In a More magazine interview after the series had concluded, Debra also admitted that she almost rejected the role because, "I didn't want to be, for lack of a better word, a fag hag. And I didn't want to be just the pretty, straight girl in the corner while the guys did all the funny stuff."
When she auditioned, she was told that she was the only actress auditioning for Grace, but it turned out she had to beat out Nicollette Sheridan and another actress. Afterwards. Jim Burrows, the legendary television icon and the show's director, informed her the role was hers, but he had to convince Debra to take it.
"I looked in his eyes and I just saw the gravity," she said. "He was telling me, You gotta do it.' I remember the whole ride back to my little apartment I was thinking, 'Jimmy Burrows is telling me I should do this show.'"
Network TV would never be the same again. In the pilot, Will and Grace were watching the TV show "ER" and they talked about how attracted they were to George Clooney.
"There was a huge percentage of people, who after that scene, did not get the fact that Will was gay,” Debra said. “He said, 'I'm batting for the other team.' I thought, 'Wow, this is going to be an interesting journey.'"
“Will & Grace” approached homosexuality more so for comedy than for taking social or political stances.
Classic TV Beauties 1990s Countdown
DEBRA MESSING as Grace Adler in "Will & Grace"
Debra was the lovable and neurotic Grace, best friend to Will (Eric McCormick) on the show that proved American TV viewers would embrace openly gay characters.
A sitcom based more on friendship, comedy, and likeable characters than on homosexuality, “Will & Grace” received criticism from the gay community for its portrayal of homosexuals, yet it still became a groundbreaking series opening the door for future programming featuring gay characters.
Debra almost didn't become Grace, a Jewish interior designer living in New York City. Exhausted from working 16 hour days on the sci-fi series “Prey,” Debra felt relieved when the show was canceled after 13 episodes. She told her agent that she planned to sleep for “four months.”
.No. 19
"I think our show is hilariously funny but the unexpected social and political effects that it's had are the things that make me feel most proud," Debra told journalist Jenny Cooney Carrillo when the show was on the air. "Ellen's [DeGeneres] show was just going off the air because her character had come out of the closet, so we fully expected to be pulled off the air because America had made their choice."
Debra said the show "became more about us trying to get through life as single people with all the things everybody has to contend with rather than whether you're gay or straight.”
Debra played Grace for 184 episodes over eight seasons (1998-2006). She was nominated for six Emmys, winning one, along with one SAG award.
Debra appeared in three episodes of the TV series NYPD Blue (1994-95). This led to a co-starring role as Stacey Colbert in "Ned and Stacey," a Fox series that lasted just 47 episodes. During that time she also appeared in two episodes of "Seinfeld."
In 2005 Debra starred in "The Wedding Date," a romantic comedy about a woman who hires a male escort to pose as her boyfriend at a wedding to fool her ex-fiance, who had dumped her several years earlier.
"I never concocted anything that elaborate but I've also never had a failed engagement," she said. "I do remember being single and going to family weddings and feeling judged... People saying, 'Oh, she's alone.' So I undeerstand the impetus for her doing something that extreme."
After "Will & Grace" Debra started in the TV mini-series “The Starter Wife,” playing a woman who was abandoned by her husband and forced to rebuild her life. She was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe, and she won a Gracie Allen Award for Outstanding Female Lead in a Mini Series.
Since 2012 she has starred in the musical drama “Smash,” playing Broadway music writer Julia Houston.
“"Will & Grace" was nominated for 83 Emmys, winning 16. “W&G” was the highest rated sitcom among adults 18-49 from 2001-05, and was a top 20 program for four seasons.
"I believe that we will be 'Will' and 'Grave' forever, until we die, and it's something I am really proud of," Debra said.
"I've had moments when people are coming toward me with outstretched arms and I'm thinking, Is this my third cousin who I haven't seen in years? And then I realize, No I don't know this person! At first, it scared me."
Born in Brooklyn, the daughter of Russian and Polish descendents, Debra and her family moved to East Greenwich, Rhode Island when she was three. She took dance, singing and acting lessons and starred in numerous musicals, including “Annie” and “Grease,” when she was in high school.
Debra graduated summa cum laude from Brandeis University and then earned a master's degree in Fine Arts from New York University's Tisch's School of the Arts.
Despite the taxing school schedule, Debra said she had fun studying at NYU.
"I took circus class!" she told More magazine in 2013. "At the NYU graduate acting program, they make you take circus all three years and I learned to trapeze. It was all about body awareness and physical strength. For me, I was just thrilled to be hanging upside down by a trapeze."
After acting in the stage play "Angels in America: Perestroika." She made her film debut in 1995's "A Walk in the CLouds," playing an unfaithful wife to co-star Keanu Reeve's character.
Debra's natural hair color is auburn, but when she got her first movie role, the producers "dyed my hair thirteen times and at the end of it, I was this vibrant redhead. All of sudden I was getting jobs that I wasn't getting prior to that... and when I got 'Will & Grace' I told them my hair didn't have to be red but they said they liked it."
Two days later her agent sent Debra the “Will & Grace” script and convinced her to read it. Then the show's co-creators, Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, showed up at her front door in Los Angeles on a rainy night with a bottle of vodka and a lime.
"We popped the vodka and cut up some lime and sat in the living room and talked for three hours," Debra said in the book "Top of the Rock," authored by former NBC executive Warren Littlefield. "So much of it was my fear that the end product wouldn't end up being what everyone wanted it to be.
"I thought, 'This is really exciting but is Middle America going to be okay with this? Will the network ultimately be okay with this?'"
