by Warren Littlefield, Former NBC President of Entertainment
Max Mutchnick: We were set up in an overall deal at NBC and had offices in a bungalow where Charlton Heston was attacked by David Kohan.
David Kohan: I had one question for him: “Do you think fewer guns would mean fewer murders in the U.S.?” And he totally ducked me.
Max Mutchnick: I don’t feel like we were in that deal for very long before we had a pitch with Warren. We pitched a show that took place in San Francisco, and Will and Grace were the neighbors. Jack and Will were the same guy in the first draft, and we split them off. We wanted to get all of that color in there.
Warren: Hearing that first pitch from Max and David was a flashback moment for me. I’d had a similar experience with Susan Harris about The Golden Girls more than a decade earlier. On a Saturday night in August, I put on a tux and watched Selma Diamond and Doris Roberts onstage together in 1984 at a network promotional taping, and they’d been hilarious. They confused Miami Vice with a fictitious new sitcom, Miami Nice. Their chemistry had inspired me and the others in attendance to think of the possibility of a comedy starring actresses over fifty. The pool of available talent was extraordinary.
Through Paul Witt and Tony Thomas, I reached out to their partner Susan Harris—the creator and writer of my favorite comedy, Soap—and told her what I was thinking. I’ll never forget what she said: “I love the idea, but will you put it on the air?” I assured her, “If you write it, it’ll be wonderful, and we’ll have to.”
I found myself saying much the same thing to Max and David. They were deeply skeptical that we would find a spot on our schedule for a show about the gays. JoAnn Alfano was the talented creative executive working with them at the studio; I knew they’d get the support they needed. I told the boys, in essence, if you write a good script, we’ll have to make room for it.
David Kohan: It was right as Ellen came out, and that show got a really big hit. I remember pitching romances for Ellen to the show runners, and they kept saying, “No, I don’t think we’re going that way.” We wondered, why not? Then Ellen came out. Needless to say, we didn’t get the job.
Max Mutchnick: We turned in the Will & Grace draft, and it was largely left alone. But it didn’t start with Will and Grace doing their thing. Warren made us write the cold open—them on the phone talking about how they were both attracted to George Clooney. And people still didn’t know the guy was gay.
Warren: When NBC put together the selling package, Will wasn’t identified as gay.
The promotion department certainly liked the pilot, but they feared alienating advertisers and audiences. Despite Ellen’s trailblazing, we were still in territory that was quite new to network television.
David Kohan: “They’re not a couple; they’re a couple of friends.” That was the promo line.
Max Mutchnick: That’s how we were supposed to know Will was a homo. Ohlmeyer called it Grace & Gay. So warm.
Warren: Don had been fighting me on the idea from the beginning. He didn’t think the country was ready for this relationship on broadcast TV in 1998, because he wasn’t ready for it. Instead of having yet another confrontation with Don, I decided to string him along. “It’s just an idea. Nothing usually comes of them.” That was followed by “It’s just a pilot script. Most of them don’t go anywhere.” But then it became “Hey, you know that Mutchnick and Kohan script? Jimmy Burrows wants to direct it.” Don loved and respected Jimmy Burrows. There wasn’t much he could say after that.
Max Mutchnick: Warren was crossing the street, and as we passed each other, he said, “Jimmy Burrows read the script and wants to meet with you guys.”
Warren: Writers who don’t know Jimmy can be intimidated by his credentials. My approach with Max and David was exactly the same as it had been with Reinhold Weege, the creator of Night Court in 1983. “Just sit down and meet Jimmy, and I’ll pay for the meal.”
Max Mutchnick: I said, “I don’t know that we want to do that. I’d rather we star in the show than Jimmy Burrows.”
Warren called a couple of hours later and said, “You’re meeting Jimmy tomorrow afternoon at Nate ’n Al’s in Beverly Hills.”
David Kohan: I remember us deciding to say, “Thanks, but no thanks, Jimmy. We have a good idea of what we want here, and we don’t necessarily need the corrosive influence of a remarkably successful director.”
