Kelsey Grammer: A Brother’s Love and Loss

Summary

All There Is with Anderson Cooper

Episode: Kelsey Grammer: A Brother’s Love and Loss
Date: December 17, 2025
Host: Anderson Cooper
Guest: Kelsey Grammer

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Episode Overview

This powerful episode of "All There Is," hosted by Anderson Cooper, centers on the enduring effects of grief, especially from violent loss. Cooper is joined by the actor Kelsey Grammer, who opens up about the murder of his sister Karen in 1975, and how that loss—as well as others in his family—shaped his life for decades. With remarkable candor, Grammer discusses the long shadow of bereavement, his journey toward healing, and the ongoing bond he feels with his sister. The episode interweaves listener voicemails that highlight the universality and complexity of grief, reinforcing the central theme that grief is both deeply personal and widely shared.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Public and Personal Grief (00:01–05:46)

• Cooper begins with reflections on reporting tragic news and the way art (like Rob Reiner's films) evokes emotion and memories of his own losses.
• Listener voicemails testify to the unique pain of violent loss and the unpredictable ways grief resurfaces in daily life.
  • “There is no day that magically it goes away. But there are days that you can see the brightness in life.” — Barbara [02:34]
  • "Grief hits in waves... we just have to sit with it and remind ourselves that grief and love go hand in hand." — Masouda Letfi [03:20]
  • Profound connections with loved ones lost are described, as well as struggles to feel their presence.
  • “Now I realize I have to let this all pour out of me so that I can be happy.” — Kim [05:25]

2. Kelsey Grammer’s Early Losses and Impact on Life (07:11–10:28)

• Anderson outlines Grammer’s traumatic family history: the murder of his father, the murder of his sister Karen, and later, the accidental deaths of two half-brothers.
  • Cooper: “Did you know the impact that loss and grief had on your life?” [06:47]
• Grammer admits to not truly acknowledging grief, living with an ever-present sense of it, and feeling as though he might die young.
  • “There were decisions I had made as a young man...I think I was going to die young. And I thought I should live as though I might die the next day.” — Kelsey Grammer [07:15]
  • “Every joy filtered by a touch of grief.” — Anderson Cooper quoting Grammer’s memoir [07:29]

3. Acceptance and Transforming Grief (08:11–12:11)

• Both Anderson and Kelsey discuss how failing to acknowledge grief stunted their ability to experience joy.
  • “I’ve lived half a life. That by not allowing me to really acknowledge grief... I’ve sort of lived, never fully present.” — Anderson Cooper [08:20]
  • Grammer credits the writing of his memoir and the support of his wife, Kate, with enabling his transformation: “I live in amazing joy now...I’m lifted.” [09:16]
  • A moving exchange about family, healing, and “the cycles that repeat in families” as a form of comfort and connection. [12:40]

4. Trauma, Memory, and Revisiting the Past (13:22–18:33)

• Grammer describes why returning to Colorado and reading his sister’s police report was necessary; it deepened his understanding but also confronted him with horrors he hadn’t known before.
  • “I really wanted to become familiar with that...my desire was to be with her in her final days and in her final steps, was just to be intimate with her again...” — Kelsey Grammer [13:29]
  • “In my imaginings, the man who found Karen at his doorstep was a good Samaritan...I stand correct and disappointed that that man did not attempt to help her.” — Anderson Cooper, referencing Grammer’s writing [15:47]
  • The chilling last words Karen heard: “Tilt your head back.” [17:19]
• Confronting these new facts brings both sorrow and renewed resolve in Kelsey’s efforts at parole hearings. [17:50]

5. Grief, Mediumship, and Healing Practices (19:16–21:46)

• Discusses Kelsey’s experiences with ceremonial meditations, plant medicine, and consulting mediums as ways of connecting with Karen and processing trauma.
  • “I do think it's a gift from God, mediumship. I think it is meant to help people resolve grief.” — Kelsey Grammer [19:40]
  • Describes seeking to "hear" and dialogue with his sister using meditations, finding profound comfort and forgiveness: “She came and told me you were a good brother, forgive yourself...get back to your life and love it.” [21:20]

