Ted Danson Says 'Whimsical Creature' Woody Harrelson's Insane First Day on Cheers Involved a Bar Fight and Carjacking

Woody Harrelson made a wild first impression on Ted Danson.

During a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the Cheers alum, 76, recalled the first time he met his former costar-turned-friend, 63, on the NBC sitcom.

"He is a whimsical creature," Danson began of Harrelson. "He's astounding. He's such a bundle of contradictions. I think the first day we met him on Cheers — we'd been together [filming] for three years — and he came and joined us."

When the Hunger Games alum had gotten into a "bar fight" and was "carjacked" the same day, Danson's initial impression of him was "Oh dear God, that's who that is" until Harrelson turned around and asked, "Could you look at this poem I wrote?"

"It's like the most beautiful poem you've ever read," he added. "And he's like, 'Would you come see the play I wrote?' ... and it's a brilliant f---ing play. You cannot pigeonhole that guy." 

"One of my favorite Cheers stories is, waiting for him, and he got to be about 30 minutes late for rehearsal," The Good Place star continued to recall. "And we were going, 'Well, what the hell?' And someone came running in and said, 'Woody called. He's in Berlin. The wall is coming down and he didn't wanna miss it.'"

"That's the whimsical side of Woody but also the magnificent side. He just bites off these big chunks of life," the Man on the Inside star laughed. "He's just astounding."

This isn't the first time Danson has reminisced about the wild times he shared with Harrelson on Cheers.

On the Aug. 14 episode of the duo's Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast, Danson, Harrelson and their former costar George Wendt revealed they once played "hooky" and experimented with hallucinogenics.

Back in the day, John Ratzenburger, who played Cliff Clavin, invited the cast to spend the day sailing to Catalina Island. With Kelsey Grammer asleep in a bunk on the boat, Harrelson offered Danson some drugs.

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"We hadn't had breakfast, so I was fairly hungry and ate, I think, an extraordinary amount of mushrooms," Danson recalled. "There was still a huge swell. So people not on mushrooms would be seasick, pretty much. But I sat there getting more and more and more freaked out in whatever it is you get — stoned or whatever it is — on mushrooms,"

Harrelson, who played Woody Boyd on Cheers, said that Danson looked "like a hologram" of himself, adding, "I thought you really — you just weren't breathing at all" before Danson declared the trip "the worst four hours of my life."

Cheers is streaming in full on Hulu and Paramount+. Meanwhile, Danson's new series, A Man on the Inside, premieres Nov. 21 on Netflix.