David Hyde Pierce reflects on gay jokes on Frasier: “It was always acknowledging the preposterousness of stereotypes’

Frasier Crane and his brother Niles Crane may have been straight on the long-running NBC sitcom Frasier but more than once they were mistaken for gay.

And they were never very cool about it.

‘It’s probably more of a reflection of the time that we were in. …It is a reflection of something that was more of a conversation at the time than it would be now,’ says David Hyde Pierce who won four Emmys for his portrayal of Niles.

Pierce, 56, came out publicly in 2007 which was the year he won the Tony Award for the play Curtains and three years after the end of Frasier’s nine-year run.

He told HuffPost Live this week that the show’s many gay-themed jokes were meant to make fun of the ‘preposterousness’ of gay stereotypes.

‘The reason they had those gay jokes in Frasier, especially about Niles and Frasier, was it was examining stereotypes and those two were very neat and persnickety and it was acknowledging the fact that a lot of their behavior [like] wine tasting and going to the opera and all, would be seen as gay by a lot of people,’ Pierce said.

But, he makes clear, ‘it was never jokes at the expense of gay people … it was always acknowledging the preposterousness of stereotypes.’