Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV

by Warren Littlefield, Former NBC President of Entertainment

  Twenty percent of the country would never watch the show, because it had gay people in it. I thought if you could make people think Will and Grace might get together, then a lot more people would watch the show. If you could get them to watch, they wouldn’t care after they saw how funny it was. That was the funniest show I’ve ever done. Ever. I called it a fairy tale, figuratively and literally.

  Megan Mullally: That’s why that show was able to happen with the groundbreaking aspect of two of the four regular roles being gay. It was never politicized in any way. It was just about four people, four friends who were in relationships with each other in one way or another.

  Had it been politicized at all, it never would have worked. That’s what happened with Ellen. It was amazing and fantastic and historic. It was very cleverly done, the way she came out in that episode. But from then on, everything was about her being gay and the problems that that would cause.

  Jim Burrows: At the beginning of the second year, Max wanted the guys to look better. Eric always looked great, but we do the first scene, and Sean comes out in Prada pants, pointy Prada shoes, and a suit jacket.

  I say, “Cut, cut. I’ve got a technical problem.” I went over to Max and said, “No.” This was a man who claimed to have fucked most of the men in New York, and the best thing we could do was keep him in Jack Purcells and a sweater vest. That made him innocent, so he could talk about all that stuff. His costume never changed after that.

  Debra Messing: The first time we had a moment of “you can’t do this,” it had nothing to do with homosexuality, with sexual politics. It was Megan’s character yelling at her maid, played by Shelley Morrison, and using a derogatory word that the censors were concerned the Latin American community would find offensive.

  I remember that day. It was so vivid to me. Them coming down and telling Megan they’re really concerned about this. And the character had been established that she is just offensive to everybody. This is what she does. She is just offensive to everybody who walks the earth.

  We really struggled with “Why do we have to edit this? Because if we edit this now, aren’t we opening a door to editing everything in the future?” And again, when you talk about strategy, I remember the discussion being “This is our first season. We might have to make more compromises and be a little more careful our first season. And as we go, we are going to be able to be bolder and bolder.” It was really interesting that the one and only thing that was tagged was that. It never happened again.

  Eric McCormack: The show was very much a living entity. It had a lot to do with how Jimmy rehearses and shoots. It had a lot to do with how good that writing staff was. We got to a point where the reigning thought was “We just shot it. Why would you shoot it again?” Put in fifteen new jokes. Replace the ones that don’t work, and replace the ones that do work.

  Very often what ended up on television in any given scene were two or three or four jokes that were brand-new. Had never been rehearsed. Never heard by the crew, not heard by the audience. That’s the reason the laughs were so big. The jokes were fresh—Laura Kightlinger or somebody had just thrown them off the top of her head—and we thought they were funny. All four of us had the ability to do it off the cuff. These characters were alive for the audience. They were seeing us create. Shoot night was alive. It was a rock concert, and there was nothing better.

  Sean Hayes: One time I said, “Jimmy, is it funnier if I go straight for the refrigerator or should I stop at the couch?” He said, “I don’t care, honey. I’ve got to pick up my daughter in an hour.” There was a compliment buried in there. He was so comfortable with the marriage of the actors and the material that he trusted our instincts. Before Jimmy, I didn’t know it was up to me.

  The laugh is everything. When you’re taping a show, if an actor was about to step on his own laugh, Jimmy would stop and go back. Jimmy was a theater guy, and sitcoms are theater.

  Debra Messing: I thought that it was so ingenious how Max and Dave found a way to navigate around the censors in terms of the language and metaphors that they were constantly using for sex acts, for body parts. The craziest words and the craziest things put together, which made it okay to be put on prime-time television, and younger kids had no idea what they were referencing, but the adults could feel smart.

  Megan Mullally: It’s key that all four of us had a theater background. Every one of us had done plays or musicals or both. That made a huge difference, because, like I said, it was farce. Everybody had a great sense of pace. And of course, Jimmy.

  Debra Messing: The rewriting was so constant that there were times when we would get a word and “Oh, we couldn’t say that. It’s too on-the-nose naughty.” Then because we had Jimmy, and he had such authority, he’d be like, “Just shoot it anyway. We’ll make them see it, and we’ll make them cut it after they see it.” No one can overestimate the importance of having Jimmy direct every episode for eight years. It was unlike any experience I’d ever had. It was just pure joy.

  I always tell people, if you can, go to a taping of his and just watch him direct. It’s like he’s a conductor. He often doesn’t even watch the action. He walks back and forth along the line of the stage, and he listens to the musicality of the comedy. As soon as he hears us veering off rhythmically, he’ll say, “Stop, go back!” He will not let us finish the sentence, because he doesn’t want to blow the punch line. But he already knows that it’s not going to land as well as it could, so, “Let’s go back. Let’s start that section again.” He’ll walk up to one of the cameras with his toe in the middle of the scene. He’ll push it, roll it so that the angle is just a quarter of an inch different. It’s this intuitive thing that he has. You feel so safe with him, and you always feel when you’re around him his love for actors, for stage-trained actors.

