‘He was devastatingly sexy’: Frasier’s Jane Leeves and David Hyde Pierce on the love between Daphne and Niles

From a breathless tango to a kiss that sent fans wild, the pair crafted a sensational seven-year TV crush. The real-life best friends talk first impressions, Casablanca moments, and having hot husbands

Lesley Manville and Peter Mullan on their heart-melting TV romance

It was a crush. An unexpected one. The psychiatrist Niles Crane (snooty, conflict-avoidant, married to a high-society wife with a fear of buffets) fell for his father’s physio, Daphne Moon (working class, Mancunian, reckons she’s a bit psychic) the moment he met her in his brother’s Seattle apartment.

Across seven seasons of the mega-sitcom Frasier , the crush took hold. Daphne remained seemingly oblivious, but the pair built a friendship and a will-they-won’t-they story that fans loved to be teased with. It made for some cracking episodes: from the pair being holed up in Niles’ candlelit mansion during a rainstorm (with that broken glockenspiel) in the side-splitting A Mid-Winter Night’s Dream, to a passionate leg-in-the-air tango after Niles’ divorce in Moon Dance (“Oh mama, I’ve got it all!”).

Daphne finally learned the truth the night before her wedding to Donny. The next morning, in her white gown, she knocked on the Winnebago in which Niles (four days into a bad new marriage himself) was hiding and told him to drive.

It’s been 22 years since we last saw the pair on screen, but the stars Jane Leeves and David Hyde Pierce remain dear friends. Hyde Pierce attended, and had a near fatal car accident at, Leeves’ English wedding and he is godfather to her son. They are both in long-term marriages: Hyde Pierce and the writer-producer Brian Hargrove married in 2008 after 25 years together; Leeves and the TV executive Marshall Coben have been married for 30 years. In fact, John Mahoney, who played Marty Crane in Frasier, predicted Leeves’ relationship one day in the green room: “I always wanted kids and said to John: ‘I’m going to adopt,’” she remembers. “He said: ‘Do not do that now. Within a year, you will meet someone.’ And she did, at a Paramount party. “I don’t know how that happened.”

“I love you doing this,” Leeves laughs from her Malibu kitchen, as Hyde Pierce joins from a study (which features a bookcase Niles would be proud of) in his New York home. He claims to have just had his hair done, endearingly, he’s a bit frazzled, before asking for reassurance that no one will see this video. They’re more than happy, though, to tell the story of Daphne and Niles.

Jane Leeves: I was on the set on the first day of the pilot and I saw David walking in and crossing the bleachers. I went racing up to him like a mad fan because I’d been watching [the Washington-DC-based sitcom] The Powers That Be, which was cancelled for some bizarre reason, it was brilliant and he played the most odd and fabulous character. I don’t think you really had any dialogue, did you?

David Hyde Pierce: No, I played a suicidal congressman who only mumbled.

JL: I thought there was a calmness, a kindness and an intellect that was devastatingly sexy, I have to say.

DHP: Well, I thought: I can’t believe Paramount Studios doesn’t have security … No, I realised that I lucked out getting the best loon in the business.

DHP: I knew her from Seinfeld and Murphy Brown, another show from the dark ages. And we just felt like kindred spirits. It’s safe to say that was true of the whole cast. They put a real family together.

JL: It was extraordinary, because I was the only person at that first table read who had read with Kelsey [Grammer]. So the chemistry was unknown.

DHP: Also, we did a photoshoot before the pilot and I remember Jane saying something about how there could be just a little something between us, and we ended up leaning on each other.

JL: The idea came into my head that they were polar opposites and it would be funny if he found her attractive, because she was also the opposite of Maris.

JL: I love David. He’s a true gentleman in every sense of the word and the finest human being you’ll ever meet.

DHP: It was as it is now. We’re just best friends. Jane and her husband, Marshall, rented this wonderful shack near the ocean in Malibu. My husband and I, and our dog, would go over and stay. When they moved on, they talked to the landlord about us taking over the rental and we did that. We were very close.

JL: John Mahoney was asking me for my parents’ address [in East Grinstead, West Sussex] one time, he wanted to send them a card, and I read it out. And David went: “Muffin-on-Poot?” and the whole room just fell apart.

DHP: As a person from the US, everything is “something-upon-something” in the UK. That one just occurred to me and it seemed to stick. But it was with great affection.

DHP: For Niles, Daphne is far and above the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen in his life. Whatever aura she gives off just mesmerises him: her personality, the scent of her hair. He’s bewitched. He also thinks she’s completely beyond him, like a creature from another planet or from mythology or the woodlands or something. The fact that the relationship impossibly comes together is a beautiful surprise for him.

JL: For Daphne, it’s the kindness and gentleness. He’s so different from any man she’s ever experienced. She came from a family with seven brothers, these brutes, so to find that a man could be kind, an intellectual … it’s the same thing for her, it’s this magical man in front of her.

We kept the suspense of the Niles attraction to Daphne going for years and people often ask me: “Why did she not know?” Yes, part of her thought that [he liked her], but the other part of her would say: “Oh, what are you talking about? He’s married and look where you come from and look who he is. He’s a doctor, for goodness sake.” And that voice in the back of her head is what made sense of that seven years of longing.

