Ted Danson got lost in 30 Rock after a ‘full-blown panic attack’

Actor Ted Danson has revealed that he once got lost at NBC headquarters in New York after suffering a “real panic attack” while working on a series as a young actor.

During a recent episode of his podcast Where everyone knows your nameTHE Cheers the star spoke with Saturday evening live Alumnus Bill Hader on the experiment that occurred in the 1970s at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, now known as the Comcast Building.

“It’s an incredible amount of nerves that go through your body when you go out to do something live,” Danson, 77, said. “I did a soap opera where I was horrible for about nine months in New York.”

Danson explained that the unnamed show was “almost live, meaning if you had a half-hour show, you had 35 minutes of this huge computer on NBC back in the ’70s on which you could store your serial (on). So… if a post fell out, maybe You could do it again.”

The veteran movie star recalled that he was hired to play a ladies’ man, who “talked to everyone and was gentle and all these things.”

“The night before (the shooting), I had my first real panic attack,” he recalled. “I called this therapist… and I said, ‘I’m not going to go… It’s too much.’ And he said, “No, no, don’t cut your nose. You want to do this. »

“So I took a Valium – and I didn’t realize that Valium and I didn’t get along. I barely slept, but I had the Valium, and it was still in my system. And I get off at 30 Rock, or wherever it is, and I’m in the bowels of the building looking for where I’m supposed to go. Someone recognizes me from something, I don’t know an advertisement, and says, ” Hey, isn’t it… ?’And I started running.”

Danson said his reaction “made no sense,” adding, “I got lost in the guts of NBC. The person didn’t chase me, I just ran.

“Then I get up and I do this scene where I’m in a restaurant and I’m hitting on this woman… It’s my first day. She’s been on the show for about two years, and it was effortless for her .And I was (covered in) sheets of sweat.

“The producer looked at it and said, ‘No, we’re going to make him the town sleazeball. He’ll turn all his friends over to the mafia. That’s who he is.’

Despite his early experiences, Danson became a household name when he landed a role on the NBC sitcom. Cheers, which ran for 11 seasons starting in 1982. In the classic series, Danson played the role of womanizer Sam Malone, owner of the Boston bar where the television series was set.

During an October conversation on his podcast with The right place co-star D’Arcy Carden, Danson revealed he experienced an emotional moment after filming the pilot episode of Cheers– because he thought he was “so bad” at it.

“You know what I did when I saw the pilot? I shot (Cheers co-creator) Jimmy Burrows aside, and I started crying because I thought I was so bad, and he looked at me for like two seconds and started laughing and walked away in the direction opposite. “

Looking back, Danson deeply appreciates being part of the iconic sitcom, considered one of the greatest television comedies of all time.

“I had this moment years later where I realized and I had this ‘sacred’ moment, where I got to play Sam,” Danson said.

The Emmy and Golden Globe-winning series ran for 275 episodes before ending in 1993 and helped launch the careers of its stars, including Shelley Long, Woody Harrelson, Rhea Perlman, Kelsey Grammer and the late Kirstie Alley.

It was revealed this week that Cheers was set to get a British reboot after a London-based company secured the rights to adapt the comedy for the British market.