  Sean Hayes: At the beginning, the scripts were all jokes, and Jimmy would come in and say, “There’s no story.” That was his go-to line that we’d all imitate later: “Honey, there’s no story.”

  We used to sit down at a table while we were rehearsing and talk about what was working and what wasn’t. Jimmy always said it was about the writing: if it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage.

  Eric McCormack: People think anybody can do this. You always run into those guys who say, “Yeah, I was going to be an actor.” They think, “How hard can it be? You’re just up there being you.” So when you get a chance to not be you … it’s a good thing. It was complicated. It had its moments, but eighteen or nineteen million people a week were buying it.

  Debra Messing: The NBC comedies were so sophisticated and so smart there was an assumption that if anybody can take a stab at this and succeed, it would be NBC. Then the letters started coming when we would show up in the morning to do our rehearsal. The letter from a fourteen-year-old gay boy from Arizona whose best friend disowned him and wouldn’t talk to him anymore because he said that he was gay, and he has been watching with his mother—who was devastated when he told her—but now they laugh together. And, “Thank you because you have bridged this huge thing between my mother and me, and hopefully one day my best friend will talk to me again.”

  It was so shocking because of the crazy hilarity and goofiness that was going on on that stage and then to have these letters of real impact. At the end of the day, it’s the greatest gift to all of us involved in Will & Grace to be a part of something that made people feel like “for the first time in my life, I am represented on television.”

  Eric McCormack: You get spoiled by the words you get to say. You get spoiled knowing Jimmy Burrows will be there every week. You get spoiled by a big audience share. And the money they had to spend on my suits! If Grace is always out of money and always borrowing from me, why does she have so many fantastic clothes? It’s TV. You don’t ask.

  Max Mutchnick: Jimmy came to us after the thirteenth episode and said there was room on his mantel for another Emmy and it was time for us to make him an executive producer.

  Jim Burrows: I told
Max and David the only reason I wanted to be a producer on Will & Grace was so I could get an Emmy if they did. I haven’t gotten a directing Emmy in years.

  David Kohan: We decided, once again, we were going to say, “Thanks, but no thanks, Jimmy.”

  Warren: Max called me and said, “They’re going to jam Jimmy Burrows down our throats. We don’t know what to do.” NBC had just dumped me, but that didn’t keep me from having strong feelings for one of my “children.” We had dinner at Spago. I said to Max and David, “This is the greatest thing that can happen. Embrace it. Embrace Jimmy. This means a hundred episodes are in your sights.” I also knew if I couldn’t be close to offer guidance and protection for their vision, having Jimmy locked in would mean no one would fuck with it.

  David Kohan: That night, Joan Collins and Nancy Reagan were at Spago. Barbara Davis was there too, and then in came Marvin Davis’s chair. A couple of big guys came in carrying Marvin Davis’s chair and put it at the table with Joan Collins and Nancy Reagan.

  Max Mutchnick: It was huge. It was like a Barcalounger. It was the weirdest thing, and it went with him wherever he went.

  David Kohan: We loved the whole procession of it, and we wondered if he was going to come or if he was just sending his chair.

  Max Mutchnick: At the Beverly Hills Hotel, Barbara Davis came over to our table and said she was sick of her Bentley. She said she always had a chase car, a duplicate Bentley to follow her because hers always breaks down. I’ve lived on that story. A chase Bentley.

  Megan Mullally: I remember there was a moment, just a regular episode in the first season, and I opened the door to make my first entrance, and the audience started screaming. Then we had to start again, and Jimmy had to ask them not to scream. That’s when I first realized that people were responding to the character. We aired that first season, and they reran it over the summer, and over the summer it really kicked in.

  Warren: Sound familiar? Patience and risk rewarded once again.

  Eric McCormack: Near the end of the first season, I ran into Jimmy on the lot. He’d usually be off playing golf or something. I said, “Jimmy, what are you still doing here?” He said, “I was just talking to the boys about what we’re going to do with your character next year.” I said, “Next year? I like the sound of that.” Jimmy said, “Jesus Christ, McCormack. Buy a house.”

  I went home that night and told my wife, “God said we can buy a house.”

  Debra Messing: None of us saw what ultimately happened coming. We didn’t see any of it coming. We had no idea that the show was going to become something that was socially and politically important outside of just being a piece of entertainment and that it would be important to so many people.

  Eric McCormack: Initially, it was gay men and women who loved the show. Then, second season, straight guys would say, “My girlfriend likes the show.” Then by season four it was “Sometimes I watch it with my wife.” Then it became “I make my wife watch your show.”

  Megan Mullally: The role of Karen is a perfect example of an incredible writing staff that was extremely intuitive. Any little thing that I would bring in that was new and different that they liked, then they would write to that. Then they would write something that I hadn’t expected, and I would play to that and build on that. It was all very collaborative and symbiotic, in the sense that we took the best of what each other was doing and then tried to add to it.

  Debra and Eric wanted to spend a lot more time hashing out story. Sean and I had the luxury of not having to do that because we didn’t have the A-story, so we didn’t have to really worry about overarching themes or season arcs. We were just over in the corner, flashing our tits and falling down. We didn’t have to worry about the real stuff.

