Eric McCormack, who played a gay lawyer
for eight season on the groundbreaking NBC comedy Will &
Grace, has applauded Neil Patrick Harris' portrayal of a straight
man on the CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother.
McCormack currently plays a
schizophrenic neuropsychiatrist on cabler TNT's Perception.
In an interview with UK
glossy Attitude,
McCormack was asked whether he was satisfied with how Will &
Grace ended.
“We definitely gave the show the end
it deserved and it also took away the temptation to go back to that
because I think we would only damage what we did at the end,”
McCormack answered. “I always thought that was one of the best
things the writers ever did; to create the illusion for one second
that you were seeing Will and Grace at 18 meeting each other, until
they introduce themselves and you realize that it’s their children.
When we had the read through around the table for that, all of us
gasped. And the night we shot it, the gasp from the audience
followed by us coming on in old-age make up was pretty effective I
think.”
McCormack was also asked if he's
mistaken for being gay in real life.
“Only by my wife – which is
embarrassing! Haha! I didn’t put it out there, I certainly didn’t
worry about it one way or the other, but the word got out pretty
early that I was just a straight married guy and who knows, maybe
that was in part what made it OK for America too back then. Nowadays
you have Neil Patrick Harris playing a straight guy which is another
great stride for America, because it shouldn’t matter on either
side of the fence,” he answered, a reference to Harris' role of a
womanizer in the CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother.
“There was certainly some guys back
then that were pissed off that a straight guy was playing a gay guy
but I think that went away,” he added.