}
Notes • Christa Miller only appeared in the first and second episodes in Season 8. • Kathy Kinney is credited as a guest star in the
pilot episode, but she is credited as Starring from the second episode on. • Craig Ferguson was credited as Starring in all episodes of Season 8, but only appeared in 4 episodes. • John Carroll Lynch appeared in 8 episodes in Season 8, and was only credited as Starring for the episodes he appeared in. •
Drew Carey (
Drew Carey) – Drew Carey is the main protagonist of the series. A perpetual "
nice guy", for most of the series, he works in the human resources department of Winfred-Louder, a
multinational department store chain. Drew is the founder and co-owner of Buzz Beer, a coffee-flavored
caffeinated beer (at the time, such drinks were legal but uncommon in the United States). He has a long-standing feud with co-worker Mimi Bobeck; both play endless, occasionally complicated, seriously mean-spirited pranks on each other until she becomes his sister-in-law, after which they still dislike each other. •
Mimi Bobeck (
Kathy Kinney) – Mimi Bobeck is Mr. Wick's assistant/
secretary and the main antagonist of the series. Much like
Fonzie from
Happy Days and
Steve Urkel from
Family Matters, the Mimi character was originally a one-time character, only appearing in the
pilot episode. She is an overweight woman who wears a lot of
makeup, yet has a very high but unstable self-esteem. (As an
in-joke, Mimi's mother was played by known makeup addict
Tammy Faye Bakker.) Mimi is Drew's nemesis; she vowed to make Drew's life a living hell after Drew denied her a job based on her makeup. Mimi's pranks included gluing Drew's hand to a pornographic magazine, covering Drew's desk with garbage, and eventually sending Drew to
China while he is unconscious. She is also known for calling him "Pig" and "Doughboy." Mimi's past has a lot of connections to the world of music; she often talks about being a
roadie for
Foghat and was married to
Eddie Money for two weeks after appearing at his first concert. Additionally, she claims to have
slept with both
Joe Walsh and
Peter Frampton. Later on, Mimi becomes more of a friend to Drew (they agree to put their feud on hold while Mimi dates and later marries his brother, Steve) and a loving, if unconventional, mother to Gus. Early in the series, it was revealed that Mimi was Catholic and of
Polish ancestry, and inherited the title of Duchess of
Kraków after her aunt died. (Starting in 2009, Mimi/Kinney resurfaced as a guest on
The Price Is Right, hosted by Drew Carey since October 15, 2007, during the show's April Fool's episode, first in 2009 as a model and then ransacking
Mike Richards' position as executive producer on the show, in 2010. Carey usually promotes Kinney's next project during the closing of that episode.) •
Lewis Kiniski (
Ryan Stiles) – Forming a double-act with Oswald, Lewis is tall, gangly, and perpetually bemused. Ryan Stiles once described Lewis as "Not even a character at first, just a creep really." He possesses an
IQ of 162, but works as a
janitor for a company called DrugCo, which conducts bizarre experiments. Due to accidentally releasing a strain of bacteria into the population, he was busted down to janitor from a position that required him to wear a lab coat. At one point, he posed as Drew to take his physical exam for him, unexpectedly taking a psychiatric exam as well. He tried to give answers which he thought suited Drew's life and situation, and the results showed him to be mentally unstable and possibly criminally insane. He mentioned in one episode he was adopted. •
Oswald Lee Harvey (
Diedrich Bader) – Lewis's slightly shorter, dark-haired friend is the dumb one of the double-act, which tends to be his most distinguishing characteristic. Lewis described him once as a "man-child stuck in a sort of prolonged adolescence." Oswald was a deejay at the beginning of the first season but later on became a delivery driver for Global Parcel (a fictional package-delivery service whose
uniforms are modeled after those of
UPS). He later attempted to become a nurse, but he failed the required tests. Drew later got him a job as a delivery man for Never Ending Store, but Oswald was injured on store property. After receiving damages, he bought the Warsaw. In the episode