We found Doris Day parking, right in front of Nate ’n Al’s. We sat down with Jimmy. He said, “I think I want to do it.” And we said, “Okay.”
Jim Burrows: I had a great meeting with Max and David. They were Will and Grace. They thought they were auditioning me. Writers always do. I tell writers what I think the script needs, and if they’re defensive about it—“No, it’s funny”—then I don’t want to work with them. If they can defend their material and tell me what’s going through their heads, then I can work with them.
Max Mutchnick: He had a change on the script too, what we came to call the Jimmy Burrows double/double. Jimmy likes for things to fall apart in the second act, and then everything fixes itself.
Jim Burrows: The boys wrote a really good script. In the second act, it lacked fire. They wrote a scene where Will goes down to the courthouse to talk Grace out of marrying Danny. I told them I’d seen that scene before. I suggested a scene where Will admits that he doesn’t like Danny. Grace gets furious and then comes in the next day and says, “You broke up my marriage.” She screams at him. He goes to his office, and she comes in to apologize. So at least you’d have some heat there.
I also said they needed a kiss at the end of the show. I thought it was really important to make America think Will was going to take the magic pills and become straight.
I’d never done a political show, and I never intended this show to be political, but it changed—in a small way—the perception of gays. I would drive carpool every Thursday, and the thirteen-year-olds would want to know what was happening with Will & Grace. They were comfortable with it.
Max Mutchnick: I remember Warren asking us what we thought about casting. It was a conversation. Don came to the audition for Eric McCormack. He said Eric reminded him of Paul Reiser, and then he got up and left.
Eric McCormack: In 1993, I was doing a pilot outside of Dallas, and Constance Marie was in it. I remember dragging her to my hotel room to watch Seinfeld and Mad About You. By the time I got to L.A. in 1996, I was dreaming of a Thursday night sitcom that Jim Burrows directed.
I got The Jenny McCarthy Show. I had a very funny character. We had thirteen shows guaranteed. I was playing a Charlie Sheen type, a spoiled TV star. We shot the pilot, and then I got the call from Warren that the character was being cut entirely. It was seven months later that I went in to read for Max and David for Will & Grace.
The part was basically mine, and I was told I had to meet with Jim Burrows. It was happening!
Jim Burrows: When I got on Will & Grace, they had Eric McCormack and Marin Hinkle. I told them I thought they had a Will but not a Grace. I’d known about Debra Messing from Ned and Stacey and Prey.
Warren: I was a big fan of Debra’s from Ned and Stacey. She’s beautiful and funny. I wondered how she’d gotten away from us at NBC. She should be over here. Now we had a show for her.
Debra Messing: I was working on the spectacular, futuristic drama Prey on ABC at the time, where I played a bio-anthropologist, and we were supposed to be counterprogramming for Friends. It was my first drama, and I was the protagonist, and so I was working sixteen to eighteen hours a day.
I was completely, completely exhausted. I would come home and fall asleep on the couch, and five hours later my husband would wake me up and say, “You have to go back to work.”
The show got canceled. It ended on a Saturday, and I e-mailed my agent and said, “Don’t wake me for four months. I’m going to sleep, and I’ll see you in a while.” Then Bob Gersh, my agent, called on Monday and said, “We have a special script. You have to read it.” And I was like, “No, no, no. I’m exhausted. I cannot move. I’m in bed.” And he said,
“We’ll send it over. Don’t leave bed. Just read it in bed.”
I read it, and I thought, “Uh-oh.” It was a very ambivalent feeling, because it was like, “You know what, he’s right. There is something really special on the page. The characters are already specific. It has such a unique comic voice that jumps off the page. This doesn’t happen in a pilot script.” And I thought, “Yeah, that is kind of special, but I’m too tired. So I’m just gonna go to bed.” And Bob told me, “Okay, look. Sleep for a couple of days, and then why don’t you just go in and talk with the writers?”
Max Mutchnick: Debra Messing was sick of earning $35,000 a week since she was eighteen. She was exhausted.
