ALLEY OOPS
The bar has closed for actress Kirstie Alley, aged 71. Her first role of note was as Spock’s protégé in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and she followed suit with a number of smaller films and box office smash romcom Look Who’s Talking. Any other Travolta leading ladies might wish to finalise their wills.
However it was on the small screen where she made her name (that everyone knows) as Rebecca Howe, the gold-digging screwball manager of the titular bar in Cheers. Introduced as replacement for Diane after Shelley Long left the show, Alley won an Emmy for the role but divided audiences with her OTT-ness. She was the only living Cheers regular to never make a guest appearance in spinoff Frasier, apparently as being on a show revolving around psychiatry conflicted with her Scientologist tenets. Somewhat frustrating for the obitwriting when you’ve watched through Frasier but are getting started on Cheers soon (the legend of Cliff Clavin on Jeopardy! won’t wait much longer)!
Post-Cheers, Alley won a second Emmy for TV drama David’s Mother, and returned to the sitcom world as the eponymous lingerie store owner in Veronica’s Closet. Her career remained consistent but without any huge success – her last attempt at a sitcom flopped, and throughout the past decade her best known appearances were all reality TV (Celebrity Big Brother, Dancing with the Stars, The Masked Singer). She was also known for her on-and-off riding of the MAGA train, meaning the Scientology wasn’t even the loopiest thing about her. The only team to know her name for DDP purposes is Big Brother theme Unpersons.
Kirstie Alley
12 January 1951 – 5 December 2022, aged 71
💀💀💀💀💀💀💀 + 👻 = 11 POINTS