by Warren Littlefield, Former NBC President of Entertainment
Sean Hayes: They called me back to test for Jimmy Burrows. It was just for Jimmy, and then I tested again at NBC, and the job was between me and Robert Arquette, who is now a woman. I’d never done any TV shows, guest starred on a TV show, nothing.
I used to think, “Wouldn’t it be great to be on a show like Cheers.” You just come in and do your job and you go home. You’re not that famous. The show is. And then there I was, and I couldn’t believe that I was part of this legendary NBC.
Megan Mullally: I first auditioned for the role of Grace. I thought the script was fresh and more modern feeling. I went in and read, and it was just flatline. They couldn’t have been any less impressed with me. So that was that, and I forgot all about it. Then a couple weeks later, I get a call from one of my agents.
She said, “Oh, we have an audition for you for a pilot, Will & Grace.”
I said, “I already went down there.”
She said, “No, it’s for a different role.”
And I said, “What other role?”
She said, “A secretary.”
And I was like, “Oh, all right. Well, send it to me again.”
Mind you, I was stone-cold broke. It’s not like I was rolling in dough and could pick and choose. I was mysteriously being sort of particular. It got to the point where it was the day of the test, say the test was at 1:30, at NBC, in Burbank. At 11:30, my agent called me and said, “Are you going to the test?”
I’m in my pajamas eating a plate of scrambled eggs, and I was like, “I don’t know. I don’t know what I can really do in that role. I’m not really sure if that’s what I want to be doing, but okay, I’m just going to go.” So I went. That’s how close a thing it was.
I guess because I wasn’t feeling like I had to get it, it made it better. When I did get it and the deal was closed, I had $200 to my name. Two hundred dollars. I don’t know what I was thinking.
Sean Hayes: We did a table read. I met Megan, all dressed in black, and I thought, “Who does this girl think she is?”
Megan Mullally: When I first saw Sean, he pulled up in his car, and he had that incredible smile. I was like, “Oh my God, who is that cute little elfin person?” I was very taken with him right away.
Debra Messing: I remember the cast going over to Max’s house to do the very first reading of the script, and we were crying we were laughing so hard. I remember just looking around the table, looking at this Sean Hayes. It was like, “Who is this Sean Hayes guy? He is a genius.”
To this day, I think Sean might be the most talented person I have ever worked with in my entire career. He is really touched with magic. And then Megan. She literally can’t say anything without making me laugh. Then the warmth between Eric and me. It felt like this best friendship had been in place for years. We didn’t have to put any effort into it.
Warren: Even still, airing Will & Grace came with no little risk for the network. There had been no sitcom like it before. Would we embrace our fears or run from them?
David Nevins: I remember being asked, more than once, “What world do you live in to think America wants to watch this gay TV show?”
Eric McCormack: Will & Grace was what Must See TV had to do next.
I had more a fear of success than of failure at the beginning. I had the fear of getting the wrong thing. The fear of getting Full House. To see John Stamos only now overcoming that role. I recognized that if I got the part, Will Truman could be my Sam Malone. You add gay to that, and you might have something that will brand you.
Around that time, there was a gay character on Melrose Place, and the actor didn’t want to talk about it in interviews. I remember thinking, if I do this, I’m going to have to really do it. I needed to take on that side of me and wear it proudly. I didn’t have to go off and play a football player during hiatus just to prove my manhood.
Debra Messing: My first experience on TV, I felt like a dancing monkey, in fact so much so that I named my production company Dancing Monkey. It was Ned and Stacey. We had some really amazing fans, and a lot of the experience was really special. I had never been on a TV show in my life. I had just come from doing plays and being in graduate school, where it’s collaborative. My contribution was not valued. It just felt like, “We’re going to decide what the scene is. We’re going to decide the way it should go, and it’s your job to execute it.”
That is my job as an actor, but after a while if you feel like you’re just a shell and you’re not actually contributing something, it drains you of the creative lifeblood that made you want to act to begin with.