David Kohan: The first meeting was at her apartment. We walked in with a big bottle of vodka and said, “Let’s sit down and talk.” We all got along well. It was like we’d gone to camp together.
Max Mutchnick: A big moment in our career was the drive to Debra Messing’s house when we were casting Will & Grace. We were on the phone with Warren for thirty-five minutes, and he told us how to get the actress. It was incredible.
Warren: My advice was essentially this: You’re romancing her. Take baby steps. Try to get her to say, “Yes, I will go on this date with you.”
Debra Messing: It was pouring outside, one of the rare times it rains in Los Angeles. It was 6:30 at night, and it was really dark. I opened the door, and they were drowned rats holding a liter of vodka and a lime. I said, “Hi.” And I thought, “Oh, boy.”
We popped the vodka and cut up some lime and sat in the living room, and we talked for three hours. So much of it was my fear that the end product wouldn’t end up being what everyone wanted it to be. I was fearful of having this gay character as the center of the show and this woman, and then this gay supporting character. I thought, “Now, it’s about time. This is really exciting, but is Middle America going to be okay with this? Will the network ultimately be okay with this? Will GE be okay with it?”
Warren: All fair questions. I got a call from Debra following her “meeting” with Max and David.
Debra Messing: I was blasted.
Warren: And she said, “I may be a little drunk, but I feel really good about this.” My heart started to race.
Debra Messing: After that night with the vodka, I was in with them. But then I was scared about signing on to a contract for six-plus years and not being happy. So then came the weekend and the audition at Jimmy’s mansion. Seeing the art on the wall and seeing the framed pictures from Cheers on the piano and the twenty-five Emmy Awards all over his office.
Max Mutchnick: I don’t know why the audition was set up on Saturday at Jimmy’s house.
Debra Messing: Bob Gersh kept calling, and he was like, “Okay, you know what, why don’t you just go over to Jimmy Burrows’s house, on the weekend, and meet Eric? You know, Eric has been cast. And you can just do some reading. No pressure. No one else will be there. It’s not an audition per se, but if you read it and you love it and you want to do it, then you’ll do it.”
David Kohan: There were two other women auditioning just in case Debra Messing said no. Nicollette Sheridan auditioned in ridiculously tight leather pants.
Max Mutchnick: The other one was Rebecca Kleenex commercial. She was in the hottest commercial at the time.
David Kohan: The actresses were each told by the casting director that they were the only one auditioning, so we staggered the times and informed the town car company that none of the actresses could see each other as they were coming and going.
Debra Messing: I thought, “Oh my God. I get to go to Jimmy Burrows’s house in Bel Air!” That had a lot to do with it. I thought, “What does a home in Bel Air owned by Jimmy Burrows—this icon of television history—what does that look like?”
So a car showed up at my apartment, and I was like, “A car!” It was the first time that a car had been sent for me, and I thought, “Oh my gosh. This is very different from Fox.” Because I had been on Ned and Stacey, and that was my first experience.
Jim Burrows: We set up this incredible ruse at my house on Bellagio. We invited the studio and the network and the three girls, but the girls all came in separate limos because they each thought they were the only one reading.
Eric McCormack: Three actresses, and it had to happen on the weekend at Jim Burrows’s house. I was shooting a movie with William Shatner, and my mother had had a heart attack the day before. I’d shot until 4:00 in the morning, and then I had to come to Jimmy Burrows’s house to be Will. I was a mess.
Jim Burrows: The first girl read. Rebecca Boyd. She wasn’t any good. Nicollette Sheridan read, and she was okay.
Eric McCormack: Nicollette Sheridan said, “Any notes? Anything?” Jimmy told her, “Wear tighter pants.”
Debra Messing: I only found out after the fact that two other actresses came over on Saturday to audition. Bob called me beforehand, and he said, “I have been assured there is no one else coming to audition. It is only you. This is not a screen test. This is not a test day. It’s only you.” Then I find out that Nicollette Sheridan had been there, and I was like, “What! They lied to me!”
