'Will & Grace' Broke Ground for Gay Reprentatn—Can It Do It Aga? | GQ

Contents:

• WILL & GRACE BROKE GROUND FOR GAY REPRENTATN—CAN IT DO IT AGA?
• ‘WILL & GRACE’ FANS ARE STILL UNSURE IF ERIC MCCORMACK IS GAY REAL LIFE
• 'I WOULDN'T GET THIS ROLE TODAY': WILL & GRACE'S STRAIGHT 'GAY' STAR

WILL & GRACE BROKE GROUND FOR GAY REPRENTATN—CAN IT DO IT AGA?

Everyone remembers the basics: bt iends Will, a gay man, and Grace, a straight woman, live and love Manhattan wh their quirkier iends Jack and Karen.

Mutchnick and Eisenberg dated real life, and then beme close iends after Mutchnick revealed he was gay. She also told Kg that McCormack didn't origally want to play a gay character.

‘WILL & GRACE’ FANS ARE STILL UNSURE IF ERIC MCCORMACK IS GAY REAL LIFE

Actor Sean Hay, who portrayed openly gay character Jack on Will & Grace, didn't e out real life until five years after the show end. More recently, Hay has revealed that he's "ashamed and embarrassed" he stayed the closet for so long when he might have ma a difference young gay people's liv by g out sooner.

Fellow executive producer David Kohan and producer-director Jam Burrows agreed, notg that the show had troduced and normalized gay people for a swath of the public. In 2012, former Vice Print Joe Bin ced the NBC s Will and Grace as a reason for Ameri's "evolvg" attu on homosexualy 2012: "I thk Will and Grace probably did more to te the Amerin public than almost anybody has ever done so far. Broadst televisn the early 2000s was a powerful form of reprentatn wh work UPN and s Ain-Amerin geared programmg, diverse soaps like telenovela adaptatn Ugly Betty, and y, ss like Will and show, starrg a gay man and his straight female roommate, at least partially managed to te straight people on the ia that there's more than one type of gay person—albe rich, whe, affluent on.

There was Jack, the flamboyant one most people assumed gay men to be; then there was Eric McCormack's Will Tman, the mundane, everyman that tght straight people their next-door neighbor uld be gay. Will's portrayal has gone on to be the blueprt for most gay men on televisn sce then, whereas Jack is somehow seen as negative, and regrsive. Was he a gay mstrel show?

'I WOULDN'T GET THIS ROLE TODAY': WILL & GRACE'S STRAIGHT 'GAY' STAR

I've e to realize that Karen Walker was the te gay in of Will & Grace.

As portrayed by Megan Mullally, Karen was the boozy, outspoken bch of the NBC s, often ed as a gay male surrogate the way that the women of Sex and the Cy uld often be. Much has been ballyhooed about whether Jack's feme, theatre-lovg, melodramatic portrayal did a disservice to gay men as the one mastream reprentatn on televisn.

It's as much looked down upon the gay muny to be "femme" as is the straight muny.