6. The Enduring Inner Child and the Role of Acting (21:55–26:27)

• Both men discuss the “inner child” and how childhood loss reverberates throughout a life.
  • Grammer credits acting as a refuge and way of keeping his “little boy” safe, giving him moments of pure joy and honesty.
  • “I chose a place where my little boy was safe, and he's been fully at the helm in many, many sort of parts of my life.” — Kelsey Grammer [23:55]
• Cooper reflects on his own emotional growth and the journey to let that inner child “get out there and live.” [24:00–24:46]

7. Rage, Forgiveness, and Remembering the Lost (26:12–29:44)

• Grammer confesses that rage at the killers once consumed him, often turning inward, but that learning more about the real events and letting go of self-blame helped him find peace.
  • “That rage is righteous...So I raged at myself, raged at God, raged at them. But the circumstances led me to a kind of peace in the end. But that guy's still in there.” — Kelsey Grammer [26:32]
  • The hardest images of trauma haunted him for decades, but a conscious shift in remembering Karen for her life, not her death, brought healing. [28:16]
  • “The truth is: her life is what identified her, not her death.” — Kelsey Grammer [29:00]
• On grief advice: “Spend more time in the life they lived...let them live again instead of the horror of their taking off.” [29:11]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the presence of loss:
  “Every joy filtered by a touch of grief.” — Kelsey Grammer (read by Cooper), [07:29]
• On healing:
  “I live in amazing joy now...I’m lifted. I’m lighter than I used to be. Much lighter.” — Kelsey Grammer, [09:20]
• On the impact of unresolved trauma:
  “That boy was soul sick and felt unwanted...but so many others [memories] are joys I’d forgotten or had remained hidden because of trauma.” — Kelsey Grammer, [25:12]
• On advice to the grieving:
  “Allow yourself to spend more time in the life they lived...let them breathe again...instead of the horror of their taking off.” — Kelsey Grammer, [29:11]
• Listener Barbara:
  “There is no day that magically it goes away. But there are days that you can see the brightness in life.” — [02:34]
• Kelsey Grammer on Karen’s ongoing presence:
  “Yeah, I do, I do. I guess I always have. Sometimes I didn’t really want to pay attention, but always had her there in my head, in my heart.” — [11:35]

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• Barriers to Joy: How Living Without Grieving Stunts Us — 08:11–09:20
• Ceremonial Meditations, Plant Medicine & Mediumship — 19:16–21:46
• Kelsey’s Description of Reading Karen’s Police Report — 14:31–17:44
• Reflecting on His Inner Child and Acting — 22:41–26:27
• Advice for Those in Grief — 29:00–29:44

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Tone and Takeaways

The episode is intimate, compassionate, and unflinchingly honest. Both Cooper and Grammer speak with vulnerability and wisdom, inviting listeners to honor both their pain and their capacity for joy. The language switches between the deeply personal and the universally resonant, capturing the ongoing, nonlinear process of grief and the enduring love behind loss.

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For listeners or anyone experiencing grief, the episode reminds:

• You are not alone in it.
• Remember the lives of the loved ones, not just their deaths.
• It is possible to reclaim joy, even after the harshest of losses.

Transcript

[Anderson Cooper]

Last night, I sat on the anchor desk and read the news about Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle, murdered in their home. There is no shortage of sadness tonight, not to mention almost unimaginable shock and horror. I didn't know Rob personally, but his work touched me.

[Caller or Listener]

Are you okay?

[Anderson Cooper]

When I first saw Stand By Me, I remember crying in the theater. It was a coming of age film about childhood friendships, and it made me reflect on my own painful coming of age after my dad died.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Why don't you just make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number and make that a little louder.

