Will and Grace

• TV Show

• NBC

Streaming Options

Over the course of 246 episodes and 11 seasons, Will & Grace delivered plenty of laughs through the years — be it via Will’s sarcasm, Grace’s neurotic tendencies, Karen’s pill-popping and biting wit, or Jack’s crazy antics. Airing in four different decades — the original series aired on NBC from 1997-2006 and was revived by the network for a three-season run from 2017-2020 — the show quickly found a place in pop culture history thanks to its inclusion and portrayal of its gay lead characters.

That’s why a season 2 episode, “Acting Out,” stands out not just for a specific scene but also how it showcased the sitcom’s spicy syntax while co-opting another stellar cultural first.

It was a momentous occasion in 2000 as Will (Eric McCormack) and Jack (Sean Hayes) — with Grace (Debra Messing) wedged between them on the couch — were about to watch the first-ever primetime network kiss between two gay men on a fictional NBC sitcom called Along Came You. It was a moment, for them, akin to another significant event.

“That’s one of those lines that worked on a meta level because it’s self-referential — the show is making the kiss that it’s talking about,” explains series co-creator David Kohan, adding of the 1969 moon landing, “and ‘one giant leap for mankind’ was [a first-time event].”

Adds McCormack, who delivered the punchline, "What I love about 'man-on-mankind' is it’s like a missing link between the kind of gay joke TV couldn’t make pre-Will & Grace and the commonplace single entendres of today. In ’99, that punchline was as surprising as the kiss itself."

Even though Will and Jack didn’t get to see that kiss — cameras on the fictional sitcom panned away — Will & Grace viewers still got to witness one when Will rectified the censorship, later in the episode, by spontaneously planting one on Jack outside Today when Al Roker greeted them as part of the outdoor audience. “We were having issues with [NBC allowing us to show a kiss] and this was how we got away with it,” says co-creator Max Mutchnick.

"Going to the Today show and shooting that sequence, I remember we only had, like, one take with Al Roker and he was cool," Mutchnick recalls. "But I just think it's amazing that we flew to New York and shot this very expensive, big episode in order to get a kiss on that show."

"It was blistering cold but Eric’s lips warmed me up. Then he bought us a house and we moved in together," Hayes jokes. "Also, Al Roker was very sweet."

McCormack shares a similar sentiment: "Taking Will and Grace and Jack and Karen out of Stage 17 in Studio City and onto the wintery streets of Manhattan was so freakin’ exciting. They went from sitcom characters to flesh and blood New Yorkers. Plus, Sean Hayes is a good kisser, so… win/win."

Twenty years later, almost to the day, the sitcom's reboot featured another memorable punchline, this one from Jack, who continually made audiences laugh with his immature quips and shenanigans alongside Karen (Megan Mullally). But few could’ve expected something so philosophical as he opened up to Will about his faith — while also shading a popular, long-running CBS procedural — in the show’s final season.

“I’ve never even met anyone that watches NCIS,” says writer Suzanne Martin (who Hayes calls "the best sitcom writer of all time"), admitting she never has either. “I was thinking about something that you believe exists, even though you’ve never seen it.”

"How many times have I looked at the TV Top 10 and seen some show in its, like, twelfth season and thought, 'Who the hell is still watching that?' " McCormack says, sharing Martin's sentiment. As for insulting the CBS drama, he says there was no reluctance in going there. "There was almost nothing that Will & Grace hesitated about dissing. NCIS? Easy pickin's! Besides, we compared them to God! I’m sure they didn’t complain."

Hayes, who so matter-of-factly delivered the line, also wasn't worried. "I don’t think it’s possible to diss one of the most successful shows in television history," he shares. "My guess is they’re doing just fine with or without us mentioning them."

Funny but also poignant, executed in one brief, impactful exchange between two friends.

"I loved these scenes: Will describing how religion had let him down as a kid, but Jack surprisingly clinging to the parts that were still comforting. New area for us," McCormack explains. "The joke is a brilliant turn on the 'If a tree falls in the forest…' idea."

And the nugget of wisdom — which reads like a clever, elevated version of a knock-knock joke — “was surprising” coming from Jack, Martin says. “I love dumb characters that can suddenly be smart."

Concludes Kohan, “It was like hitting a baseball on the sweet spot of the bat.”

Home run, indeed.

