Megan Mullally: "We’re really lucky to get to do Will & Grace right now on network television"

The Daily Beast

The actress says Will & Grace, which returns tonight to kick off its second revival season, is doing something difficult as a network sitcom by making noise amid more than 500 scripted TV show. “So many of them are really good,” she says. “But all those other shows i’m thinking about, they’re all on some cable channel or streaming service. They’re not on network. They can say anything and can do anything and can address any subject matter and can really like hunker down and go deep. I feel like we’re really lucky to get to do Will & Grace right now on network television. Because there’s a giant swath of the audience that are not watching all that groovy stuff. They’re not watching the very profound, great, pushing-the-envelope shows that we’re watching. So to have this show plunk right down in the middle of a Thursday night on network is so great. I feel really lucky about that.” Debra Messing adds that she wouldn't have done the revival if it wasn't allowed to tackle pop-culture and the current state of politics. “There were many reasons to believe that perhaps the network might have concern with us doing what we always had done," she says. "So I articulated that and said I need confirmation that you will fully support the creative team here to do what we always did. Once I got that confirmation, I was always in.” As for her own social media political activism, she says: "No one in my professional world has asked me to stop being outspoken. Which is great.”