E-mail a friendEric McCormack
airdate May 23, 2008
Emmy-winning actor Eric McCormack is best known for his groundbreaking character—and big-break role—on the sitcom, Will and Grace. The Canadian-born actor began his career on the Shakespearean stage and has appeared on Broadway and in dozens of series and made-for-TV movies. He also has a production company that develops ideas for TV. McCormack holds dual Canadian and U.S. citizenship and is very involved with breast cancer awareness advocacy. He can next be seen in The Andromeda Strain on A&E.
Star of "Will and Grace" explains the views people have on a straight actor playing a gay character. (1:34)
Eric McCormack
Tavis: Eric McCormack is an Emmy-winning actor who, of course, starred in the popular and long-running NBC series, "Will & Grace." His latest project is the TV version of Michael Crichton's classic, "The Andromeda Strain." The two-part movie airs this coming Monday and Tuesday on A&E. Here now a scene from "The Andromeda Strain."
[Clip]
Tavis: To say, Eric, that that was an unorthodox prayer would be the understatement of the year (laughter). It was not only unorthodox, but God must hear all kinds of prayers.
Eric McCormack: That's the only way I pray, unorthodox (laughter).
Tavis: Do you want to explain that scene?
McCormack: Uh, I play a reporter named Jack Nash who's, I would say, somewhere between Anderson Cooper and Geraldo Rivera.
Tavis: Wow (laughter).
McCormack: Who also has a drug problem. He breaks out of rehab to try to break this story. He's the only reporter that has any chance of getting word of the disease out to the world and the Army tries to kill him because he knows too much. He ends up in the middle of the desert by himself and basically finally has to admit that he, A, has to talk to God and, B, has a problem. At that moment, God sends, I guess, help in the form of a beautiful eighteen-year-old who's trying to escape.
Tavis: Michael Crichton fans know that this was a feature film that now is a two-part series for A&E. The challenge for taking a feature film and then making it a two-part TV mini-series is what?
McCormack: Well, I think the original novel and the movie that it was based on were very much a product of their time. They were very much science fiction. Anyone who remembers the film, it's not real fast-paced. It is, like I say, a period piece. This is a lot more current and I think is a lot more science fact.
I mean, when you think about guys with TB getting on international flights and causing an international incident, when you think of how China didn't talk about the SARS epidemic until long after, it's now very, very possible to imagine - and, of course, about the terrorism - to imagine a disease that is ninety-five percent contagious. It's not such a crazy notion anymore, you know, so I think adapting it was to try to make it very 2008.
Tavis: And yet, as that scene indicates, while the movie tackles some very serious subject matter, it has levity in it, though, as well.
McCormack: Well, luckily, my character is a little sarcastic and certainly that's probably the first time he's ever talked to God, so it shows you how desperate things get in the story (laughter). Yeah, there's a little levity, but really that's representative of my story line. But the main story line of doctors trying to solve this thing because it's a hundred percent contagious before it gets out and kills everybody is really exciting. I think the thing plays like a feature film. It plays like a summer blockbuster.
Tavis: I've asked this question of guests, I guess, over five years of doing this show on PBS. I've asked this question, I suspect, once or twice of certain guests, but I find it interesting at least to ask this question of you, which is how you go about choosing what you want to do these days in terms of acting, particularly given that that face is just so well-known for all those years of "Will & Grace."
McCormack: Yeah, well, you know, it's a good problem to have. It's a blessing and a curse. But I didn't sort of leap out of "Will & Grace" saying, "Okay, I've got to do something immediately." The thing is in syndication. It's on five times a day in some markets.
Tavis: Every day somewhere, yeah.
McCormack: So taking a little break is not a bad thing, but I really was looking for something like this. When this came along, I thought, "This is great." Because not only is it a big exciting, very different project, very serious project, but the character is very, very different, obviously straight but very flawed and very driven and, actually in the second half, becomes something of an action hero which didn't happen much on "Will & Grace" (laughter).
I mean, it was definitely what I was looking for, but then, beggars can't always be choosers. You're just looking to work. I'm just really glad of how well this thing turned out. I think it's really exciting.
Tavis: When I think about all the success - to the point you make now, the blessing and the curse - when I think of all the success that "Will & Grace" brought you professionally and, I suspect, personally, I was rereading how that actually came to be for you. The fascinating part for me is now how it ended up for you, but how it began.
So you were on another sitcom, which we won't even mention that, but you'd done another sitcom that just didn't quite work out, but it opened up the door for "Will & Grace." I mean, what do you make of the fact that you did this, it tanked, but then it opens up this door to "Will & Grace" and you go on to fame and fortune.
McCormack: Well, it's one of my favorite stories that I did the pilot for "The Jenny McCarthy Show."
Tavis: There you go. There it is (laughter).
McCormack: There it is. Actually, that show went on and did as it was supposed to do, twenty-four episodes. I was fired after the pilot because they cut my character. I was depressed around fifteen minutes or so. But cut to a year later. I'm shooting the pilot of "Will & Grace" and it went incredibly well that night. Warren Littlefield, who was running NBC at the time, walked up to me and said, "Aren't you glad I fired you?"
Tavis: Yeah (laughter).
McCormack: I was like, "Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much, sir. Happy to be here."
