An Unlikely Frasier Episode Earned Death Threats For Daphne Actor Jane Leeves

The “Frasier” revival probably should have been a one-off special, but  we’ll always have 11 seasons of classic comfort sitcom hilarity regardless. “Frasier” ran from 1993 to 2004, maintaining a remarkable consistency over the course of 264 episodes. Kelsey Grammer’s lovably snooty Dr. Frasier Crane and his family, friends, and co-workers will remain beloved by a generation raised on the NBC sitcom — unless, that is, you’re oddly offended by cruelty against rubber eels. Yes, as Daphne Moon actor Jane Leeves reveals in her book “Daphne & Me: My Life on Frasier (And a Bit More),” her character whacking a rubber eel against a countertop earned her death threats from enraged viewers.

“The Innkeepers” is a fondly remembered episode from “Frasier” Season 2 in which the titular psychiatrist and his brother Niles Crane (David Hyde Pierce) decide to take over a failing restaurant and restore it to glory. Of course, nothing goes to plan, and the boys end up enduring an opening night from hell wherein their family and friends are all recruited to help keep the restaurant running as things fall apart in dramatic fashion.

“Frasier” had already ventured into farce with Season 2’s “The Matchmaker.” But “The Innkeepers” stands as a farcical triumph — despite, as Leeves points out in her book, some viewers believing it strayed too far from the show’s otherwise sophisticated humor. But for other fans of the show, it wasn’t the shift of comedic styles that was at issue. Instead, it seems Daphne’s treatment of an eel in the kitchen of Les Frères Heureux (The Happy Brothers, as Niles and Frasier christen their culinary venture) was a crime worthy of death.

“The Innkeepers” single-handedly makes Season 2 one of the best seasons of “Frasier.” In the episode, as a harried evening in Les Frères Heureux becomes even more fraught, Niles Crane — conscripted to chef duty alongside Daphne Moon — tries to bludgeon a tank of eels so as to not have to handle one of the live creatures. Meanwhile, Daphne’s patience wears out. “Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” she exclaims before marching over to the tank, yanking out an eel, and slamming its head on the countertop. She then hands the lifeless fish to a stunned Niles in one of the episode’s many moments of broad slapstick humor.

Turns out, it wasn’t just Niles who was stunned. In “Daphne and Me,” Jane Leeves reveals that she received threatening letters wishing her a torturous death for this transgression. “What I could never have anticipated were the death threats,” she writes. “Yep, you heard me. I got death threats for my mistreatment of the clearly rubber eel. As explained in the scene-opening title card, ‘No eels were harmed during the making of this episode.'”

Granted, Daphne gave the thing a good whack, and whoever was in charge of providing the rubber eel certainly delivered a fake fish with some convincing heft to it. But as Leeves goes on to point out, her killing the pretend fish was hardly the most egregious example of small screen violence. “At the time, shows like ‘NYPD Blue’ and many crime procedurals of the present day got away with, or even overtly endorsed, so much unconscionable carnage and brutality,” she writes. “I wonder if they ever got letters?” Just in case you doubt the maliciousness of these missives, Leeves goes on to provide an example.

It might sound unbelievable that Jane Leeves received letters wishing her a painful death simply for clocking a rubber eel with a wooden counter. But in her book, the actor actually provides the text of one such letter. “Miss Leeves,” it begins. “Every time I see the ‘Frasier’ episode where you smash the eel’s head for a laugh I wish you’d get an agonizing terminal disease. It doesn’t matter if the eel is real or fake. It ain’t funny. I pray that you get smashed on the head, too.” Bearing in mind this was long before the internet age, which means somebody had to sit down, write the letter, find the correct address, then mail it out. Maybe we were doomed before the internet subsumed our lives after all.

Interestingly enough, “The Innkeepers” was a moderately controversial episode of “Frasier” when it first aired. The show itself had debuted to stellar reviews and outstanding ratings. David Hyde Pierce might have felt the “Frasier” pilot was “terrible” at first, but the series premiere earned Emmy wins for Kelsey Grammer, writers David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee, and director James Burrows.

“The Innkeepers,” however, prompted what Leeves called “mixed reactions.” As the actor writes, “Some thought it strayed from the refined, sophisticated humor that was ‘Frasier.’ I disagree wholeheartedly. In my mind, ‘Frasier’ was one of the only shows capable of pulling off an ambitious, expertly-written slapstick comedy with such flair and sophistication, adding another tantalizing flavor to the show.” Of course, now “The Innkeepers” is recognized for everything Leeves highlights — though whoever wrote her that letter probably never came around to it.