Kelsey Grammer feels he missed an opportunity to give back to his country by not serving in the military when he was younger.
During a recent interview with Fox News Digital, the 71-year-old actor discussed his latest project, “America the Beautiful,” a 40-minute giant screen documentary, and why he always does his best to “show up for the military” when he is able to.
“I will always have an annoying sort of sense of smallness that I didn’t serve, but I do my best to make up for it,” he said.
He explained that, despite feeling that way, he is unsure if he would have made a different decision if given the opportunity to do his life over again, noting, “It was a really interesting time.”
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When he was a young man, he said, the Vietnam War was “sort of in full flair,” and he had signed up for the draft and was ready to go fight had his number been drawn, but “President Nixon pulled us out just before I would have gone down to get my number.”
“So, I was thankful for not having to go, make that decision, but I would’ve gone. If my number had been up, I woulda gone. But I was, I was thankful not to,” he said.
“I used to work in San Diego. It was one of my first jobs at the Shakespeare Festival there, and I would go over to the Point Loma Military Graveyard and have a lunch sometimes. And I’d sit next to this cross that I’d found of a young man who was really only eight months older than I was who had died in Vietnam. And it just broke my heart.”
As a father, Grammer says he speaks to his children about the many sacrifices people have made to ensure the safety of America, adding he “will always try and instruct them with the idea that service to your country is a good idea.”
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He says that together they discuss the Revolutionary War and all the great battles throughout history, noting he would encourage them to serve their country if they wanted to, but “their mom would get mad at me.”
He noted, however, that this is something “people have been doing” for many years.
“There’s a lot of wonderful patriotic people in our country today whose children and whose husbands and wives are serving, and my hat is off to them all. And we salute them. I mean, with this particular thing, the 11 hour, the 11 day, 11th month, Armistice Day originally, now Veterans Day at the end of the first World War. Remarkable. The number of people who died in that war,” he said.
“So, certainly the hope was that it would never happen again and, sure enough, a generation later, we were fighting World War II. Amazing. And we go on. We continue. Hopefully it’ll end one day.”
Grammer feels a strong connection to Veterans Day since his grandfather served as a colonel in the Army Corps of Engineers during World War II. When speaking about his grandfather, the “Frasier” star said he “was always an inspiration to me.”
“I looked up to him like a kid would,” he said. “I mean, he raised me, but his bravery and his courage and his commitment to the country, these were active, living, breathing things that he was … he embodied that. And, so, it’s always been my hope to kind of pass that along a little bit. At least a remembrance of him, respect for what he was able to do in the face of extraordinary hardship.”
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One way in which Grammer is honoring his grandfather — and all the other men and women who have served the country — is through his new film, “America the Beautiful,” which hits screens Nov. 11.
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The film was created in honor of America’s 250th birthday and celebrates the beauty of the country and the love of the land Americans share for it.
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“That was the original idea of the movie, why they made it, and they invited me to join in. I think it’s absolutely apropos. I mean, without the sacrifices that have been made by our military men and women, then we might not actually have this treasure of national beauty that we do have,” he said.
“The Americans that have gotten to know our national forests and our national parks. They are inspired by them every day and blessed by the fact that they’re still here. And I think that speaks in large part of the sacrifices that people make abroad and at home to secure our future and to defend our country.”
Through making the film, he was able to understand President Theodore Roosevelt’s philosophy that “we have to preserve our physical life as well as our creative and our ideological life.”
He learned how Roosevelt was allotted “time to seek solace in nature” and gather inspiration and comfort from it, leading him to create the national park system, believing “everybody should be able to have” the same “personal relationship with the wilderness” as he found.
Grammer’s hope for the film is that audiences are able to understand the “overwhelming beauty we have been given” in this country, calling it “powerful” and saying “it defines us.”
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Of all the places he visited, he called the Badlands his favorite, saying, “I felt like I was in a holy place” while he was there, saying it felt like being “in God’s land.”
“It was just an amazing day we spent there and, of course, then we went and saw Mount Rushmore. We also saw on the way there … a mountain called a Crazy Horse, which is like four times bigger than Mount Rushmore,” he said.
“It’s an amazing thing that a private family’s been working on it for 60 years, maybe longer, where it’s just Crazy Horse seated on his steed, and he says, with his finger pointing outwards, sort of like this, he says, ‘My lands are where my dead lie buried.’
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“And that’s powerful stuff, but I think that is an American saying. That is an American occurrence. It’s these two cultures clashed, and then he became a new culture together, but it’s all based on that land, this extraordinary land that we have.
“And, yeah, it’s a rainbow. It’s a cornucopia of life and teaming, teaming life, renewal, power, all these things that actually really are America. They live here, and I’m proud to have done the movie.”
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“America the Beautiful” premieres Wednesday, Nov. 11, and will be available on IMAX, Giant Screen and Dome theaters, with some theaters offering free screenings for veterans on Veterans Day.
Visit americathebeautifulmovie.com for a list of where to find the film.