[Anderson Cooper]

These go to 11. I also loved his mockumentary this Is Spinal Tap. It remains one of my favorite movies of all time. In September, I interviewed Rob about a Spinal Tap sequel he had made, and I'm so glad I did. When we started talking, I think he was surprised and definitely amused at how much I loved Spinal Tap and how many of the lines I knew by heart.

[Kelsey Grammer]

When we first did it, people came up to me and they said, I don't understand this. Why would you make a movie about a band nobody's ever heard of? And one, you know, why wouldn't you make it about the Beatles? They thought it was a real band. They thought it was a real documentary.

[Anderson Cooper]

Anybody in the world who does this hand gesture? I mean, you know, it's from Spinal Tap. Like, you know, it's like. It's like the puppet shows Spinal Tap and someone's just sitting there like this.

[Kelsey Grammer]

You know everything. You know every line from the film more than I do.

[Anderson Cooper]

I'm so glad I got to have that conversation with him. Not just because he seemed to have a good time, but because at the end of it, I got to tell him directly just how much his work had meant to me. You have brought me so much joy through this and so much work that you've done. And also, I mean, you are also a very committed patriot and citizen of this country and concerned about this country. Yeah. I just think you're awesome.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Thanks for talking with me. Wow.

[Anderson Cooper]

It's my pleasure. I hope I didn't just fall into the trap of just riffing.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Giving you some clients like a fanboy. It's all right. I don't mind it.

[Anderson Cooper]

Okay. Rob Reiner, thank you so much.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Thank you.

[Anderson Cooper]

I realize I don't say those kind of things to people enough. It's something my mom used to do, and I could see the impact it can have on someone. So now it's something I'm trying to do more. I've been listening to your voicemails and you can always call and leave one at 1-404-827-1805. Many of you have called in to talk about your loved ones were murdered or died violent deaths.

[Caller or Listener]

My name is Barbara and my older son Nicholas was murdered at 17. The one thing I have learned is to keep the memory alive, to remember my beautiful son who will forever be young. So with grief also comes some kind of comfort there always in my heart and be able to enjoy my son that's still here, my grandchildren. Oh, I see so much of the ones that I've lost. There is no day that magically it goes away. But there are days that you can see the brightness in life. My name is Masouda Letfi and I just wanted to remind everyone the grief hits in waves. And sometimes it's on a random Monday afternoon, sitting here in front of the roundtable, picking up our Monday night pizza. We just have to sit with it and remind ourselves that grief and love go hand in hand. I lost my brother. Saying no, he'd let me. He tried to stop a man with a gun on the freeway. He got shot five times in the head as he was giving the 911 operator the man's license plate. My brother was an Air force veteran of 14 years, a California boy that served his country. Over a year later, in the courtroom, I used 11 minutes to look my brother's murderer in the eye and tell him what a beautiful human being my brother was. And I see signs every single day. I see little messages from my brother. Our connection with the afterlife is just a thinly veiled curtain. And he's there and he's helping us become better human beings on the other side. And I'll continue to ride this wave, even in a roundtable parking lot on a random Monday night while I'm picking up my kids pizza. My name is Kim. I wanted to tell you, Anderson, that something you said today, so profound about your dad. You said that you can feel him now and you feel like you knew him better than when he was alive. I lost my dad when I was 18. He was murdered. And that's how I feel about him, that I know him now. I didn't know him then because he had spent my entire life in and out of jail and then came home and was murdered within a year. And I want to get to a place where you said you can feel him. I don't. I don't feel him. And I haven't in a very long time. Now. I realize now that I have to let this all pour out of me so that I can be happy. Because I think for so long I was afraid to be happy because it would be that I didn't feel the true sadness of the weight of him being gone.

