Toks Olagundoye (‘Frasier’) on finding the ‘softness’ and humor of her ‘high-powered’ character [Exclusive Video Interview]
“It’s still really surreal,” admits Toks Olagundoye about her starring role on the Paramount+ series “Frasier.” The actress was “very much” a fan of the original series that ran on NBC from 1993 to 2004, because it was “really well written and so well directed.” She especially loved that the show had “such a great mixture of high comedy and realism,” pointing to the late John Mahoney‘s character Martin Crane as her favorite character. Now 20 years after that show wrapped, the performer is a series regular on its return. Watch our exclusive video interview.
Olagundoye plays new character Olivia, the head of the psychology department at Harvard University, where Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) now works as a lecturer upon his return to living in Boston. What drew the actress to the part, aside from her love of “Frasier,” was “the fact that we’re in a comedy that hasn’t seen a lot of people of color and that she was in a position of power.” She wanted to instill in Olivia a sense that “she’s a high-powered woman, but she’s still human and still has a softness.”
SEE ‘Frasier’ reviews: Kelsey Grammer ‘perfect’ in ‘charming’ new series
It wouldn’t be “Frasier” without the return of Grammer as the title character, and Olagundoye declares that working with him is “amazing, absolutely amazing.” Though she says he is “nothing” like his character in terms of his pretentiousness, she does admit that “he’s very much like Frasier in the way that he has a really big heart.” The actress also shares the bulk of her scenes with Nicholas Lyndhurst as Alan, a professor in the psychology department who is Frasier’s oldest friend and a bit of an annoyance to Olivia. Just as she loves the original “Frasier,” the actress is a big fan of Lynhurst’s show “Only Fools and Horses” and calls him a “national treasure” in England. “We have the British sense of humor, that dry sense of humor in common,” shares the performer about how their dynamic on-screen took shape, adding that despite the constant barbs between characters, “you obviously know that deep down, they really love each other.”
One of the best episodes that showcases the chemistry between Olagundoye, Grammer and Lyndhurst is “The Founders’ Society,” in which their three characters compete for two open slots in an exclusive club at Harvard. Frasier and Alan conspire to throw Olivia under the bus, speaking Latin to each other not knowing that Olivia understands exactly what they’re saying. “I was so pleased with the writing of that because I think that Olivia, or a woman like Olivia, would play along,” reflects the actress. She also loved that when it is revealed that Olivia has outsmarted them, “they’re only surprised for a second.” She says that their reaction and dynamic throughout the episode “gives so much more dimension to all the characters.”
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One of the running threads throughout the season is Olivia’s rivalry with her older sister, Monica, who works at Yale. Olagundoye thinks their competitive nature comes from their parents, who probably “pushed it into them that you are two Black girls in this world, you’re going to have to work really hard for everything, you’re going to have to work three times as hard” to succeed. It doesn’t help that since Olivia is younger, her parents probably “showered love and adoration” on Monica because she achieved so much success first. “Frasier” hasn’t introduced Monica on screen yet, but if and when they do, Olagundoye knows who she wants to play her sister: Yvette Nicole Brown. She shares, “We know each other, we’ve worked with each other, we have a really good rapport… It needs to be someone who I have a really good, positive rapport with.”
The season finale of “Frasier,” “Reindeer Games,” also introduces a romance in Olivia’s life. Though Olivia has been flirting with Frasier’s son Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott) throughout the season, she ends up being swept off her feet by his fellow firefighter and pal Moose (Jimmy Dunn). Olagundoye relates to this development in Olivia’s life because she herself was raised by parents who “made it very clear to me that I needed to walk through this world with kindness and consideration and be a dreamer but be practical,” and “Moose has all of that.” “Frasier” is currently in production on Season 2, and the actress reveals that in addition to some “very very exciting visitors” coming on to guest star, the new episodes will do “a really good job of fleshing out all the characters more, so you’re going to see a lot more of personal lives for all the other characters in the show.”
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