The late Patrick Stewart is best known for playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the “Star Trek” franchise and Professor Charles Xavier in the “X-Men” films, but he was a versatile actor who turned his talents to comedy on more than one occasion, including in a memorable appearance in “Frasier.” The British icon, who died in October 2026 aged 86, guest starred in the Season 11 episode “The Doctor is Out,” which aired on September 30, 2003.
Stewart played Alistair Burke, a Seattle opera conductor and a new friend to Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) and his brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce). A public misunderstanding leads Alistair to believe that Frasier is gay, and he further mistakes Frasier’s eagerness to be close to a local celebrity for romantic interest. The episode boasts a rating of 9.1/10 at IMDb and it earned a spot on TVLine’s list of the 15 best “Frasier” episodes.
In 2006, Stewart spoke about one quirky aspect to working with Grammer on his hit sitcom. “I’m a huge admirer of Kelsey but I’d been warned by the cast, ‘Kelsey will appear not to know it right up to the take. Don’t be alarmed,'” Stewart told the Independent. “We’d be running the script in the make-up run and he still didn’t know it. Thank God I’d been warned or I’d have run. But suddenly in front of the camera, bang, bang, bang, he was right on top of it.”
Grammer and Stewart worked together several times
Patrick Stewart and Kelsey Grammer worked with each other on more than one occasion. Prior to Stewart’s memorable turn as Alistair Burke in “Frasier,” Grammer made a guest appearance in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” The Stewart-led sci-fi series was flying by its fifth season, which contains some of the best episodes. Grammer played Starfleet officer Morgan Bateson, captain of the USS Bozeman, in “Cause and Effect,” which TVLine named as a must-watch episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
The pair also worked on the “X-Men” movies together, with Grammer joining the franchise as Dr. Hank McCoy/Beast in 2006’s “X-Men: The Last Stand.” He told MovieWeb that he had been “warmly received” by Stewart and the cast. “I did a ‘Star Trek’ several centuries ago and Patrick was my boyfriend on ‘Frasier,'” he said. “It was wonderful to work with him, he’s a terrific actor and we had a wonderful time doing that. So when I came to shoot ‘X-Men,’ of course he’s one of the first people I saw.”
Grammer was among the many former friends and colleagues who paid tribute to Stewart following his death. He expressed his admiration for Stewart on a personal level and highlighted his appearance on “Frasier” in a statement he gave to The Hollywood Reporter. It read: “Sending love to Patrick and all of his fans and family. He was just terrific. Gave one of the greatest turns as a guest on ‘Frasier’ — ever! A marvelous man. I liked him so. Time spent with him was always time well spent.”