[Anderson Cooper]

My guest today has experienced that same kind of violent loss. Kelsey Grammer was 20 when his sister Karen was murdered. She was 18. We'll be right back with my conversation with Kelsey. My guest today is Kelsey Grammer. His sister Karen was murdered in 1975 when she was 18 years old. Kelsey was 20. And though he went on to star in hugely successful series like Cheers and Frasier, his sister's kidnapping and brutal slaying and the unresolved questions and emotions he's had surrounding it were never far from his mind. He finally set out to answer those questions, which he writes about in a recently published memoir, A Brother Remembers. Kelsey, thank you so much for doing this. I don't think a lot of people knew the extent to which loss was such an early part of your life. Your grandfather you deeply loved, Gordon, died of cancer when you were 12 years old. Your dad was shot and killed when you were 13. Your sister was murdered when she was 18. You were 25 years later. Your two half brothers, Stephen and Billy, were killed in a shark attack. Did you know the impact that loss and grief had on your life, or did you realize it early on?

[Kelsey Grammer]

I don't know if I actually ever let it become a presence in my life. I think it was always sort of sneaking around in the background a little bit. There were decisions I had made as a young man and probably as a result of it. One was always that I think I was going to die young. And I thought that I should live as though I might die the next day.

[Anderson Cooper]

There's so many things you write in the book which I think are so powerful and I relate to you. Write new no event in my lifetime since Karen's death has gone untouched by some measure of grief filtered, every joy filtered by a touch of grief.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, a lot of my living had been attenuated, diminished just a little bit by the fact that this grief was sort of just an abiding presence in my life that always just took a little bit away from the present. And I did try to apologize to all the people that maybe they felt there was some distance, a sense of a gulf maybe that couldn't be breached. But I live in life now in a way that I never allowed myself.

[Anderson Cooper]

It is something you said toward the Ends of the book. You write, grief kept me from living. I apologize, with the regret of a half century, lived partway. I've always described it to myself as I've lived half a life. That by not allowing me to really acknowledge grief, to never have grieved, I've sort of lived, never fully present. And I actually think the process you've undergone is one I'm sort of trying to undergo, which is accepting grief to some degree in my life and so that I can experience full joy. Because I don't think you can have joy without having felt loss.

[Kelsey Grammer]

I agree with that. I do agree. I applaud your courage. It is a courageous step to try to live that way, to get into the mix of your own life and find that way out that doorway to joy. I live in amazing joy now. I mean, I sit in the room with my kids. We're sitting in the screening room right now at night. This is where we'll all gather. And we watched the awful last installment of Jaws last night as a family.

[Anderson Cooper]

Even a bad installment is fun with family.

[Kelsey Grammer]

More fun for the family. Right? So we're all just sitting here just talking. And, you know, the movie was kind of just down in the background. And it's. There's just this joy surrounding me. And I can kind of feel this. I'm lifted. I'm lighter than I used to be. Much lighter. And what was fascinating, when I finally finished the book I was writing in upstate New York, and I typed out the last line of it, and I suddenly thought, wow, that's it. I turned to Kate and I said, I'm finished. I'm finished. And she said, I've missed you. Which is just an amazing thing. So she spent, really two and a half years with me. I was kind of disappearing a lot. You know, I'd be down a hole. But her remark at that point, I mean, to think of that kind of patience and love being where, you know, where I. Where I ended up. I ended up with the right person. Just kind of fascinating. But not until I was ready to allow that.

[Anderson Cooper]

You know, when you were younger and had kids, you didn't talk about your sister.

[Kelsey Grammer]

I would mention that, you know, Karen had died when she was, you know, 18 or had. It was a tragic death, but I didn't. I didn't discuss it much. It was. Honestly, it was after the last two alive started to come up for parole that I had to reengage the loss of my sister. I had to relive it every time I went in. Going to parole Hearings and begging for my sister's life to be honored still at parole hearings.

[Anderson Cooper]

Do you actually see the killers a couple of times?

[Kelsey Grammer]

I have, yeah. I sat right next to one of them at one point. You know, he loomed large as a sort of a figure of enormous power and hate in my life. And then he seemed kind of feeble and weak. But the last of them is still alive and tries to get out every year, you know, so I got more used to it. I'm more used to the fact that I have to be in that moment still. Even though it's 50 years ago this last July. It was 50 years ago, but it's still an active part of my life.