To be able to come on the show and to be allowed to be physically comedic, that was life changing. That was such a huge gift. And there wasn’t a lot of precedent for it at the time. Suddenly Susan was on, Caroline in the City was on. Friends was on, and Seinfeld was ending. At that time, there were a lot of leading ladies who were the stars of sitcoms, and it was the men who did the pratfalls. I said, “I want to be one of the men.”
Megan Mullally: Because Will & Grace is farce, I wanted to bring a different element to the character. My natural speaking voice is very low, and I didn’t feel like that was right for the character. I wanted to bring something to it that would create more energy. I tend to be a sort of voice and hair and wardrobe actress. Once that all comes together, I can really nail the character better.
I knew that if I did that voice in the pilot, they would fire me. So I didn’t want to. I worked it in pretty slowly. I would say by maybe the tenth episode, it’s fully in there. But I really didn’t come out of the gate with that, because I thought, “They’ll replace me. This is too weird. Too bizarre.”
Sean Hayes: I was so sick during the shooting of the pilot because I was riddled with nerves. And I remember the first time I saw the monitor, and I said to myself, “Oh my God, I’m on TV.”
David Kohan: The main thing we learned from Jimmy Burrows initially was that the story is king. It didn’t matter how funny you were if the audience wasn’t invested in the characters. We didn’t necessarily get the idea that the story was paramount.
Max Mutchnick: We also learned to listen and not watch. With Boston Common we were always glued to a monitor. Jim ran a show where there were no monitors on the stage, so you couldn’t see what the cameras were doing.
David Kohan: He’d say you assume the director is going to get the shots.
Max Mutchnick: All you had to do was hear that the music was in key, and you knew cameras would cover it.
Eric McCormack: Jimmy has supreme confidence. It’s what makes him Jimmy. With that confidence, there was also the ability to be surprised. He’d prefer not to direct. He’d rather actors come in and be brilliant. When that doesn’t happen, he’s got his work cut out for him. When Sean Hayes would come in and do some outrageous piece of physical business, nobody was happier than Jimmy.
We worked three hours a day. Jimmy didn’t believe in belaboring it, and that was so my style.
There were no marks on the floor. You didn’t have to hit marks. Jimmy trusted his crew to find us, and they found us. We all felt we were in great hands. That left Max and David to forget everything else, just go and just write a great show.
David Kohan: Working with Jimmy was an education and story camp in a lot of ways.
Sean Hayes: We only worked three hours a day because the writing was there. We were actors and a director, so what were we going to fix? Sometimes Jimmy would send us home. “It’s not ready yet. Go home.”
David Kohan: In the pilot, there was a law partner in the show named Andy Fellner. He was a straight single guy who’d get all his romantic advice from Will. Will would explain what a woman would want in every situation. But the character felt extraneous, and he was making the show a little long.
Then a directive came down from the NAACP or something that there wasn’t enough color on Thursday night.
Max Mutchnick: So Warren said to us, “No matter what, this guy’s going to be black.”
David Kohan:
Cress Williams as Andy Fellner. Suddenly it didn’t work. He wasn’t a nebbish. He was something else.
Max Mutchnick: We had run-throughs every day, and everything worked until you’d get to Will and this black guy. It just didn’t work, and that was the gift of Jimmy Burrows.
David Kohan: He said, “We’ve got to cut it.”
Max Mutchnick: And once that character was gone, the script sang. Jim knew that the show was peaking too early. We released everybody and gave them two days off in the middle of the pilot—unheard of. It was a brilliant move because it made for an incredible filming.
Sean Hayes: All you ever heard was “the great Jimmy Burrows” like “the great Oz.” He knows how to read a script and give great notes on a faulty story line, and he knows how to read and balance actors.