Tavis: Yeah. On this side of it, I know you've been asked this question, I would suspect, at least a million times, a straight guy playing a gay character. You got asked that question a bunch of times on the front end. As you look back on it now, any difference in how you felt about doing it then versus now? Or has your sense of it always been the same?
McCormack: Yeah, my sense is always - I mean, when I was doing press for "The Andromeda Strain," people are like, "Did you do any research?" They'd ask me that about "Will & Grace" and I'd go, "No. What do you mean? What kind of research? What are you talking about? I read something." (Laughter)
You know, I think it's amazing that we can all of us at any time be cast as a killer and nobody actually asks you if you've ever killed anybody, but if you play a gay man, it's like, "Oh, how do you do that? Are you really gay? Is there anything you want to tell us?" To me, you know, people are people. I think that the best thing the show did was, at least initially, didn't make a big thing of that.
It wasn't sold as, "Hey, look. There's two gay guys on the show." It's here for friends and, as people got to know them, I think that's - looking back on it now, the real victory of the show is that little kids - not little kids, but, say, twelve or thirteen - sort of watching the reruns and they're coming into the world, coming out of high school, with the sense that gay isn't as weird as maybe their parents had thought, you know, and they're gonna go into the world and do good works, and I think "Will & Grace" is a little part of that.
Tavis: I didn't realize - I think I mentioned it to you when you walked on the set. I had no idea you were Canadian. I don't know how I missed that all these years. I don't know that it means everything, but it -
McCormack: - I don't talk about it, Tavis, and thanks a lot. Cut. You know what? What we do is sneak in. You know what I mean.
Tavis: You just kind of sneak in, yeah.
McCormack: We have a few - Mike Myers will talk about it a lot. I actually went to high school with Mike. There's a lot of Canadians in this business, you know. I'm about to start a series in the fall and the two leads, myself and Tom Cavanaugh, are both Canadians. That's why we don't talk about it. We don't want you to know.
Tavis: You don't want us to know, yeah (laughter). The new series with Cavanaugh is about what?
McCormack: It's called "Truth in Advertising." It'll be on TNT in the new year. It's the way two men work together, that love-hate relationship that guys have when they work together, in this case, in the world of advertising.
Tavis: Are there professional challenges that you have not had to date that you are like itching to get your hands wrapped around?
McCormack: I would say that certainly "The Andromeda Strain" gave me a taste of that sort of action hero thing, which I never saw myself as.
Tavis: "Ironman" hasn't done all that bad.
McCormack: Yeah, well, there you go. You know, nobody was looking to Downey, Jr. a few years ago to be an action hero.
Tavis: Precisely.
McCormack: I think what a lot of the big comic book characters have been showing lately is that underneath the characters have always been, you know, mild-mannered men that needed the persona. I think that's kind of what happens to my character in this thing too. He's the last person you think is gonna help anyone and he ends up becoming something of a hero as everyone does in this thing because everyone has to band together. I mean, I certainly can see more of that.
But I think the other thing too is that I used to do a lot of, you know, pre "Will & Grace." I'd play a lot of cops and a lot of bad guys and I carried a lot of guns. I sort of did that thing. It's just that I wasn't famous (laughter).
Tavis: Or to my mind - I haven't seen that stuff, but to my mind, believable. I guess it's given how I know you now, how I've come to know you because of the stuff you've played. I can't imagine that face playing a bad guy.
McCormack: Well, that's my challenge, you know, my professional challenge. But like all actors, I would also like to get behind the camera. I've done a little producing the last few years.
Tavis: I was about to ask you if you wanted to do some of that.
McCormack: And I would like to direct. You know, every actor says that and it's like (snore), and the next guy who's coming on, he wants to direct too. Mike Huckabee wants to direct (laughter). But it is true. The more you learn, the more you actually want to kind of share that a little bit, you know?
Tavis: Yeah. On a serious note, I read that you and your wife are very much involved in cancer work over the years. I have a friend who's battling that right now, so it's all on me every day just watching her and trying to help her get through - she has breast cancer - get through what she's going through. So I saw that you've been involved in that. What put -
McCormack: - well, my mom beat breast cancer twenty-five years ago, but we lost her to bladder cancer two summers ago. My father has been battling prostate cancer off and on, so it's an incredible reality in my family. It's an incredibly maddening thing. It continues almost like something from a mini-series. It continues to evolve and learn from - I can't believe that we're not going to beat it.
But it's a son of a bitch and it's really disheartening that it is so prevalent. You know, there's certain diseases, when you champion them as a celebrity, you go out and you do benefits. You actually have to describe to some of the people in the audience what the disease is so that they'll go, "Oh, I didn't realize that. Well, I'll give some money."
You don't have to do that with cancer. Everybody knows. Everybody gets it and everybody's parents, sister, brother, but I still am incredibly, incredibly hopeful that, before my son is my age, he'll look back on cancer the way, you know, we look at polio, you know, I hope.
Tavis: Well, I'm glad you and your wife are out there doing that. "The Andromeda Strain," two nights on A&E, Monday and Tuesday and then later, "Truth in Advertising" coming on TNT. Who says Eric McCormack is letting the grass grow under his feet? This guy's awfully busy. Good to see you, Eric.
McCormack: Nice to see you, Tavis. Thank you.
Tavis: Nice to have you on, man.
Back to May 23, 2008