Related Content:

Episode Recaps

Will and Grace

Streaming Options

Author:Gerrad Hall - Source: EW

Imagine your favorite celebrity started talking to you through your smart-speaker. Or through that fancy multi-use pressure cooker you got last year for Christmas. Or some other piece of high-tech gadgetry. And not just delivering pre-recorded prompts telling you a package has been delivered. It's Tom Hanks or Viola Davis or Jennifer Lopez actually conversing with you.

That's what happens in the new HBO Max comedy Superintelligence (out on Thanksgiving Day), when James Corden starts communicating with Carol Peters, played by Melissa McCarthy. It's not by accident, though: Carol has previously professed her love of The Late Late Show host on social media and is the self-proclaimed president of his fan club. So when she — a very average person — is singled out to be a gauge of the collective state of humanity by a potentially destructive superintelligence (an all-knowing, all-powerful form of A.I.), it speaks to her with his voice.

"Genuinely, it was the first time I've ever felt remotely well-known in my life," Corden recalls of first reading the script in EW's Around the Table video series. "I was like, this is ridiculous. This is absurd that script exists and it's me being me in a film with Melissa and Bobby [Cannavale] and Brian [Tyree Henry] and Sam [Richardson]. I was like, this is too much for my brain to take."

But McCarthy and Falcone reached out to Corden for a very specific reason. "If somebody's going to deliver terrifying news but you're like, 'That seems kinda pleasant...' it should be James Corden," McCarthy says of offering the role to the Emmy- and Tony-winner, a role which was originally written with her in mind. But once she read the script, McCarthy's interest was piqued by the lead, which was originally written as a male character. "I liked it so much and I just loved the thought of someone that is average — which, on the surface, people think that means plain and uninteresting," the Oscar nominee says, "but...I like to think — and I do believe — that the average person is good and the average person leads with kindness."

Thus begins Carol's quest to prove humans are more caring, more giving, more empathetic beings than it might seem. And she has just three days to do so, otherwise this superintelligence could end all of humanity, or at the least, enslave it.

"I do everything, first, not comedically, just as a story," explains director (and McCarthy's longtime husband and frequent collaborator) Ben Falcone of the movies he's directed (Tammy, The Boss, Life of the Party). "I thought the story was just so interesting. And then when I read it, it was also really funny, and you have such freedom because if a superintelligence can technically impersonate someone's favorite celebrity, then they could do anything else too. So we had some fun with that." Like confusing her as she tries to leave a building by changing all of the signs to Exit, or buying and auto-piloting a new Tesla (which can also dance!), or dumping billions of dollars into a bank account.

But it also required a deeper understanding of how artificial intelligence works, research McCarthy calls "terrifying and interesting." Enter SpaceX founder and industrial designer/engineer Elon Musk, who had lunch with Falcone and McCarthy to help enlighten them. "We said, 'Does this seem plausible?' and he said, 'It will happen. It's a matter of when, not if,' " McCarthy recalls. Adds Falcone: "We basically told him the brief outline of what the script was and said 'Are we on the right path?' and he said, 'Well, the only thing I'd say is, why do you think there will only be one?' "

Rather than a "network of computers" to contend with, as Musk told them will someday exist, Carol has just the one. But still, with the clock ticking to prove people are good, she makes it a priority to smooth things over with her ex, George, played by McCarthy's Spy costar Bobby Cannavale.

"I really got to know Melissa when we were shooting Spy. We had one really intense day on Spy when we had to shoot this fight scene in a helicopter — in a flying helicopter. It was very painful, physically, but we laughed so hard," Cannavale says of his great working relationship with the actress. "From that day forward we just get on really well. I just show up and know we're going to have a good time."

Even when he has to kiss her, the leading lady, in front of the director, her husband. "I just did it. It wasn't even in the script," Cannavale jokes. "I looked at him first. [Points his fingers at Falcone's eyes] I really look at him and then I take it and I go deep."

The conversation with McCarthy, Cannavale, Corden, and Falcone continues Around the Table in the video above, where they talk about the fan clubs they belonged to, what they'd do if they knew we only had three days until the end of the world, incorporating Carpool Karaoke into the movie, and the "fight" Cannavale got in with a certain former Seattle Mariners and Cincinnati Reds player.

Superintelligence debuts Thursday on HBO Max.

Related content:

• Meet Saved by the Bell's Haskiri Velazquez, Bayside High's new Zack Morris
• Superintelligence stars on celebrity fan clubs, A.I. and Elon Musk, the end of the world, and more
• The Stand director Josh Boone clarifies that Marilyn Manson rumor
• Watch Happiest Season stars use Mad Libs to hilariously describe the holiday rom-com

Author:Gerrad Hall - Source: EW