Warren: I remember a moment on Caroline in the City. It was a rehearsal, a run-through, and on the counter there was a vase, and Lea Thompson was supposed to slide the vase away. As she did it, Jimmy said, “Other hand.” Then she did it again. Though I have no idea why, it went from a movement that meant nothing to a burst of comedy. He knew for her, in that moment, that’s how it would work. I couldn’t figure it out. Jimmy just instinctively knew.
Megan Mullally: I’d met Jimmy at a couple of auditions, and I thought he was so intimidating. Of course, if you know him for more than two hours, you realize that he’s the biggest softy in the world. The thing that I love about Jimmy is his incredible talent and facility for comedy, particularly physical comedy.
You always know where you stand with Jimmy. He does not blow smoke. He’s no bullshit. That was the best thing because I knew I could trust him. If I had any questions about the character or the direction it was going in, I could just ask Jimmy, and he would settle it in one short sentence. But in a nice way. He’s a man of few words. He’s very blunt, but he’s kind. I’m sure you know ours is the only series that he directed every single episode of.
Sean Hayes: I don’t think the show would have lasted without Jimmy. Max and David used to just write in jokes and didn’t seem to care about the characters until Jimmy came along. Max used to call it The Jimmy Burrows Show, and I said, “You should call it The Jimmy Burrows Show, and you should thank him for it.”
Eric McCormack: I was intimidated by Jimmy at first. During the pilot, I was doing something, and I was trying to be funny. Jimmy said, “Let me tell you something I told Teddy.” I thought, “Teddy? Oh my God, Ted Danson. Now I’m his Ted!”
Sean Hayes: I remember my first fitting, before we shot the pilot. I said to Lori Eskowitz, who’s doing wardrobe on the show, “We don’t know if this is any good, do we?”
She said, “Are you kidding me? It’s an NBC Studios show with Jimmy Burrows. It’s going to go.”
I said, “How do you know?”
She said, “I just do.”
Debra Messing: We were shooting the pilot, and we were all looking like scrappy New York theater actors in our sweatpants and ripped T-shirts and no makeup, and we were sitting outside the stage at a picnic table. I was smoking at the time. The four of us were there, and I had this old matchbook from a restaurant that was all ripped up and it had two matches left. I lit one, and the wind blew it out. And then all four of us came together to try and help me with my last chance to light this cigarette.
Megan Mullally: Don Ohlmeyer comes walking by, and all we knew is that he was some big chief, but we really didn’t know what he was.
Debra Messing: I’m sucking on the cigarette trying to get it to stay lit. It’s going out, and all of a sudden this hand comes in with this glittering yellow-gold Dunhill lighter.
It was Don Ohlmeyer, and he said, “May I?”
Megan Mullally: He’s a fancy guy. He was like, “Well, hello.”
We were like, “Oh, hey. Hi.” I don’t even think we knew what his name was, and we certainly didn’t know exactly what his job description was. I still don’t. But Eric and Debra were a little more business savvy than Sean and me. Sean and I were just idiots.
Debra Messing: We did not understand who this man was. We knew he was powerful, but we had no idea exactly what he did. He was in his sweatpants, and he was walking by. It was the sweatpants era for Ohlmeyer. And he said, “Well, hello, everybody, how’s it going?” Then we realized who it was, and we were like, “Oh, it’s going great.”
He handed me the gold lighter and said, “Here, you need to have this. You can’t be using those matches any longer.” My mouth dropped, my eyes bugged out of my head, and all of us were silent. I was like, “Ohhh, okay. Thank you.”
Megan Mullally: She went to hand it back to him, and he said, “No, no. Keep it.”
Then he walked away a minute later, and we were like, “Oh my God! Our show is gonna get picked up! We’re in!”
Debra Messing: A couple of months later, I find myself in bed watching David Letterman, and Adam Sandler is on promoting one of his huge comedies. Letterman says, “When did you know that you were on the road and you were going to make it?” And Adam said, “I was on SNL, and Don Ohlmeyer gave me this lighter. It was a gold Dunhill lighter. He just took it out of his pocket and he said, ‘Here, you need this.’ I’m this kid at SNL, and I remember feeling like, ‘Okay, I’m in.’ ”
And I’m thinking, “I’ve got a lighter too!” It was like I had been knighted, but instead of with a sword it was with a gold Dunhill lighter. I still have it, so every time I look at it, I think about the pilot. I’m very sentimental that way.
