Frasier’s Maris Crane Was Frequently Referenced but Never Seen on Camera. Here’s Why Fans Didn’t Meet Nigel’s Wife

Maris Crane’s presence was felt throughout Frasier‘s 11-season run, even if she never appeared.

Stories about Maris’ unusual requests and her relationship with Niles (David Hyde Pierce) peppered the show’s run. In a recent oral history of the show for Yahoo Entertainment, it was revealed that creators David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee originally intended for Maris to be part of the show’s action, but the audience reaction to her changed their minds.

“When David, Peter, and I were writing the pilot, we thought, ‘Let’s pull a fast one on the audience and make them think that we’re going to do a thing like Norm’s wife, Vera, in Cheers, where he talks about her, but you never see her. Let’s do that for a few episodes, and then surprise — we’re actually going to see her, so we weren’t ripping off that Cheers thing after all,’ ” Lee told the outlet.

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When they considered casting Maris, Hyde Pierce recalls, “I had done a show with Valerie Mahaffey, and she is a wonderful, beautiful, terrific actress who in many ways, physically, might have been right,” he says.

Co-star Jane Leeves, who played Daphne, shared she thought Eleanor Bron would be a good fit. “There was something so wrong about her, but hilarious,” she said.

But despite the ideas floating around, Lee found that, “Two or three episodes in, she was already so bizarre, she was uncastable.”

“So we just went, ‘Well, we’re never going to see her.’ Although we did see the shadow of her behind a shower curtain once,” he explained.

Over time, Maris became almost mythical, from her unusually distant relationship with Niles to everything she leveled against him in their inevitable divorce.

Joe Keenan, who served as both a writer and producer on the series, added, “Nobody you could have cast would have been as interesting as the person the audience had envisioned.”

“Suddenly, she went from being just this excessively thin, chic, rich woman to being somebody who routinely defies the laws of physics. You would do jokes about her running off through the snow and leaving no footprints, or going on a wine trip and getting into a vat of grapes and not being able to break any. Some characters just have to be off-screen. The more you talk about them, the more impossible they become to cast.”

Hyde Pierce joked, “The more we found out about Maris… I don’t think anyone would actually want to work with the person who would be right for that character.”