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Like his character on Boss, Kelsey Grammer is playing some political hardball.
The former Cheers and Frasier star earned a Golden Globe for his work on the first season of the Starz drama but came away empty-handed when Emmy nominations were handed out in July. As he told Jay Leno on Tuesday night, he thinks it has something to do with his proud political activism for the Republican Party.
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“It’s hard to figure. … It may have to do with several things, honestly, but I think it’s possible. … I’m a declared out-of-the-closet Republican in Hollywood,” he told the host. “Do I believe it’s possible that some young person, young voting actor — or even older voting member for the Emmys — would sit there and go, ‘Yeah, that’s a great performance, but ooh, I just hate everything he stands for?’ ”
No, that’s impossible, he said — quite sarcastically.
Grammer has won five Emmys, four for playing Frasier Crane, the stuffy-yet-beleaguered psychologist that originated in the fourth season of Cheers and ran through much of the ’90s on its own NBC spinoff, Frasier. The Emmys for those shows came during the 1980s and ’90s, which, as Entertainment Weekly points out, came before his political activism began, but he did win another Emmy in 2006 for voice work as Sideshow Bob in The Simpsons.
Grammer has been quite outspoken, one of the rare conservatives in Hollywood. He endorsed Rudy Giuliani in the GOP primary in 2008, then backed John McCain; this time around, he originally backed Rep. Michele Bachmann in her early, now-dashed quest for the White House. He also has said that he may run for mayor of New York when he retires from acting.
“It is not unfamiliar for me to have a point of view that might be considered out of the norm in my community,” he told the NY Post in 2011.
He also showed Leno a tattoo of his wife’s name, Kayte, on his pubis.
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