Everywhere I looked, it was television history, and Jimmy was at the center of it. I was so nervous. I remember walking in and seeing Eric. He had scruff, and he had just flown in from Canada. And immediately there was just this click. You don’t know why it happens, but it was just instant. We were like, “All right, let’s play.”
David Kohan: Debra and Eric were amazing together. It was as if they had been great friends for a really long time, and it was right there on Jimmy’s couch. It was thrilling, but then … was she going to do it?
Warren: It was so wonderful to see the two of them together. Chemistry like Paul and Helen, Ted and Shelley. I loved it. I knew we had to get Debra to commit. I also knew it wouldn’t be easy.
Jim Burrows: When Messing read with Eric, it was magic. Messing had been flaky, wouldn’t commit to a lot of projects. I walked her out, and I said to her, “I don’t know you, but you were genius down there. This is a great show. Don’t fuck this up.”
Debra Messing: I looked in his eyes, and I just saw the gravity. He was telling me, “You know. You gotta do it.” And I said, “Okay. I’ll go home, and I’ll think about it.” And I got into that car, and I remember the whole ride back to my little apartment I was thinking, “Jimmy Burrows is telling me I should do this show. Jimmy Burrows.”
Harold Brook: The reason you make deals before the actor reads is because if somebody loves him in the room, you don’t want that actor coming out and saying, “They love me. Now let’s go hold up the network.”
We had that problem with Debra Messing. She read with Jim Burrows on a weekend. We didn’t have a deal closed, and he expressed his love for her. She “agonized” until she got one point on the back end.
Warren: It wouldn’t have worked any other way. Debra was in demand. I knew she’d have lots of choices. When Harold made his final offer, I called Bob Gersh and said, “You’ve stretched the rubber band as far as it will stretch. There is no more money. We love her, we want her, and if she does this, it will be a hit.” Bob closed the deal.
David Nevins: The idea for Jack came along in order to make Will a little more butch. Sort of a Frasier/Niles thing. Sean Hayes had done Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss. That was the only year I went to Sundance, and Lori Openden and I saw the movie. He had this incredible winning sweetness to him, and I had no idea he had the comedy chops he had.
Sean Hayes: I was sitting in the screening of Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss, and the projector broke. The lights came back up, and somebody tapped me on the shoulder. It turned out to be a guy who worked for Lori Openden. He introduced himself and said they were casting a new show called Will & Grace and they were looking for their Will. I said, “Watch the movie. Maybe you’ve found him.”
The script came to my hotel room the next day. I read it. It was very well written, but a lot of scripts are. I didn’t have money
to fly home to audition, and I wanted to bask in my first big role at Sundance.
By the time I got home, I was told Will was already cast, and I was asked to come in and read for the other guy. I couldn’t pay my rent, so I said sure. It upped my confidence that I was coming from something—Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss. I went to see Max and David, and as I was leaving the room, I told them, “Stop staring at my ass,” and went out and slammed the door.
Max Mutchnick: Sean Hayes came in to read for the part of Jack, and it was like there was a star standing in our office. We had him read twice because it was such fun to watch him, but we thought it would be a difficult deal to make.
We knew we had him when his manager called and said, “I don’t know if I’m going to do this network deal, but let me ask you a question. Is he going up against fifty or sixty other guys?”
Then I knew we had him. He was represented by Murray’s Talent Loft in Tarzana. No experience there at all.
Eric McCormack: When the role of Will was mine to have, I got scared. I backed off. I think it went through Christmas and New Year’s. I phoned Max and David and said, “I think I have to back away from this.” Max said, “You’re making the biggest fucking mistake of your life!”
Right after New Year’s, like a scene from a movie, I sat up in bed. I said to my wife, “I made a terrible mistake, didn’t I?” She said, “Yeah, I think you did.” I got on the phone with my agent and said, “See if they’ve cast this. Let’s get it back.”
I found out after the fact that all four of us—the actors—had crises committing one way or the other.