[Anderson Cooper]

Do you feel her?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, I do, I do. And that's what's. It's been remarkable. I guess I always have. Sometimes I didn't really want to pay attention, but always had her there in my head, in my heart. I think sometimes, you know, bringing me a warning, saying, you don't need to go down this road or this one. You don't need to go out with her.

[Anderson Cooper]

She was giving you, giving you dating.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Advice, A little dating advice from time to time. I don't think you need that for too much longer. I told you so sometimes. Yeah, exactly. There have been a couple of moments.

[Anderson Cooper]

Like that because I didn't grieve. I have not felt the people I've lost for much of my life. And it's only in the last year or two that I've felt my dad. And I've actually feel like I have a closer relationship with him now than certainly than I have most of my life. And I've come to know him in a different way because I'm a dad now. And the way I look at my kids, I remember the way he must have looked at me.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, that's the gift of it, isn't it? We're living in our ancestors footsteps as well as our own. As we sort of carve through the life we've been given and the one we make and our children will be visited with us.

[Anderson Cooper]

You've really noticed in your life the cycles that repeat in families and through the generations. I think there's something beautiful and there's something comforting about that to realize like we are not the first to suffer whatever it is we are suffering, to go through what we are going through.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, we are doing what's been done throughout history. We carry it with us and we always will. It is part of the human thing. It's part of being here in this strange plane. That we're on. And whatever it's meant to do, it's also meant to teach us grief.

[Anderson Cooper]

It was important for you to actually go back to Colorado and walk through her final day.

[Kelsey Grammer]

That was something I'd always thought was important. I didn't know a lot of the intricacies of her last year of life, and I really wanted to become familiar with that. We weren't communicating so well back then. Of course. We didn't have cell phones. We didn't have all sorts of stuff. But we were discovering a lot of the same things at the same time, but weren't aware of it. We weren't communicating about it. And so my desire to go for this trip, to be with her in her final days and in her final steps, was just to be intimate with her again, to know her again like I knew her once before. This love that I had for my sister was some of the greatest meaningful connection with another human being that I've ever had. I mean, we lived and breathed, like, at the same pace, you know, rise and swell. We lived everything together. And that last year we didn't. And she was off on her own, and I was off on my own, but she was coming home. I was gonna see her in, like, four or five days. And we were really looking forward to being together again.

[Anderson Cooper]

You did something which I've thought about a lot. You got the police report.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah.

[Anderson Cooper]

For your sister. I thought about getting the police report. My brother jumped off at the balcony of her apartment building in front of my mom. And I thought about getting the police report for a while, even though there's nothing really, certainly in my case, to learn from it. But you requested the police file, and they sent it to you. And they warned you at the beginning of it about whether or not you should read it and whether you really wanted to read it.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, it was important for me. It was just to be with Karen, to be with her in that last moment.

[Anderson Cooper]

How were you able to do that?

[Kelsey Grammer]

It just seemed like I had to do it. It just seemed like I had to go. Kate came with me, and that was really helpful. And I also wanted to know what she was doing there. Did she have a nice life there? And she did. She had started to construct a life for herself there with this young man that she'd met. And John. I got to know John only through the police report did I find out John's name. So that was helpful. And so it was almost like I was sort of taking the trip with them. And it was heartbreaking at the Same time. And hard to read. Because for a long time, Kate, Karen was just a Jane Doe, you know, a girl whose body had been desecrated and who was left to die somewhere.