  Sean Hayes: It was very exciting to be famous. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t, but I learned the only thing you need fame for is to get a table. That’s it.

  Eric McCormack: With the exception of Sean, we were all in our thirties. We had been around, most of us. There was growth from the first year to the second year, so there was time to get used to the idea of our success. It was Friends, Frasier, and us—we were the big shows on NBC for a few years.

  I so wanted to embrace my good fortune, and I think I did. I was involved with AIDS charities and gay charities, and it could have been that gay America wouldn’t have accepted it and straight America wouldn’t have accepted it. But that didn’t happen. I just relaxed into it.

  Debra Messing: When Megan and Sean were let out of their cages, so to speak, all bets were off. There was literally nothing that was too big or outrageous that couldn’t be done on our show. Because you always knew you had Jimmy, Max, and Dave to figure out ways of grounding it. Make it real, make it grounded. Having that balance so that the extreme vaudeville that we ended up falling in love with with Jack and Karen could soar. Then you could ground it with whatever was happening with Will and Grace.

  Megan Mullally: We would have fun talking about different ways where we wouldn’t see Stan, my husband on the show, but we would see parts of him, like his dental records or an X-ray. One time, I’m in the bathtub—we found the person on the set with the biggest feet, who was one of our PAs and like six five—and you just see his giant, hairy foot next to my head.

  Once I feel like I’ve become familiar with a role, that character becomes very real to me, as if it was actually its own real person. It was no problem for me to have this husband that we never see, because in my mind Karen loves him and that’s all that matters.

  Jim Burrows: The Will & Grace writers’ room was the funniest room in the world.

  Megan Mullally: Our worst episode was great. Off the charts. We were so spoiled by that. Our writers were not only great, but there was great chemistry in the writing room too, just as we had a chemistry on the stage, with the actors and Jimmy. I’m trying to think of a sports analogy, but of course I don’t know anything about sports.

  Jim Burrows: Everybody wanted to be on Will & Grace. Lots of guest stars. It almost ruined Friends. Julia Roberts et cetera. What it tends to say is “our cast sucks.” It was different with Will & Grace. The guest stars just made our actors better.

  Debra Messing: Every time someone came on—Madonna—we’d be like, “Really? Really? Us? Okay.” We’d feel a little nervous at first, and then we’d be like, “Wait. This is our playground. This is our home. This has been our home for years. We’re not the nervous ones.”

  Jim Burrows: The only note I ever got from a high-placed executive on Will & Grace was “too many gay jokes.”

  Debra Messing: Maybe after the sixth season was the first time that the cast got together and said, “How are we feeling? Is it time for us to stop?” And we would have the conversation “No, there’s more. We have more that we can do.”

  The thing that drove those conversations was that this was something that was so precious to us, that we were so proud of, we just wanted to protect it. We had seen 3rd Rock from the Sun go from being this trailblazing, Emmy-winning, creative, original, fantastic show to a time when people are like, “Oh, is that still on?”

  It really is impossible to have perspective when you’re in it. Because when you love something, you’re too close to it. We consciously said, “We have to err on the side of leaving before we’re comfortable.”

  Megan Mullally: We all had a lot of fun together. We never had any huge drama. We were lucky in that too, because there are successful shows that have drama behind the scenes, but we really didn’t have that. Everyone got along.

  For an actor, just having a job for eight years straight, it’s almost unheard of. The same job. You’re lucky if you have a job for eight days in a row.

  Debra Messing: Until we die, the four of us are going to be like siblings. It doesn’t matter how much time goes by, when we see each other, it’s family. You can’t even hope for something like that to happen. Certainly, when you go to acting school, you don’t say, “I’m becoming an actor because I want to play one role for eig
ht years.” Usually, it’s the antithesis. It’s “I want to play all kinds of roles, in different genres.” But playing one role for years has its own glory in its own way.

  Eric McCormack: I made a pilgrimage to come to L.A. with just Canadian stuff on my résumé because being here mattered. I got to walk on the lot every day where Seinfeld was filmed.

  Debra Messing: We laughed every day at work. You don’t really have to say more than that. To be able to go to work every day and to laugh is such a blessing.

  Jim Burrows: America got tired of the show after eight years. I don’t know why. It never lost its edge.

  Debra Messing: When we were done, everyone was talking about what they wanted to take from the set as a memento. I said, “I want the door to my office. Just the door that says ‘Grace Adler,’ and I want to put it in my office at home as a piece of sculpture against the wall.” I get it, and I’m so moved by it. Then, two weeks later, I get a call. NBC wants $225 for the door to pay for the wood.

  I said, “Are you kidding me?” They were like, “Well, no. They could use the door on another pilot.” I said, “Tell them to sue me.” So much for being part of the family.

  Eric McCormack: I was inside something that was hard to share with other people. And it was hard to believe it would ever end. Must See TV felt indestructible.

  Warren: In 1996, Larry David left Seinfeld. Being a show runner is grinding work under the best of circumstances, and Larry had also taken upon himself the job of rewriting every script for every episode of the show.

  Jason Alexander: Larry was always saying, “It can’t be done again.” Next week’s show was impossible, and we’d done seven years. He was done after every week.