‘Will & Grace’ Had Another Ensemble Member In Its Pilot

[hewontgo]

'Will & Grace' Had Another Ensemble Member In Its Pilot, Costars Reveal In Podcast https://t.co/RlzlrmcqlC pic.twitter.com/7lEpbEq8k5
- Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) June 24, 2023

Eric McCormack and Sean Hayes reveal that the pilot featured them, Debra Messing, Megan Mullally, and Cress Williams.

McCormack said :
“There were five characters as

Comments

[xdecadentx]

Not sure how 5 would have been too many? I feel like 4 for sitcoms is quite a small number.

That said, I didn't know they had a podcast and will check this out.

[disarmingdevil]

Didn't Friends have six? Five would've been fine.

[a_files06]

Friends had an even number where each side countered one another.

[xdecadentx]

How I Met Your Mother was 5, right?

[a_files06]

That's a better example but still wouldn't work well w/W&G starting out imo. We didn't need a straight guy.

[xdecadentx]

Yeah I'm not sure they needed another character, but '5 is too many' sounds like a rope-y excuse. Maybe it's explained better in the podcast.

The 'probably Jewish' thing makes me wonder if he was endgame for Grace.

[a_files06]

I don't think the director was speaking generally but more in terms of this specific show.

[a_files06]

I think in this case they already made Will/Grace the counters to Jack/Karen so having another Will whose just straight would seem odd

[oatmealcrispcer]

A similar 5 becoming 4 dynamic played out in making the pilot for Golden Girls too, where because the Sophia character was only meant to be a recurring guest not full time, they had a fourth full time cast member (a gay live-in cook/domestic). Once they shot the pilot they knew Sophia character was a hit and had to be main cast, and they felt keeping the cook would not fit and they wouldn't have enough time to give all the characters the screen time needed in the episodes to make it work.

Sad because I love Cress Williams so now will always be curious if it could have worked (and made the show better) to keep him. Maybe they'll somehow leak the original pilot, I'd be curious to see it.