, which the guys from here went to do over there. It really was a good pilot, but for some reason it didn’t work out. I played the computer, Holly 6000. She was a little different to the one over here, a bit dottier, and I got to say things like “A million people have been killed,” with a big smile on my face.

Then I was offered a role on this show, Nurses. But the Frasier people had called my agent and said, don’t let her take anything else before she sees this. NBC had already approved me for the part which is very unusual because normally you have to go through this long process. They sent me the script and I went in and read with Kelsey (Grammer, aka Frasier], and they gave it to me on the spot.

But everybody came to Frasier in an unusual way. Like with David Hyde-Pierce [Niles]. somebody arrived with a tape saying, If you want a brother for Frasier, this is your guy. They said he didn’t have a brother in Cheers, but after they saw the tape they were like, well he does now. . So we all came to it in this untraditional way, without millions of actors being tested.

Sitcom spin-offs don’t have a good track record. Didn’t that bother you?
That did occur to me, yes, but the script was so good I soon stopped worrying about it. It was such a departure from Cheers, it didn’t try and follow on from it. It stood on its own. It was the best pilot script I’d ever read, and we all hit it off instantly.

John Mahoney (Martin Crane] and I clicked immediately, because he’s English. He was born and raised in Manchester. His sister was a war bride so he went over to the States when he was 19. He still has family in Manchester and visits them a lot.

Was Daphne always going to be English?
Either English or Puerto Rican. It was basically an attitude they wanted, someone to bust Frasier’s bubble every now and then.

And she was always from Manchester?
It was in the script that she was from Manchester, but their main concern was that she be working class and easily understood by  Americans, because they cannot understand thick, thick accents. So we had to keep it soft and find a balance. You know, when I watch English shows with my husband [TV exec Marshall Coben) he can’t understand a word if it’s in a really thick London or Northern accent. So you have to find a level that’s comfortable for the audience.

You must’ve known that the accent would get picked apart over here.
Yes, but what can you do? Frasier wasn’t made for the English market. It was made for America, and there is a method behind it.

Even so, they can’t understand absolutely everything.
I remember one script where I was coming through the door finishing off a joke and I said, “And the duck said…” They told me I had to say it like [posh voice] “duck”, and I said I couldn’t do it like that. In the end they changed it to frog. John Mahoney has the same thing. He’s got this completely American accent but he can’t say Wednesday. He goes. “Wendsdy”. The Northerner in him always comes out, so they have to keep it to Tuesday. Same with umbrella. which comes out as “oombrella”. Everybody has their little thing. but it’s so strange to be talking to him and hear this Northern accent suddenly come out of nowhere.

He joined the army when he first came over, to get his Green Card. He didn’t want to feel like a foreigner for the rest of his life so he went around with a notebook saying, “How do you say banana?” and he’d write it down in his notebook. He made sure he had an American accent before he even considered becoming an actor.

Were you surprised that Moose [aka Eddie the dog] made it on to magazine covers before the rest of you?
At first it was strange, but we’re not jealous of the dog or anything. We all adore him, he’s hilarious he really is like a little person. It was just funny the way it happened. What floored us was that it was almost like people thought he was coming out with all this stuff. We actually had people asking how much he earned.

How much is that?
I don’t know. Not a penny I shouldn’t think. He’s happy with a sausage every now and then.

Friends’ David Schwimmer always says how much he loathed working with the monkey, that he’d mess up every scene he was in. Do you have the same trouble?
No, it’s not like that at all. He has a brilliant trainer and he’s a very smart dog. The story behind him is that he was given to his trainer. Mathilde, by this family in North Carolina because they couldn’t control him. When he first started working he was a little grumpy and difficult and didn’t care about affection. Now, because he’s so well-trained and happy, he’s a different dog altogether.

These days, she’ll teach him what he has to do and he’ll do it before he gets the signal, because he knows if he does it he’ll get this treat. So now she has to leave it until the last minute to teach him what he’s supposed to do. And sometimes he’ll go berserk and start doing everything right in the middle of a scene. The audience always loves that.

Sometimes his job is just to be there and sit in a chair and all of a sudden you’ll hear the audience roaring, and you’ll look over and he’s licking his balls.