Nick Tortelli - Eddie LeBec

Eddie LeBec

Guy Édouard Raymond "Eddie" LeBec is portrayed by Jay Thomas. Eddie was an ice hockey player of French Canadian background, and was married to Cheers waitress Carla Tortelli. Carla and Eddie had met when Eddie began frequenting the bar after moving to Boston to play goaltender for the Boston Bruins hockey team. The two had an affair and, after learning Carla was pregnant, they were married.

The show was internally inconsistent as to Eddie's full real name. In the episode in which he and Carla are married, his full name is stated as being "Édouard Raymond LeBec". However, in a later episode, Carla states explicitly that his name is not "Édouard", adding that his actual name is "Guy" (traditionally, a shortened version of "Guillaume"). Carla explains that "Eddie" is simply a nickname by which he is called "because it sounds too weenie to say 'Guy'".

Jay Thomas was never a cast regular, and thus Eddie was not often seen. Initially, the writers handled this by having Eddie retire from hockey and take a job with a traveling ice show, thus requiring him to be away from Boston most of the time. In 1989, Eddie was written out of the show entirely. The official reason given was negative viewer reaction to Carla's being married, but in 2006, Thomas indicated that he was fired from Cheers for publicly insulting the physical attractiveness of Rhea Perlman, the actress who played Carla. Ken Levine, one of the writers of Cheers, related much the same story in his blog, stating that Thomas was written off the show after insulting Perlman on his radio show while she happened to be listening. While Levine claims that Perlman demanded that Thomas be fired she denies this, saying that she opposed Carla being in a permanent relationship.

The episode titled "Death Takes A Holiday On Ice" deals with Eddie's unfortunate demise: he was run over by a Zamboni while pushing a fellow cast member out of the way. At the funeral Carla learned that Eddie had a second wife, Gloria, who lived in Kenosha, Wisconsin. As a result of the union, Gloria had become pregnant and Eddie, despite being already married to Carla, felt obliged to also marry Gloria. At Eddie's funeral, Carla and Gloria learn of each other for the first time and wind up in a catfight with one another over the issue of which of the two is the "real" Mrs. LeBec. In anger, Carla resumed her first married name, Tortelli. During their relationship Carla and Eddie had a set of twin sons: Elvis and Jesse. According to Gloria she and Eddie also had twins.