Doreen Alderman was a dancer in Broadway’s “42nd Street” when she met another actor, Kelsey Grammer, playing Othello on Broadway. They soon married and had Spencer.
“My mom saw him and said, ‘Why can’t I meet a guy like that?’ ” Grammer says. “A few nights later, there was a big ‘Evita’ party … and then my dad is there. They saw each other from across the room, and three months later they got married. And they were married for a while. My dad was so poor when they met, my mom always said all he had was a dog.”
Her dad later became wealthy as Dr. Frasier Crane on two long-running series, “Cheers” and “Frasier.” Given Spencer’s lineage, she may well have been fated to become an actor.
She’s starring as Casey on “Greek,” airing Mondays on ABC Family. The drama revolves around sororities and fraternities.
When Grammer was a student at Marymount Manhattan College, she was not in a sorority, as they aren’t all that popular in New York.
Back in Los Angeles, Grammer was missing Manhattan. “I was always told if you wanted to make it, you had to live in New York City for three years,” she says. “At first it was really tough, then I loved it. It was a great place to be professional and to do whatever you want.”
She was studying theater, after having begun college as an art history major, and left school just a semester shy of her degree to work on “As the World Turns” as Lucy Montgomery.
Now playing Casey, who is a polished and ambitious sorority girl, Grammer says, “I love my character. I think she’s awesome! I get to be funny, and I get to be serious, and I get to work with amazingly talented actors, and it’s all unbelievably creatively satisfying for me.”
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First professional gig: On “Cheers,” in an episode in which Emma Thompson played a children’s entertainer. “I was background for (Frasier’s) son’s birthday,” Grammer says. “I sit on the bar stool, and I was at the age when kids lick their lips a lot. I did that the entire scene! It was a wonderful performance by me.”
Other credits: “Clubhouse,” “Jonny Zero,” “Third Watch,” “The Bedford Diaries.”
Unusual pet story: “I had a pet alpaca for a while,” she says. Her dad had a house in upstate New York, and she adopted one from a nearby farm. “They are animals that have to be in groups, or they die of a broken heart. I have seen alpacas cry.”
