'Frasier' breakout Toks Olagundoye remains unflappable after cancer

By Whitney Friedlander

Sept. 18, 2024 3 AM PT

It’s amazing how finally getting something you’ve anticipated your entire life can bring about a sense of calm.

Or at least that was the case for Toks Olagundoye.

“From the second I got it, I was very candid about it,” she says. “I told everybody because I knew I was going to be low-energy … [but also] I feel like it really is so prevalent that it almost needs to be normalized in a way.”

The 49-year-old Nigerian-British actress and voice-over artist wasn’t speaking about her breakout turn in Paramount+’s “Frasier,” the continuation of the Emmy-winning NBC sitcom that begins its second season on Thursday. Rather, she was speaking about the breast cancer diagnosis she received while going through the casting process for the Kelsey Grammer-starring comedy.

Olagundoye was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer, a fairly aggressive form of the disease but one that she says can be stopped if caught early enough. She underwent three lumpectomy surgeries and chemotherapy before starting work on “Frasier” and had a double mastectomy while filming the show’s first season, which premiered in 2023.

A woman holding flowers leans against the frame of a stained-glass window.

She knew of several friends and a relative who had received a similar diagnosis, so Olagundoye is tested regularly. She admits, “I was so stressed out about getting cancer my whole life that by the time I got it, I was like, ‘OK, cool, let’s fix and get over it.’”

Now she says, “I sort of wish I hadn’t been so stressed out about it.

“As long as you are screening yourself and making sure you’re going to the doctor regularly, and really keeping track of your own health, and you catch things early enough, it’s going to be a little bit of a tough time, but you’ll be fine,” she says during a Zoom conversation in August that’s occasionally interrupted by her son and husband and my cat. “I think that if people think of it that way, the way they think of minor illnesses like a cold, then it won’t be so stressful. I think a lot of us carry a lot of stress about it.”

This pragmatism is one thing that sets Olagundoye apart from her “Frasier” character, Olivia Finch. Although she’s chair of Harvard’s psychology department, and thus boss to Grammer’s euphonious Freudian and his old pal, Alan (Nicholas Lyndhurst) — a job she apparently got by dropping her superior during a trust-fall exercise at the office retreat — Olivia can be tense, jumpy and uncomfortable in her own skin. Her dating life was almost nonexistent during the first season. And much like the way Frasier was introduced to American audiences on “Cheers,” Olivia’s recreational time is largely spent with friends in a Boston pub.

This isn’t necessarily how “Frasier” 2.0 creators Chris Harris and Joe Cristalli first saw the character. They laugh, remembering a first season episode in which Olivia gets deeply involved in solving a puzzle.

“It felt like this whole character came together” at that moment, Harris says. “Yes, she’s brilliant. Yes, she’s smart. Yes, she’s in theory the boss of Alan and Frasier. But she’s also a goofball and a nerd.”

In the second season, both because Olagundoye’s health is on the mend and the writers have now firmly established the universe of the new show outside their titular lead, Olivia gets more to do and that nerdiness shines through. For example, she’s very dedicated to her role at a murder mystery dinner party (elaborate costumes are involved) that takes place later in the season.

“There’s not a lot of people who like poking fun of themselves,” Cristalli says of Olagundoye. “She likes playing, not a buffoon, but somebody who’s just aware that what she does can be seen as strange or weird, and she leans into it … it’s so funny, the juxtaposition. She’s in a gown that looks like she should be going to an opening of an art museum and she’s talking about puzzles.”

A man in an orange top hat and purple waistcoat stands next to a woman in a blue gown and tiara.

Alan (Nicholas Lyndhurst) and Olivia (Toks Olagundoye) in a Season 2 episode where they dress up for a murder mystery party. (Chris Haston/Paramount+)

A woman in a blue gown and golden gloves holds her hands together.

“Yes, she’s in theory the boss of Alan and Frasier. But she’s also a goofball and a nerd,” says series co-creator Chris Harris of Olivia. (Chris Haston/Paramount+)

That riddle-solving aspect of the character is something that was pulled from Olagundoye’s life. An enthusiast of crosswords and other games usually done alone, she even met her husband when she was being socially unsocial and chatting on Twitter (he’s a mechanic with no ties to the film and TV industry and was a fan of her work on the ABC alien comedy “The Neighbors”). Her favorite activity when she was a teen was to sit by her bedroom window while listening to Simon & Garfunkel and reading Sylvia Plath.

“I don’t have FOMO,” Olagundoye explains. “So I was the girl when everybody’s like, ‘We’re going to a party’; I’d be like, ‘I have two more chapters of this book to read.’”

This season, Olagundoye is excited for Olivia’s insecurities and impostor syndrome to reach a peak when she is face to face with her rival: her sister Monica. Only mentioned and not seen so far in the series, her sister is a Yale provost and will appear late in this season. She’s played by “Community” alum Yvette Nicole Brown — a casting choice Olagundoye proposed, as the two actors are friends in real life.

“Their relationship is interesting, because the second that Olivia is around her big sister in person, she actually acquiesces to her,” Olagundoye says. “Yvette and I were talking about how we really still wanted to follow the Black family dynamic and that idea of respecting your elders, even if it’s a sibling. And that is something that Olivia would do. She might have all of this stuff … but, once she gets around her, she’s still the little sister.”

Never mind that Olivia is extremely accomplished herself, the actor says, because “we all know people who have the most spectacular lives and they’re focused on this one thing. You’re like, ‘Let it go. You’ve got everything, you know.’”

Olagundoye could force her character to completely calm down. But what’s the fun in that?

“I go to the quirk really quickly with her, so I have to remind myself to be composed,” Olagundoye says. “I want to burst out of the seams because she’s so out of her mind. But, like, ‘No, no. You run the department at Harvard. You have to chill out a little bit and present an adult front.’”

‘Frasier’ breakout Toks Olagundoye remains unflappable after fighting cancer

More to Read

More From the Los Angeles Times