Recasting Cheers In 2026: All 10 Main Roles

Published Nov 10, 2026, 9:00 AM EST

Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock.

Barring O.G. American sitcoms like I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, and The Dick Van Dyke Show, you’d be hard-pressed to name a show that’s had more influence on the modern TV comedy than Cheers. M*A*S*H introduced a surprisingly nuanced human drama that would carry through into half-comedy half-dramas like The Bear and Succession, and Seinfeld introduced the notion of a TV lead playing a fictionalized version of themselves, since seen in Maron, Louie, Mulaney, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. But Cheers had a bigger, broader influence than any of them.

Cheers nailed down all the tropes and conventions of a classic ensemble sitcom. It had a permanent hangout spot, revolving around the staff and regulars of a Boston bar; it had a will-they-or-won’t-they couple with Sam and Diane; and it had an eclectic mix of clashing personalities tailor-made for comic tension, a special kind of alchemy that every subsequent sitcom’s casting director would try to replicate.

Without Cheers, we wouldn’t have bar-based sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia; we wouldn’t have will they/won’t they couples like Ross and Rachel or Jim and Pam — the ensemble sitcom would not be what it is today if Cheers hadn’t blazed the trail. But what if it didn’t? What if some other sitcom blazed the trail in the 1980s, and Cheers didn’t get made until 2026? Who would be cast to play Sam Malone and Diane Chambers and Frasier Crane in this brave new world?

Jack Innanen As Sam Malone

Sam is the glue that holds the ensemble of Cheers together, and Jack Innanen is already the glue holding together one of the best ensembles on TV right now. As Paul Baker in FX’s Adults, Innanen is the charming anchor of the cast, and the heart and soul of the show. He’s a love interest to one half of his housemates and best friend and confidant to the other half.

Innanen is about the right age to be coming to the end of a once-promising baseball career and settling down into a mundane life of tending bar. He’s got that perfect mix of funny, charming, and handsome, a.k.a. the Ted Danson special.

Ayo Edebiri As Diane Chambers

Ayo Edebiri essentially played the Diane role in The Bear. The show never indulged the fans’ shipping wishes, but Carmy and Syd had the same kind of electric workplace repartee that made Sam and Diane such a joy to watch.

Shelley Long was the quintessential everywoman on Cheers; she was very bookish and intellectual, but she was also very funny and charming and real. Edebiri has that same everywoman quality, where anyone in the audience can relate to her, and she’d make a perfect Diane if Cheers was getting made today.

Lisa Ann Walter As Carla Tortelli

Image courtesy of Everett

Lisa Ann Walter has enjoyed a long and circuitous career in showbusiness. Not too long ago, she was hosting a weight-loss competition reality show called Dance Your Ass Off and playing bit parts in Bruce Almighty and War of the Worlds. But now, Walter is best known as sardonic teacher Melissa Schemmenti from Abbott Elementary.

Melissa is essentially the Carla of Abbott Elementary: the streetwise, wisecracking working woman who busts her colleagues’ chops and doesn’t take any guff. It would take quite the acid-tongued act to replace Rhea Perlman in this role, but I think Walter could pull it off.

Danny DeVito As Coach Ernie Pantusso

Courtesy of Patrick McElhenney/FX Networks

Coach is Sam’s old baseball mentor, who finds a second career as a bartender working under his old protégé at Cheers. The late, great Nicholas Colasanto brought a real sweetness and geniality to Coach’s interactions with Sam in the early seasons.

Danny DeVito is now most closely associated with his turn as Frank Reynolds, arguably the most horrible human being on planet Earth, in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. But he has a surprising capacity for sweetness, and he’d make a great Coach in a modern-day Cheers.

Marc Maron As Norm Peterson

Anger and bitterness are such ugly emotions, it takes a special kind of comic performer to make them funny and endearing. Norm Peterson is a miserable alcoholic using beer and humor as coping mechanisms to deal with his dreary, dead-end existence, so he’s a tough character to make lovable.

But George Wendt made it look easy, and so would Marc Maron. Norm’s brand of wry self-pity is perfectly in line with Maron’s standup, and he’s already playing the old crank opposite Owen Wilson in Stick, so he has some experience being “the Norm.”

Bryan Cranston As Cliff Clavin

Before Breaking Bad turned him into one of the world’s most respected dramatic actors, Bryan Cranston was a sitcom icon. His turn in the recent Malcolm in the Middle reboot proved he can seamlessly slip back into Hal’s aw-shucks geniality and goofy lovability, even after playing a murderous meth kingpin for half a decade.

Cranston would be a great choice to take John Ratzenberger’s place as plucky postal worker Cliff Clavin. Cliff was the sweetest, gentlest member of the Cheers ensemble, and Cranston brought a very similar energy to Malcolm.

James Acaster As Frasier Crane

Frasier Crane might be the toughest role from Cheers to recast. While it’s not impossible to imagine someone else as Sam or Diane or Norm, the character of Frasier is so intrinsically tied to Kelsey Grammer — and he’s played the part so perfectly for four decades now (across three shows) — that it’s possible no one else could do Dr. Crane justice.

But if anyone could, I’d put my money on James Acaster. To make Frasier work, you need a comic performer who can be dry, eccentric, and snooty, but also extremely lovable, and that’s Acaster all over.

Austin Butler As Woody Boyd

After Nicholas Colasanto passed away in 1985, the producers of Cheers retired the character of Coach and brought in a new, younger bartender: Woody Boyd, played by Woody Harrelson. The character of Woody was defined entirely by Harrelson’s own on-screen persona: his Southern charms, his laidback attitude, his smiley demeanor.

Austin Butler may be one of Hollywood’s most overused actors right now, but he also might be the only young actor who could play Woody in a modern version of Cheers. Butler’s early work revolved around this type: the easygoing charmer.

Diane Morgan As Lilith Sternin

If James Acaster is playing Frasier, then you need to get someone equally hilarious, equally dry, and equally British to play his wife. Diane Morgan would make an interesting Lilith opposite Acaster’s Frasier.

She had a real warmth in After Life, but her iconic turn as Philomena Cunk has proven that she’s just as adept at playing coldness and awkwardness, and that’s perfect for Lilith. Morgan would do something very different than Bebe Neuwirth, but capture the same sour spirit.

Margaret Qualley As Rebecca Howe

© Focus Features / Courtesy Everett Collection

After Long left Cheers to pursue a movie career, Kirstie Alley filled the void as Sam’s new female foil. Where Sam and Diane’s dynamic had contrasted Sam’s rough working-class edge with Diane’s sheltered academia, Sam and Rebecca’s relationship had a whole different flavor.

Rebecca was more on Sam’s level as a crass ball-buster, and Margaret Qualley has quickly become one of Hollywood’s go-to actors for that kind of rambunctious, assertive firecracker. Ethan Coen cast Qualley to play that type in Drive-Away Dolls and Honey Don’t!, and she nailed it both times. Rebecca was a late addition to Cheers, so you need an actor who, much like Alley did, will stand out in an already-established ensemble.

Cheers

9/10