[Anderson Cooper]

Some of the things you discover in the police report were different than you had initially thought. She had managed to get to somebody's door to try to get help, mortally wounded. And you'd said, in my imaginings, the man who found Karen at his doorstep was a good Samaritan of sorts. I stand correct and disappointed that that man did not attempt to help her, but simply called the police after leaving. Her body as it lay, eyes vacant, staring at the sky, her legs still on the steps, her head on the ground. And a clenched fist above her head with an outstretched arm smeared blood along a wall. A path of suffering, an enormous pool of blood. And from there, the uneasy steps of a hundred yards, her last steps, then the final crawl of her life. It's really heartbreaking.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, it was. That broke my heart when I read it. When I first realized that the trail of her blood, her hands was at crawl level rather than standing height. The people that heard her scream and just went to bed didn't even look out the window. Yeah. And that house is right there still. Right where it was the same place where Karen was stabbed, just across the street. And then she made her way another hundred yards or so. Extraordinary that there was such callousness. Non caring.

[Anderson Cooper]

I don't know. I hesitate to even bring up. But you write about the last words that Karen heard, which you hadn't known until you read this police report.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah. Tilt your head back. That was.

[Anderson Cooper]

Tilt your head back. That's what the killer said.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah. The last thing she heard. Extraordinary. Malevolence. Evil. That discovery, it was beyond any horror I could have imagined. It did actually go beyond my imagination to a place that was real and that she had to deal with.

[Anderson Cooper]

It made me incredibly sad that in her final seconds, there was not kindness.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, me too. Thank you, Anderson. You know, I've had sort of diminishing resolve at times, you know, or at least in and out to. To keep this guy in jail. And I actually read that part of the police report the day before he was up for parole again. And I was calling in to testify at that point from a job I was doing in the Caribbean. And I realized that this is what she heard from this man who says he didn't do anything. So it ended up being ammunition, which was helpful.

[Anderson Cooper]

We're going to take a short break. We'll have more with Kelsey In a moment and a reminder, I'll be discussing this podcast and others on our new live interactive show, All There Is live on Thursday night on our grief community page, CNN.comAllThereis you can watch the show live at 9:15pm Thursday or in the days that follow, along with past episodes of the podcast. We'll be right back with more from Kelsey Grammer. Welcome back to my conversation with Kelsey Grammar. Kelsey writes in his book A Brother remembers that he has on several occasions done what he calls ceremonial meditations at home using plant medicine or psychedelics. He also writes about consulting with mediums throughout his life.

[Kelsey Grammer]

I have some very, very devoted Christian friends who aren't on the, you know, you don't, you don't consult with mediums. You know, that's sort of dangerous territory. And I accept that you should be very cautious. But there are those who are good. And I do think it's a gift from God, mediumship. I think it's meant to help people resolve grief. I think it is meant to help people release some things. It is a continuing gift of God that we can access our loved ones, especially for those of us who've had loss that has been so violent and so devastating and premature in many ways, there's some grief you'll never let go of. But there is an obligation to get on with your life. And if one is disrupting the other for too long a time, I think the gift of mediumship maybe helps people resolve that.

[Anderson Cooper]

You mentioned that you and your wife do ceremonial meditations at home. You also talked about meditating on hearing Karen focus on hearing her, seek a dialogue with her. What is that? Meditating on hearing Karen focus on hearing her.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Plant medicine is being, you know, experimented with to access whatever your issue might be. So you focus on a certain thing. And I've we've done a few of them. And I find it sort of comical and yet discovered some things deeply troubling within me that I thought, well, I'm glad I did this. I'm glad I, I had this experience where I got to release some things that I didn't know were still sort of stirring around in there. I, I think all these things are possible even through prayer. Honestly, whatever meditative state you get into. I got close the night when I was just sort of recouping from the surgeries. I had, you know, four or five hours of just kind of just being wiped out from the anesthesia. In a moment of just deep reflection and quiet. There was this discovery of, oh, I didn't get the Chance to hold you. I didn't get a chance to really say goodbye to you. And that was a big thing, that last moment when she took her final breath that her brother wasn't there to hold her, that I couldn't be there to just, you know, send her off, to love her. And Karen, when she came and told me you were a good brother, forgive yourself, you know, you stood up for other kids, said you got to just, you know, knock it off, get back to your life and love it, love the fact that we had a life together, that was an amazing moment for me. Just amazing.