JL: We rehearsed at lightning speed for that. [The episode was written for the pair last minute as Grammer was on “blue flu” strike to negotiate his contract. Unusually, eight of the show’s writers each wrote a part of the script. Grammer returned in time to direct and appear in short scenes.] We had to rehearse with a choreographer. I remember going to David’s house, because we were loving it so much, to rehearse at the weekend. [The director] Jimmy Burrows would have been appalled.

DHP: Our late, great director was famous for not wanting people to rehearse because he had such a keen sense of the rehearsal timeframe of a situation comedy, which is not like rehearsing for a play that’s going to run for months. Even the dog [Moose, who played Eddie] suffered if he learned the trick too soon, it would be ruined and he wouldn’t be able to recreate it in front of the live audience. Jimmy was very big on: “Don’t think it out too much beforehand, because it will blossom at the right moment.”

JL: I love the scene between us [in Mixed Doubles] when Daphne has been dating a Niles lookalike, he breaks up with her and runs off with Niles’ date, and Niles comes to tell Daphne. There’s a wonderful, sweet, gentle scene between them, like shades of Casablanca. [“If it’d been a different time in both our lives, we might actually have met. How do you suppose that would have gone?” Daphne asks him. “I would have said: ‘What are you doing for the rest of your life?’” he replies. They both, as friends, say they love each other.] It was such great writing, these writers were real romantics.

JL: Seven years is a long time and I think the audience was sort of begging to please bring this to a conclusion.

DHP: I think we all felt we had played that “these two people didn’t think they deserved each other and didn’t believe that they could ever end up with each other” and there comes a point where you just stop believing that.

One thing that the writers did very smartly: they got us together before people were tired of the suspense. I remember very well, speaking of moments that stick with me, when we kissed in front of the live audience. They lost their minds. That was the moment we finally came together. The creators also knew when to end the series; they ended it before any of us were ready. They didn’t want it to dribble off and have the network or the studio say: “Yeah, you’re done.” They wanted to be able to craft a final season. So I don’t know if there are things we wish they did, but I do think those two things were handled really well.

JL: The only thing I wish had been handled differently was the hiding of my first pregnancy. But those were different times. [When Leeves came back from hiatus, she was pregnant with her first child. Her bump was hidden in the series and in later episodes she was given a weight-gain storyline and sent to a “fat camp”.] Daphne and Niles had just got together. I came back and I was pregnant, and they probably thought it was too early for Daphne to be pregnant and they wanted to explore this relationship. But then again, it might have been interesting if she was!

DHP: I’ve never thought of that, Jane, that’s interesting, so off the rails: the idea that we see them run off together at the end of a season and when they come back they’re having a baby.

DHP: I don’t know if I ever did think of it as a love story for the ages … love story for the agents ?

JL: There was an episode or two of Niles and Daphne every season. They were always such great fun. It wasn’t until season two that I realised this thing has legs. Niles’ reaction to Daphne in the room added another layer to Frasier’s apartment; there was this pushback between Niles, Frasier and their dad, and then Daphne comes in and there’s a whole other thing going on. But yeah, by season two, I realised that they were mining this.

DHP: One of the cool things about it, too, was that it’s such sophisticated writing: knowing not to say anything when you have set up a dynamic between two characters. The whole audience knows, when Daphne walks into a room, exactly what Niles is thinking. And, eventually, vice versa. There could be comedy there, it could be poignant, it could be a million things, but it was not a show where it was a joke a minute, getting three jokes on the page. It was a different style. That’s between all the characters, in some ways. You got to know us so well.

JL: Oh my goodness. It’s friendship, it’s respect, it’s love. And admiration. I admire my husband, I admire his character. He’s my best friend. And he’s hot. That helps.

DHL: All of those things. I was thinking about both Niles and Daphne on the show, and me and Brian, or Jane and Marshall, what is romance? It’s a poetic thing. I think it’s possibility. Even having been together for ever, there’s just this air of possibility that the whole world has, because you are together.

JL: I think I know what you’re saying: being with the right person seems to make everything possible.

JL: We’ve always had such respectful fans. I don’t know if there’s been a wild one!

DHP : One of my favourite was in the States when the show first started to air. It was at a set time on a Thursday night or a Tuesday night: therefore, the people who wanted to watch Frasier watched it because they knew when it was on. But then there was a point where it went into syndication, which meant suddenly it was on reruns. I remember walking down the street in New York City. A garbage truck drove by and one of the guys hanging off the truck shouted: “Yo, Niles!” And I thought: oh, there’s a whole new audience getting to see the show.

JL: I get the same thing in New York, New Yorkers are more open. But I always just get: :Hey, it’s the virgin from Seinfeld .” It’s so bizarre. I’m like: “Not any more …”

DHP: The green room over the years became covered wall to wall with stills from every episode that our production photographer, Gail, took. At the end, we walked through and took pictures that were meaningful to us. [He turns his camera to a photo in his office.] It’s the three of us [him, Leeves and Grammer] at the piano. I’ve got a million more and they’re all around.