Kelsey Grammer to Ex-Wife: ‘I’m Gone’

 

 

ABC News

Kelsey Grammer has a new wife, a new grandchild and a new TV show, but it’s his old life with ex-wife Camille Grammer that continues to grab headlines, thanks to what Grammer calls his “gift” to her, a starring role in the reality show “ The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”

“It [RHOBH] was a part of my feeling that I should exit with some sort of gift,” Grammer, 56, said today on “ Good Morning America,” describing why someone who had already achieved fame and success in TV and movies would agree to a reality show.

“That was a way of saying, here’s what you always wanted, I’m gone,” the Emmy winner and former “Frasier” star said of his ex-wife’s post-divorce fame as a reality star.  “With my grace, go have that famous life you wanted.”

The 13-year marriage between Grammer and Camille, 43, disintegrated on camera during the first season of the hit Bravo show.  Even now, after their divorce, Grammer remains a presence on the show’s second season as Camille deals with both the divorce and the couple’s ongoing custody battle over their two children, Mason and Jude.

“It certainly caused me some stress, and I’ve been targeted a lot and they’ve said a lot of terrible things,” he said.  “But it’s just gotten a little silly at this point.”

The “stress” Grammer describes feeling from putting his life out in the public eye is not keeping him from vividly describing his new life today with fourth wife Kayte Walsh.

“It was the most dramatic night of my life,” he told “GMA,” of the December night last year that he and Walsh, a British flight attendant whom he met on a trans-Atlantic flight while still married to Camille, went on their first date in London.  “It was just extraordinary.”

“I saw her across the street and I just stood there and looked and thought this is the most marvelous thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said.  “We walked through Hyde Park and the snow started to fall.  Moments later we had our first kiss and we’ve been together since.”

Just two months later, in February, he and Walsh, 30, were married.

“I think I did [get marriage right this time], he said.  “I think Kate has everything to do with that.”

Grammer is also changing his life professionally, starring as a mythical mayor of Chicago in the new drama “Boss” on the Starz channel.

The dark role is a dramatic change from the 20 years Grammer spent playing Dr. Frasier Crane, but it’s one that matches  his long, and public, interest in politics.

“This is what I hope politics isn’t, honestly, but I fear that a lot of it is true,” Grammer said of his “Boss” character, who hides a dark secret while wielding almost imperial power over the Windy City.

Grammer, an outspoken Republican in the  left-leaning world of Hollywood, endorsed former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 presidential campaign.  This time around, he’s not backing any of the current crop of candidates seeking the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.

“It’s too early for me to tell,” he told “GMA.”

“I’m not watching the debates, because I think the debates are kind of a smokescreen,” he said, calling the process a “waste of time” similar to the Democrats’ multiple debates early on in the 2008 cycle.