Debra Messing, who played Grace Adler
for 8 seasons on the NBC comedy Will & Grace, says
the show's producers initially kept Will's sexuality
ambiguous.
Will & Grace is considered
television's most successful series with leading gay characters. The
sitcom received 83 Emmy Award nominations and earned 16 during its
entire run.
But in an interview with HuffPost
Live,
Messing, 45, explained that NBC “wanted this show to have legs and
they knew they would have to capture the audience's heart through
laughter first.”
“I remember the opening scene of the
pilot, when Will and I are on the phone talking about George Clooney
and how we both find him handsome,” Messing told host Ricky
Camilleri on Wednesday. “The way it was written was so subtle.”
“They did testing afterwards, and
half the audience didn't realize after the pilot that Will was gay,”
she said.
This was “considered a good thing for
the show,” Messing said.
On the show's response: “We got just
as many letters of hate as we did of love. But the beautiful thing
is that the scales tipped very quickly.”
In 2003, Messing won the Emmy Award for
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role on Will &
Grace.