Sean Hayes: Don gave gold lighters to Eric, Debra, and Megan. I didn’t get one. I still have issues about it.
Eric McCormack: We shot the pilot, and Debra and I were sitting on the couch on the set, and I looked at her and said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” She said, “Yeah. I think we’re going to be here for a while.”
Debra Messing: We were sitting next to each other, and we held each other’s hands. We looked at each other, and it was almost like we were saying, “Okay. We’re jumping off a cliff together, because this is going to fly. This is going to be really exciting. This is uncharted territory.”
Eric McCormack: Then Warren came out, took my hand, and said, “Aren’t you glad I fired you from The Jenny McCarthy Show?”
Warren: The greatest feeling in the world is standing on a stage and watching 250 strangers in the audience laughing, clapping, and cheering for characters they’ve never seen before. You’ve made a connection with them, and that night with this pilot it was as if we brought the Beatles back together for that audience.
Debra Messing: I will never forget the thing that shocked me most about the opening scene in the pilot. Grace and Will were talking about ER, watching ER and watching the gorgeous George Clooney. I think after the pilot was shot—I don’t know if there was testing or something—but there was a huge percentage of people who, after that scene, did not get the fact that Will was gay.
And I thought, “What?” He said, “I’m batting for the other team.” I thought, “Wow. This is going to be an interesting journey.”
Sean Hayes: I kept waiting to get fired. I got an apartment that cost $1,250 a month. I got it after we shot the pilot, and the landlord wasn’t going to let me rent it. I told him the show had been picked up for thirteen. It hadn’t yet. He rented me the apartment.
Megan Mullally: I bought a Range Rover. It was a ridiculous thing to do, but I just knew the show was going to get picked up. I bought it with my pilot money.
Jim Burrows: The pilot was great even without a great Megan character because she didn’t find that voice until about six shows in. The audience will laugh at places you don’t expect. They’ll be quiet, the worst thing possible if you’re doing a comedy. Television is usually one or two people watching the show. The goal is to get the feeling of the studio audience into the living room. We want the viewer to feel like they’re part of the audience. The audience responds, and then the actors respond to the audience. It was never canned laughter on Will & Grace. All real laugh
s.
Warren: Developing this particular idea with writers we’re paying a lot of money to and then going out on a limb and making the pilot raised the stakes considerably on Will & Grace.
A crucial moment for me at NBC was the first week of May 1998, when we ran the pilot of Will & Grace during screening week for a roomful of NBC executives, including Bob Wright. It was the usual mix, development and current executives from the West Coast, the promo department, sales executives from New York and Burbank, and the research department. They were laughing in the right places. I thought it was going well, but I knew I was too close to this one. When the episode finished and the lights came up, Bob Wright turned to me and in a voice that the whole room could hear said, “That’s the best thing we’ve ever had our name on.” Then people started clapping.
Game over. If Don Ohlmeyer had any thoughts of raising further objections and continuing the fight, Bob Wright’s reaction put an end to them.
Preston and I debated many times where we should first schedule the show. I loved it and believed it was the essence of the Must See brand. But Preston helped me to see the long-term picture.
We started Will & Grace on Monday night. We didn’t want to invite controversy, and on Monday we didn’t ask the advertisers for a mountain of cash—as we did on Thursday. We didn’t start on Broadway. We opened in Boston.
Jim Burrows: I begged NBC not to start the show on Thursday night. It had to be in a spot where it could sneak into town. It had gay people in it. They’re bad. They can hurt your television. They put it on Jimmy Burrows night. Monday. There were four comedies, and I’d directed all the pilots. It ran after Caroline in the City.