Ted Danson’s 50-year career in Hollywood isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
The “Cheers” star will receive the Carol Burnett Award at the Golden Globes next month, honoring his “outstanding contributions to television, both on and off screen.”
The 76-year-old also stars in a new Netflix series, “A Man on the Inside.” Danson plays a retired professor who has lost his wife and takes up assisting a private detective as a hobby by going undercover at a retirement home.
“My favorite kind of comedy has a serious undertone, and in this case it’s a very funny premise,” he said. People magazine of the series.
Ted Danson stars in Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside” as a retired professor who assists a private investigator by going undercover at a retirement home. (Colleen E. Hayes/Netflix)
‘A Man on the Inside’ is based on a true story, chronicled in the 2020 documentary ‘The Mole Agent’.
“There’s something inherently funny about a 76-year-old man who is a (retired) college professor, whose life is at a standstill, his daughter is worried, so she says, ‘Buy a project,’ and he happens to fitfully find a project where he becomes an undercover spy in a retirement home,” Danson told the outlet.
Danson said the show’s premise is “inherently funny” as his character “whimsically happens to find a project where he becomes an undercover spy in a retirement home.” (Colleen E. Hayes/Netflix)
He continued: ‘We’re going to explore aging, all those things that we sometimes don’t dare to talk about in this country, memory loss, everything, which we’re going to address with a tenderness and a seriousness that is still contained in a kind of light-hearted way of speaking. to live. , joyful way.”
“I’m so happy because I’m 76 and I get to be part of this conversation, which is increasingly becoming my conversation in life,” he said.
“We’re going to explore aging, all those things that sometimes we’re afraid to talk about in this country,” Danson says. (Colleen E. Hayes/Netflix)
TED DANSON shares why the first episode of ‘Cheers’ brought him to tears
Danson made his TV debut in 1975 on the soap opera ‘Somerset’ and made one-off appearances on such series as ‘Laverne & Shirley’, ‘Magnum PI’ and ‘Taxi’ before landing his breakout role in ‘Cheers’.
Danson shot to fame with “Cheers,” playing bar owner Sam Malone in 275 episodes from 1982 to 1993.
Danson, along with George Wendt, Kelsey Grammer, John Ratzenberger and Shelley Long, became a household name with “Cheers.” (Gary Null/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)
Danson continued in film and TV, starring in the sitcom “Becker” and later “CSI” and a season of “Fargo”, as well as guest starring in episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” as a fictionalized version of himself.
In 2016, Danson starred in the NBC sitcom “The Good Place,” which earned him critical acclaim and three Emmy nominations.
Danson co-starred with Kristen Bell in ‘The Good Place’. (Colleen Hayes/NBC)
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The actor has starred in numerous series throughout his career, and with his latest, he finds special meaning in the story.
“I’m a foolish man who stays young by being foolish. Will this fit my age and what we think of when we think of retirement homes?” he said the Los Angeles Times when he was considering the role.
“I’m so happy because I’m 76 and I get to be part of this conversation, which is increasingly becoming my conversation in life.”
He continued, “I’ve been saying to myself for the past two to three years, ‘I want to keep working as long as I physically can, because I want to know what it’s like to be funny at any age.’ I want to keep discovering that. I don’t want to be younger or hold on to who I was before. I want to grow older and celebrate getting older of humor.”
Danson admitted he had considered finding “a landing spot” when he turned 70 in 2017, in the middle of his run on “The Good Place”, adding that he thought, “I have to slow down and be careful.”
When he turned 70, Danson considered finding “a landing spot.” (Robert Trachtenberg/NBC/NBCU Photobank via Getty Images)
TED DANSON WAS GROWN EMOTIONALLY AT 40, BUT HE WOULD NOT CHOOSE A DO-OVER
But it was actually his wife Mary Steenburgen’s Book Club co-star Jane Fonda who inspired him to keep working.
“I met Jane, and she had her foot on the gas pedal when she was 80. She was 80 when I turned 70. And she did a whole day of filming for ‘Grace and Frankie’ and then got on a bus and went with some women to do something for the service industry in Sacramento. She was non-stop. And I was like, ‘Oh yeah, don’t cross the finish line by force.’ Why plan for decline? We tell our children they can grow up and be anything they want, but at a certain age we stop telling ourselves that,” Danson explains.
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Danson and Steenburgen met when they were both older, in their forties, and both already married with children.
“I wasn’t really emotionally fried until shortly before I met Mary,” Danson says told People in a recent interview.
“I wasn’t really emotionally fried until shortly before I met Mary,” Danson said of his wife of nearly 30 years. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)
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They first met in 1983 at an audition and were friends until their relationship deepened in the early 1990s, especially after they worked together in 1994’s “Pontiac Moon.”
“I had decided about a year earlier that I wanted to become a more emotionally mature, honest person,” he recalls. “I worked very hard on it, otherwise I don’t think Mary Steenburgen would have even seen me. So yes. The answer is no. Thank God we didn’t meet before,” he told the outlet when asked if he wished they had met sooner.
In a 2019 interview with Closer to weeklyDanson explained: “We found each other when I was 45 and she was 40. We had lived a little. We were both staring at some demons within ourselves, and it was fortunate that we met then.”
Danson and Steenburgen married in 1995, and share four children together: Danson’s daughters, Kate and Alexis, and Steenburgen’s children with ex-husband Malcolm MacDowell, Lily and Charlie.
The couple married in 1995, after first meeting in 1983. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images)
“I thought, ‘Oh yeah. Don’t slow down. Cross the finish line with power.'”
Both are now in their 70s, and Danson joked that they prefer “early bird” specials to late night dates.
“Date nights, at my age, are like early bird specials,” he says told People.
Danson joked that he and Steenburgen are doing “early bird specials” instead of date nights. (Michael Tran/AFP via Getty Images)
“The best part is the early mornings, 4:30 in the morning, coffee in bed, playing Wordle, Connections and Spelling Bee, talking and laughing and sharing,” he continued. “It’s like heaven on earth for both of us.”
Danson and Steenburgen both continue to work, and Danson especially wants to encourage older people, including himself, not to slow down.
Danson advises people his age: “Keep your foot on the accelerator. Live! This is your life until it isn’t. Go for it.” (Colleen E. Hayes/Netflix)
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“For us humans, my age and older, you still have something to contribute immensely,” he told People. “So go out and keep going, and the way you go about life until the end is an inspiration to the younger people who come behind it and to your children. Because people often think there’s a shelf life to creativity and contribute to life. That is not the case.
As he told the Times: “Keep your foot on the accelerator. Live! This is your life until it isn’t. Go for it.”
