These statements attribute the view to Woody and do not overturn the conviction. Charles Harrelson was convicted by a jury after a lengthy trial, and all subsequent appeals, including the appeal that Alan Dershowitz assisted with, were rejected. The conviction stood. Woody’s view that it was unjust is his view; the legal finding is the legal finding.
## Cheers and the Character Who Made Him Famous
In 1985, Woody Harrelson was cast as Woody Boyd in the fourth season of Cheers, the NBC sitcom set in a Boston bar. The casting replaced Coach Ernie Pantusso, played by Nicholas Colasanto, who had died earlier that year. The role of Woody Boyd — a good-natured, naive bartender from Hanover, Indiana — was written to fill the gap that Colasanto’s death had created in the ensemble.
The character’s name and origin were a deliberate nod to the actor who played him: Woody Boyd from Hanover, Indiana — the same Hanover where Woodrow Tracy Harrelson from Hanover College, Indiana, had recently graduated. It was a small biographical in-joke, the kind that sitcom writers embed in casting decisions when the actor and the character seem to have a natural fit. Woody Boyd was sweet, uncomplicated, slow to understand but generous with his slowness, and completely without the self-consciousness that was, in 1985, the dominant tone of American television comedy. He was funny because he didn’t know he was funny, and he was likeable because he didn’t have any reasons not to be.
Harrelson’s father, at the time his son was playing this uncomplicated Midwesterner for eight seasons on one of the most successful television shows in American history, was serving consecutive life sentences in federal prison. The contrast — between the character and the biography, between the warmly received naif and the convicted hitman’s son — was not something the show emphasized. It was not a secret, exactly; Woody’s relationship to Charles was documented and occasionally mentioned in entertainment press. But it was also not the primary frame through which the show asked its audience to understand the actor.