Ted Danson Reveals ‘Cheers’ Cast Began “Hazing” Woody Harrelson When He Joined The Show: “We Just Wanted To Kick His Ass”

Ted Danson recently shared a hilarious memory from his time starring on Cheers beside Woody Harrelson.

Ahead of the launch of their new rewatch podcast Where Everybody Knows Your Name, the former co-stars revealed during a recent appearance on SiriusXM’s Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend that Harrelson’s addition the cast surprisingly triggered some intense feelings in the cast.

Harrelson joined the cast in Season 4 when he was 24 years old, making him the youngest star on the show.

“Thirty-seven is when you realize you’re no longer 25 or 24,” Danson said.  “So it was more not like hazing him, we just wanted to kick his ass in anything we could find. We started with basketball and, as you later found out in life, he’s a really good basketball player, so he kicked our asses there.”

Danson was, of course, referring to Harrelson’s role in the classic 1992 sports comedy White Men Can’t Jump.

The rivalry didn’t end there. “Next, I have a vision of Johnny Ratzenberger, who played Cliff, out on the lawn by the stage doing, you know, the leg wrestling where you’re both on your back, and you try to flip the other guy with just your leg,” he recalled.

After Harrelson agreed, “Johnny’s strong,” Danson continued, “John’s strong and got some thighs on him. Woody kicked his ass. I literally have a bad elbow to this day ’cause I wouldn’t give up arm wrestling. I did finally give up, because he was kicking my butt. So then we moved to chess.”

He added that the cast decided to “beat him mentally” and moved on to challenging Harrelson to chess.

“[Harrelson] killed us at chess,” Danson confessed. “So this is all in the first week, really. So from then on it was like, if you had some awful mean prank to pull, you would not waste it on anyone else except Woody. And he is, to this day, that’s Woody Harrelson.”

Since reuniting, Harrelson and Danson have shared some hilarious memories from their time on the show.

Danson recently shared his “favorite story” from those days during a recent appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show, where he revealed Harrelson skipped work to go watch the Berlin Wall come down.

“It was the eighth or ninth year. It was a little more relaxed,” Danson told host Drew Barrymore. “If somebody showed up 15 minutes late, it was on time. If you were half an hour late, you were late. [Harrelson] was not there [for] 45 minutes and we were going, ‘Well, this is too much.’”

Danson continued, “Somebody came running in and said, ‘Oh, Woody’s in Berlin. The wall is coming down and he couldn’t miss it. He said he’ll be back soon.’”

Danson and Harrelson’s Cheers podcast launched on SiriusXM June 12.