Finding someone who publicly identifies as Republicans in Hollywood is akin to finding a needle in a haystack, and legendary actor Kelsey Grammer is one of those rarities.
The Cheers and Frazier star has never shied away from talking about his conservative leanings or his support of President Donald Trump, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t paid the price for it.
On Thursday’s show, Grammer joined Megyn to discuss being a conservative in Hollywood, how that has impacted his career, and what ‘wokeness’ has done to the entertainment industry.
Being an ‘Out’ Republican
Megyn noted that Grammer has long been open about his political persuasions. She said her team found a clip of him talking to Jay Leno about being an “out Republican” back in 2012, but she wondered why he decided to be so public when “virtually every Republican I know in Hollywood just calls themselves an independent.”
Grammer said he has always chosen to be “a little more outspoken” about his political persuasions, but not in a reactionary way. “I just think it’s sort of exhausting to be so up in arms about every single issue that comes down the pike,” he said. “It is not wise, I think, to take anything but… a longer view of things to have a little bit of perspective and to stand back from issues that seem important in that day or in that moment and realize that the currency of political discourse.”
He believes that reactionary nature of politics today has only served to divide people. “I mean, we live in America. We’re all Americans,” Grammer added. “We need to remember that – at least, I believe we need to remember that – and that my fellow American is not my enemy… That goes back to my Christian lens that I put on things.”
“These are things that still are important to me,” he said. “And so that is why I think I probably outed myself a long time ago.”
But that hasn’t come without penalty. “In retrospect, and this is a current topic, it did relegate me to the fringes of society in Hollywood,” Grammer alleged. “And so I may have had my peccadilloes, as they say, but I was never part of the dungeon crowd… I’m not in that world.. I wasn’t invited to those parties. I’m glad I wasn’t.”
Supporting Trump
Perhaps even more subversive than being a vocal Republican in Hollywood is being a vocal Trump supporter, but, again, Grammer hasn’t backed down. “It’s never cost me opportunity,” he said. “It has probably cost me some jobs.”
Even so, he had nothing but praise for the second Trump administration. “I think he’s doing a wonderful job,” Grammer shared. “There’s a phrase in Shakespeare, ‘He puts transgression to it.’ It’s not popular sometimes, but the man speaks his mind and you know where he stands.”
He also praised the president’s transparency. “I’ve never seen a more transparent presidency in my life. I mean, he talks every day to the press,” Grammer added. “Some people don’t like it. I don’t know why they don’t like it because we spent years, you know, hearing from the previous guy two or three times, and that was always just like… a belligerence that would seem to come from a very weak position.”
The Rise of ‘Wokeness’
While Hollywood has generally always been left of center, Megyn said the rise of ‘wokeness’ has infected the entertainment industry in its own unique way. In Grammer’s view, it is “manufactured outrage.”
“The woke thing is really a manufactured outrage that has been used as a lever for political change when it’s probably not,” he said. “It probably doesn’t have the teeth for that. It probably doesn’t have the job to make it all the way to, ‘Oh, we have to define our lives by this.'”
As Grammar explained, there has recently been an outcry about straight actors playing gay or trans characters, but he said the outrage doesn’t go the other way if a gay actor is playing a straight character in in a Broadway show.
“How many straight men do we have to have in the theater to allow us to have straight relationships,” he wondered. “In the world of the play, a man and a woman are married. A lot of people doing those roles, that is not the case.”
In such instances, the actors are – wait for it – acting, which is an art that is lost amid all the ‘woke’ talk. “Now, we’ve now entered a world where people say you have to be the person in order to play the person,” Grammar lamented. “So, unfortunately, there will be no more acting careers because you’ll just play who you are.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Grammer by tuning in to episode 1,246 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.