Bus-ted, it is revealed that Oswald joined the group of friends to replace Adam, a childhood friend who fell through the ice on a lake. Aside from Carey, Bader is the only cast member to appear in every episode of the series. The name of Bader's character is a reference to
Lee Harvey Oswald, the gunman who assassinated President
John F. Kennedy. • '''Kate O'Brien''' (
Christa Miller) – Friends with Drew, Lewis, and Oswald since they were kids. Kate is a bit of a tomboy and a hothead and good with her fists. She and Oswald almost got married at one point, but she called it off just after Oswald threw her a surprise wedding (essentially leaving Oswald at the altar). She later found out about Drew's long-standing crush on her at their high school reunion, and she realized that she had feelings for him too. They dated for a season (even becoming engaged) but broke up when they disagreed about having kids. Drew and Kate were married for a short time in a later season, although this was illegal, as Drew had just become married to his old girlfriend, Nicki. Eventually, Drew's sham was discovered and Kate felt betrayed. Drew eventually regained Kate's trust and they became friends again. Kate left at the beginning of the eighth season, marrying a Naval aviator and moving from Cleveland to
Guam. •
Nigel Algernon Wick (
Craig Ferguson) – Drew's boss after the first season, replacing Mr. Bell (
Kevin Pollak). English, crude, boisterous and offensive, he was also a
cocaine addict before he was forced to go into rehab. For some time, he and Drew were in a
same-sex marriage (technically a civil union) in order for Mr. Wick to get his
green card and Drew to get his job back. When he first appeared on stage in guest episodes in the last two seasons he was greeted with thunderous applause. Wick always had unusual methods of firing employees (usually men surnamed Johnson), which he does in most episodes. He is almost always referred to as "Mr. Wick", and his first name, Nigel, is rarely used. In the show's first
April Fool's Day episode, Wick was shot in the crotch with a
crossbow by an employee (named Johnson) whom he had just fired. Wick had to have one of his
testicles removed. Wick also lost a toe and a
nipple in a
fox hunt that went terribly wrong. Craig Ferguson initially auditioned at Warner Bros. for a role as a
Hispanic photographer on
Suddenly Susan, and after he failed his audition (with the role instead going to
Cuban-American actor
Nestor Carbonell), the casting director referred him to
The Drew Carey Show which was auditioning across the studio. Ferguson, who is
Scottish, played the role with an over-the-top posh English accent "to make up for generations of English actors doing crap Scottish accents." At the end of one episode, Ferguson
broke the fourth wall and began talking to the audience at home in his regular Scottish accent. •
Steve Carey (
John Carroll Lynch) – Drew's straight but
cross-dressing older brother (in reality John Carroll Lynch is 5 years younger than Drew Carey). He came to Cleveland and got a job in the cosmetics department at Winfred-Louder. He fell in love with Mimi and after one season of dating they married in a ceremony in Drew's backyard, with Drew officiating along with an online minister from an Internet website. In later seasons the concept of Steve being a cross-dresser is abandoned entirely with little explanation (though it is hinted that he gave it up to make Mimi happy). He left, along with Kate and Wick, early in the eighth season. •
Kellie Newmark (
Cynthia Watros) – Drew's childhood friend. She has had a crush on Drew since high school but never told him. She was married but her husband cheated on her with her sister. Her mother is an alcoholic and leaves her father, eventually hooking up with Lewis. After Kate leaves, Drew realizes that he loves Kellie. Drew is afraid to tell Kellie because it may ruin their friendship like it did with Kate. After Lily leaves Drew, they confess their feelings for each other. When Kellie comes out while Drew is talking to his dad and asks Drew what they are going to do about their feelings for each other, Drew's dad falls off the roof and dies. Eventually during the beginning stage of their relationship Kellie finds out she is pregnant with Drew Jr. but won't marry Drew because she doesn't think he is ready for marriage. During the finale she decides Drew is ready. But her water breaks and she and Drew get married right when the baby is born. ==Drew's marriages==