‘Cheers’: The Original Bar Regular They Cut From the Pilot and Where You Can Still See Her
The NBC comedy Cheers had a core ensemble of characters that included the bar staff and also regular customers. The ensemble was originally one character larger though. Alas, they cut the character from the very first episode, never to return, although you can still see her if you look really hard.
Writer Ken Levine revealed the missing Cheers character on an episode of his podcast, Hollywood & Levine. Levine did not write the original episode, but he knew the story. He’d written subsequent scripts from which they removed her.
‘Cheers’ cut Mrs. Littlefield right out of the show
Margaret Wheeler played a character named Mrs. Littlefield. She spoke in the original cut of the first episode but Levine referenced subsequent scripts that would have included her.
“Did you know that there was another character who was supposed to be a regular?” Levine said on Hollywood & Levine. “An older woman named Mrs. Littlefield. She was written into several of the scripts and she actually had a few lines in the pilot.”
Where to see Mrs. Littlefield in the first ‘Cheers’ episode
Levine explained why the very first Cheers episode needed to make cuts. Mrs. Littlefield wasn’t the only victim. However, removing her lines meant no longer establishing her in the show and they didn’t need to move forward with her character. Levine noted that you can still see her. Look for the elderly woman in a wheelchair.
“A couple things about the pilot, number one it was way too long,” Levine said. “Number two, they decided, you know what? This character isn’t really isn’t popping. And so they cut all of her lines but there are a few shots in that pilot, if you look very carefully in the background, where Mrs. Littlefield still remains.”
After cutting Mrs. Littlefield, they had to write a new scene
Apparently, the creators of Cheers were brutal with their cuts. So brutal that they ended up making the episode too short. Today, half hour broadcast shows may only be 20-22 minutes. They could go at least 24 in the ‘80s, so they ultimately wrote and filmed a new scene to make up for lost time.
“Interestingly, we cut and we cut and we cut and we cut, and when we put together the final version of the pilot, it was short,” Levine said. “So the tag, that last scene you see where Diane goes to her first customer to take their orders, that was actually filmed months after the original pilot. The pilot was filmed like in March or April and we started production in August. So it went from being very long, the pilot, to suddenly being short and all of us going now, what do we do?”