[Anderson Cooper]

Seems like you're still a pretty good brother. Yeah.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

[Anderson Cooper]

Weeks after your grandfather Gordon died, who was really your dad, he was the person you deeply, deeply loved. You said, I finally dissolved in tears, unable to speak. I was convulsed with grief and lost in it. Sob after sob shook my body until finally it stopped. I sat with my head and my hands silent. After a time, a voice came, my voice, that said, you will always be alone. And the oddest thing happened. It gave me comfort. Do you remember the little boy you were? It sounds cheesy, but I've sort of woken up recently to how I stunted myself very early on after my dad died. And it so terrified me at age 10 that I didn't grieve. And that little boy, I've sort of woken up to the idea that he is still very much alive in me. Do you feel that little boy still?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I feel him all the time. It's interesting. He's the one that actually had so much fun in life, and he's the one that actually still has sort of preserved my ability to have fun, even through the grief sometimes. But I was a really good kid. I wanted to please my parents. I wanted to please my granddad more than anything in the world. I loved my grandmother. You know, the places that I didn't sense my loss was when I was acting, when I had the mask of acting on. I could just be honest and open in that moment and sort of lend my own life to whatever character I was trying to play. Those moments have been free, completely free of any sense of guilt or shame or anything else. Until then, of course, maybe if there's a moment when I'm playing a guy who's grieving a loved one or a sister even, or whatever, then it comes flooding in and my own story kind of comes along for the ride. And that's what I find rewarding about the work. Still find rewarding about the work, but so it's been a refuge for the little boy in a lot of places in my imagination, but also in my life's work, my career. I chose a place where my little boy was safe, and he's been fully at the helm in many, many sort of parts of my life. Yeah.

[Anderson Cooper]

That'S an incredible thing to have figured out an outlet for. I don't know. I feel like a lot of this language is cheesy, but I've come to kind of believe in it. So I've always been skeptical my entire life, but it hasn't really served me that well. And suddenly here I am at 58, like, weeping. So maybe there's something to this little child thing. But I do think this voice I developed in my head, which is the voice that has gotten me through everything, is this protector of this little child. And I've kept him buried and sequestered. And I think having kid's my own. I want that child to get out there and, you know, live and stuff. And I love the idea that you were able to do that through acting.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah. What a great circumstance it was that I fell into the acting thing. I never wanted to be an actor. I just. I was just a kid who was surfing. I used to love that. And then a guy comes along and says, can you smoke a cigar? I said, yeah. And he says, well, then you used to play Ben Hubbard in the Little Foxes. And I did it and thought, this is great. I can do this the rest of my life. So that's where it all sort of started. And that's the one that keeps it alive.

[Anderson Cooper]

You said that boy was soul sick and felt unwanted. Later on, you write about memories that you have that come back to you. You say, to find them now has been a pure delight. Well, some are painful, of course, but so many others are joys I'd forgotten or had remained hidden because of trauma. They are peeking their heads out now, hoping it is safe to come out into the open and shine as they once did. I did not realize how many there were. People speak of the inner child. I don't really know much about it, except I presume we all have one and most of them are in hiding. I would say that that's been true for me and probably true for Karen after we were hurt by life. And nothing hurts in life more than the death of someone precious. When we are children, we do a voicemail at the end of every season of this podcast. And I think it's amazing to me the amount of People who experienced childhood loss and the impact it's had on them their entire life. I mean, it's extraordinary. And so few people are able to talk about it or give voice to it. I don't know if it's repressed grief or unrecognized grief or childhood grief out there.

[Kelsey Grammer]

And, well, what you're doing here with this show, with this podcast, and what I was trying to do with the book was say, you know, you've got company. You've got company, and you're. It's. And whatever yours is, is yours, all yours. But it's something with you.

