Canadian 'Frasier' star Jess Salgueiro says it was a 'safe' space to explore character's grief
"Kelsey [Grammer] was so tender and so grateful that this was happening again, so there was just a lot of emotions happening," Salgueiro said
While the Frasier reboot (on Paramount+) very much takes us back to the tone of Kelsey Grammer's famed sitcom, Canadian star Jess Salgueiro's character really added an emotional element to the season.
Watch Frasier on Paramount+. Save 50% on annual plans until January 2, 2024.
Spoilers for Frasier on Paramount+ beyond this point
Salgueiro plays Eve, who we meet at the beginning of the season in the Boston apartment of Frasier Crane's son, Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott). While Frasier initially thinks Eve is Freddy's girlfriend, it's a far more emotional setup for the show.
Eve's boyfriend and the father of her child was a firefighter and Freddy's friend, and unfortunately died on the job. Now Freddy has been helping Eve and the baby.
For Salgueiro, she stressed that the set of Frasier was very much a "safe" space to explore those feelings of grief.
"Watching it back now I do realize how much this show, or how much this season at least, is about grief," Salgueiro told Yahoo Canada. "I found that at least the energy in the environment on set was really conducive to kind of being open."
"Everyone was so kind, Kelsey was so tender and so grateful that this was happening again, so there was just a lot of emotions happening. There was just a lot happening in everybody's lives also, and set felt like a really nice safe place to be."
'He never made us feel like he was our boss'
For Salgueiro, even when she first got the sides to audition for the role of Eve, not even the full script, something about the character "jumped off the page" for the actor.
"Sometimes this happens, where a character just feels like it just kind of comes off the page and you're like, 'I get it. I know her,'" Salgueiro said. "I think I did my audition in one take, which I never do, I often do like a million takes, ... I just felt like, I liked her."
"Then when I started to understand the whole team that was involved and finally read an actual full pilot script, I was like, 'Oh my gosh these guys are doing this so well.' This is not some kind of trite recycling of stuff, this is really thoughtful. This is trying to honour the original and also update it, and I feel like they did a really good job."
Watch Frasier on Paramount+. Save 50% on annual plans until January 2, 2024.
There's no denying Salgueiro is acting alongside a sitcom icon, next to Grammer, while very much holding her own as a comedic force on the show. But in terms of working with the 68-year-old star, Salgueiro said he just jumped right into the role, even after all these years.
"I thought he would at least need to warm up into it, but no," Salgueiro said. "At the first table read, he was just there. He was in it. He didn't skip a beat and I was like, wow OK, this is where we're at."
Salgueiro added that Grammer was particularly "generous" as a collaborator on set.
"What I was so grateful for was that he never made us feel like he was our boss, even though he was, he's an executive producer, but he just made us feel like we were colleagues the whole time," Salgueiro said. "I felt like he was the most approachable person on set."
"I could ask him anything. I could even ask advice about like, 'Hey, how do you think I should play this?' ... He was so generous with his time and so grateful that we were doing it. Lovely to work with him and I learned so much just watching him."
Fans of the original Frasier would have been happy to see that a critical part of the original show remained for the reboot, the funny tags at the end of each episode. Salgueiro shared that those were particularly fun moments to film.
"It did feel quite iconic," Salgueiro said. "I loved the tags in the original and it was always an exciting thing, when we'd get the new script, to see what the tag was."
"Essentially, we rehearse for four days and we shoot on the fifth day, so through those four days, the script is always changing. Usually the tag wasn't written until the last rehearsal day. ... We'd all make guesses because the writers were kind of figuring out, as they're putting the episode together, as we're putting it on its feet, ... what would be the funniest tag."
Where Eve could go in a possible Season 2
In terms of where Salgueiro would want to see Eve go in the future, something interesting about the character is that Salgueiro gets to play a woman who is an aspiring actor, admittedly with skills that need some refining.
"I remember taking big swings as a young actor and it not really landing, or doing an accent that I have no business doing," Salgueiro said. "To be able to do that, again, in this capacity, is fun.
"It's just silly and in a way, helps me not take myself too seriously either, as an actor."
But moving forward in the story, if there is a Season 2, Salgueiro wants to see Eve involved in more creative projects, and maybe even find love.
"I also would like to see her evolve a bit as an actress, I'd love to see her maybe get a little bit better, get more of a handle of her craft," Salgueiro said.
"Also, it's going to be so interesting to see her raising a toddler. Her baby's roughly six months old during Season 1, and as your child grows older, obviously what's required of you and the experience you're going to have is going to be completely different. So watching her through motherhood is going to be, I think, a huge part of her story, as it should. I hope she falls in love, I hope that she experiences maybe some heartbreak, but I hope she has a nice little love life."
