Diane Chambers

Diane Chambers was a fictional character on the American television show Cheers, portrayed by Shelley Long (1982–1987, 1993). Diane was introduced in the pilot episode, her fiancé leaving her waiting at Cheers while he goes back to recover his wedding ring from his ex-wife. Diane spent most of her time at Cheers bemoaning her fate and generally acting superior to the rest of the staff and customers. Diane was also a persistent thorn in the side of her feisty fellow barmaid Carla Tortelli (Rhea Perlman) who had little time for Diane's myriad pretensions. However, Diane changed significantly enough that by the fifth season, she was more down to Earth, and marveled at what a "prissy snot" she was when she first entered Cheers. After leaving Cheers, though, she'd regressed to her former neurotic poseur personality. Diane's fiancé leaves her in the pilot episode, and she takes a job waitressing at Cheers to try to rebuild her life. In comparison to the bar's general clientele, Diane Chambers seems amusingly out of place, until she introduces intellectual psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane (played by Kelsey Grammer) into the mix. Diane and Frasier have a romance (ended when Diane leaves Frasier at the altar) sandwiched between Diane's romances with Sam Malone. Diane finds Sam's rugged and rather obvious charms, by turns, repulsive and magnetic. Sam is both maddened and drawn by Diane's ambivalence toward him. Diane also suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, hinted at in various episodes; Diane demands that the pencils and pens in her pocket be in very precise order. In the episode "Power Play" it is revealed that Diane obsessively hoards stuffed animals. Diane was later admitted to Goldenbrook Psychiatric Hospital, after Season 2, for extreme depression after a dramatic bad break up with Sam. It was here that she met Dr. Frasier Crane. After a romance (which she later admits was a "bit of fun," and that she strung him along), she left him at the altar in Italy at the end of Season 3. Diane left to work at a convent, and went back to Cheers after a visit from Sam in the Season 4 opener. Sexual tension ensued between Sam and Diane for much of Season 4, and Sam eventually proposed to Diane over the phone in the season finale. Sam wanted to propose to her in the romantic fashion that she would have wanted, and he did so on a moonlit boat ride during the premiere of Season 5, only to have her say no because she thought that Sam was "on the rebound" from his break-up with counselor Janet Eldridge (Diane later jumped overboard after Sam, in anger, said he was going to throw her off the boat). Midway through Season 5, Sam proposes again. Diane says no again, and Sam chases her out of Cheers. She sues him for assault and battery. In the courtroom, Diane accepted Sam's proposal (brought on by a judge's ruling when Diane sued Sam). Diane was written out of Cheers following Shelley Long's decision to leave the show after Season 5 in 1987. In the season finale, Diane was given a chance to write the book she always wanted. Diane wanted to marry Sam before writing the book, but Sam, who knew that Diane was going to resent him for keeping her from her dreams, talked her out of it. Diane received a hefty advance for her manuscript, and left Sam to complete it. Promising to be back in six months to marry him, Diane left Boston. Knowing Diane would not return, Sam told her, "Have a good life." The episode ended with a coda in which Sam imagined he and Diane as an elderly married couple. Long reprised her role in the Cheers series finale in 1993. Diane's novel never came together, but she had rebounded and was a successful writer of a made-for-TV movie called "The Heart Held Hostage" (based on Carla). Diane returned to Boston, and stopping at the bar for a visit, she told Sam that she was married with children. She had married Don Paul Niven, an investment banker who later revealed to be leading a double - or quadruple - life. Supposedly he ran an underground wild animal fur trade on the black market, ran a gay/lesbian porno production company on the weekends, and once faked his own death when many believed he was responsible for the death of Col. Harland Sanders. From 1981 to 1985, Niven was under the Witness Protection Program as Yanic Fabrice Charday, whose cover was a working make-up artist on ABC's Hotel. After marrying Diane Chambers in a Christmas ceremony on December 25, 1988, the couple managed to have five children in just less than five years before Diane returned in May 1993 to visit Boston. Their children, all named after department stores, consist of son Zayre Ames Chambers-Niven (b. March 3, 1989), boy and girl twins Sears Alva Roebuck Chambers-Niven and Kay Marta Chambers-Niven (b. April 12, 1990), son Bradlee Calvin Chambers-Niven (b. November 24, 1991) and daughter Penney Dorothy Chambers-Niven (b. December 8, 1992). All this prompted Sam Malone to claim that he was also married, to Rebecca Howe (Kirstie Alley). Sam and Diane agreed to meet for dinner with their respective spouses, but after Rebecca's actual boyfriend proposed to her and Diane's "husband" was whisked away by his gay partner, their covers were blown and they found themselves alone together once more. The old romantic spark soon rekindled, Diane and Sam made plans to run off to California together, but while sitting in the plane waiting for takeoff they both had second thoughts, and decided to once more call it goodbye. Long also reprised the Chambers character in subsequent guest appearances on the Cheers spin-off series, Frasier. She is seen very briefly in a dream sequence in a second season episode, and also more extensively in a dream sequence in a ninth season two-parter called "Don Juan In Hell". The character is seen 'for real', as it were, in an episode called "The Show Where Diane Comes Back". In this episode, it's revealed that Diane's TV writing career continued after the events of Cheers, and she worked her way to a story editing position on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman before getting fired. She was in Seattle to supervise the production of a play she had written. In the episode, she and Kelsey Grammer reconciled on and off the screen. On-screen, Frasier and Diane reconciled over her jilting him at the altar. Off-screen, they reconciled over the fact that Long had wanted Grammer written off of Cheers. Diane's subconscious attraction to Sam Malone is also seen in that episode; she is seen kissing and having an affair with the actor that plays Sam in her play based on her life at Cheers.