[Anderson Cooper]

You write about rage, rage of the people who murdered your sister. Do you still feel that rage?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah. Yeah, that's so. I'm glad you pointed that out. I think there was a part of me that for a while, was quite happy to let it take over and just to be angry and not settled on anything and to kind of the only target in sight, really, was myself. So I took some time to beat myself down for a while. But that rage is righteous. It comes from the fact that I couldn't stop them, that I couldn't help her, that I couldn't save my sister's life. So I raged at myself, raged at God, raged at them. But the circumstances of it all led me to a kind of peace in the end. But that guy's still in there. He's still around.

[Anderson Cooper]

Has retracing Karen's last hours and last day. Has that ameliorated some of the rage? Has it lessened?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, it has. Yeah. For a long time in this place where I couldn't forgive myself for what had happened to Karen. And of course, that probably made no real sense. It just had emotional sense, and it had emotional weight. That felt true. And I think, yeah, maybe that has helped save me quite a bit. I certainly don't blame myself anymore. And I did for a while.

[Anderson Cooper]

You say in the book, I'm sorry, Karen, that it's been so hard for me. This last image of you was impossible to shake. For years and years, it haunted me in quiet moments and down dark streets, ambushing the joy of a cherry blossom day, crushing it without warning. And today, even to this very day, it has the power to make me shake with grief. But it will not be as I remember you. I promise.

[Kelsey Grammer]

That was a big healing thing. The lingering image of Karen was always her corpse, and she didn't deserve that. That's why I apologized to her, because she's such a glorious girl, such a wonderful girl, and to have allowed myself to remember her in any other way than that was I did myself a disservice. And I didn't really honor her life that way. I honored them more and they didn't deserve it. So we got there. And we did get there in the end. I mean, Karen is with me.

[Anderson Cooper]

So how do you get there?

[Kelsey Grammer]

We're both happy. You just gotta go through the process, find out what the truth is. The truth is her life is what identified her, not her death.

[Anderson Cooper]

Is there something you've learned in your grief that would help others in theirs? Cause there's a lot of people listening right now who are grieving in all sorts of different ways.

[Kelsey Grammer]

The only real gift I would hope my experience could offer would be to allow yourself to spend more time in the life they lived in the good that you knew from them, in the joy that they brought you and the smiles that you knew from them and the happy accidents you shared. And to let them be remembered, to let them live again, to breathe again, to be in that life again instead of the horror of their taking off.

[Anderson Cooper]

Thank you so much. I really appreciated you taking the time to do this.

[Kelsey Grammer]

I really enjoyed it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time and for all you've known and lost and loved, obviously. And congratulations on your family and your children.

[Anderson Cooper]

Thanks.

[Kelsey Grammer]

You're wonderful.

[Anderson Cooper]

Thanks. I wish you the best.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Thanks, Anderson.

[Anderson Cooper]

Kelsey Grammer's new memoir is titled A Brother Remembers. This conversation is our final podcast episode of this year. We're gonna take a break for the holidays and we'll be back with all new episodes in January, starting with a conversation with singer and songwriter Patti Smith.

[Caller or Listener]

There's no rules and there shouldn't be any rules. I mean, people can in all of these phrases like time heals all wounds. It doesn't don't look to be healed. You know, it's like you have a sacred wound. Just, you know, take care of it. Don't let it get infected. But it's not necessarily gonna heal. You just learn to live with it.

[Anderson Cooper]

There's no rules in grief.

[Caller or Listener]

No, I don't think there should be.

[Anderson Cooper]

This week is also the final episode of the year for our new weekly companion show, All There Is Live. It'll be back in the new year. The last episode is this Thursday night, 9:15pm you can watch it [e-mail] AllTheRis and you can join in the conversation by sending us voicemails and comments in our comments section. Also, you can record a video for us on whatever topic you'd like and just email it to [e-mail] I hope you join us Thursday for the live show, 9:[e-mail] allthereis wherever you are in the world and in your grief. Thanks for being here. I'm glad we're together now. Streaming on CNN, candid conversations between Hollywood's hottest actors. New episodes of Variety's acclaimed series Actors on Actors premiere exclusively on CNN. Go to CNN.com watch to subscribe or log in with your t.