Eric McCormack will always love Will & Grace, but his son hasn’t watched the comedy his dad starred on for 11 seasons.
“I remember once, I think it was Thanksgiving, and he walked in and we were sitting there, and an old rerun had come up,” McCormack, 61, exclusively told Us Weekly while promoting Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue.
McCormack recalled his son, Finn, just standing there. “He looked at us and he looked at the screen and he looked back and he said, ‘Are you just going to sit and watch yourself on television all day? This is appalling!’” the actor said with a laugh.
The Emmy winner noted that he did get his son to watch season 1 of Travelers and he “really liked it.” But when McCormack asked him, “What did you think of the other seasons?” Finn confessed, “I haven’t watched it.” (McCormack played Grant MacLaren on the Netflix series from 2016 to 2018.)
When it comes to Will & Grace, McCormack played gay lawyer Will Truman for eight seasons from 1998 to 2006. He reprised his role for three more seasons from 2017 to 2020.
On the show, Will lives with straight interior designer Grace Adler (Debra Messing) in New York City. Together they have hilarious interactions with their best friends, the gleeful Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes) and uber-rich Karen Walker (Megan Mullally).
While McCormack’s 22-year-old son hasn’t watched Will & Grace, the actor told Us he did join him on set as a kid. (McCormack welcomed Finn in July 2002 with then-wife Janet Leigh Holden. McCormack and Holden were married 26 years before she filed for divorce in 2023.)
“We’ve been going through old photographs, and I found pictures of my son at 3 [years old] at the final episode, the final taping in 2006, looking through the camera,” McCormack said. “He didn’t know it. He was 3 years old, but he’s learned it now.”
Will & Grace has become a time capsule for the actor, who described watching old episodes as like looking at “family movies” or “home movies.” McCormack noted that Will & Grace outtakes are his “favorite” things to rewatch. “It’s a reminder of just the greatest job,” he gushed.
When McCormack and Hayes, 54, cohosted the “Just Jack & Will” podcast, he recalled realizing “how great” Gregory Hines was on the show. The late Hines played Ben Doucett from 1999 to 2000.
“He was in many ways our first regular big star, him and Sydney Pollack, who played my dad,” he remembered. “But Gregory was hilarious and sexy and from left field, his whole delivery, I think that was my favorite rediscovered [moment].”
McCormack praised all the guest stars, calling the late Pollack one of his all-time favorites. “He had about five episodes overall before he passed away in life,” he shared before naming Blythe Danner, who played Will’s mom, as another top pick.
“I made Gene Wilder really break up, which was one of my greatest accomplishments of all time,” he added, noting that Wilder, who died in 2016, portrayed Mr. Stein on two episodes in the early 2000s.
McCormack told Us he’d happily do another sitcom but confessed he thinks the genre is “a little bit dead.” The memories, however, live on.
“Being in front of an audience — that’s the part that I have to explain to everybody all the time — is that that really was an audience. Ours was always 250 crazy people, so excited to see their show,” he recalled. “And we cut laughs out because we didn’t have enough time. And I miss that.”
In addition to watching McCormack on Will & Grace reruns, fans can see him on MGM+’s new series Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue. He plays one of nine strangers who get lost in a remote Mexican jungle after their small plane crashes. While trying to survive, the members must solve the mystery of who is killing off the remaining passengers.
Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue airs on MGM+ Sundays.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
