Who Is Jack’s Mother On ‘Will & Grace’?

After taking a break to make room for the Winter Olympics, Will & Grace is back in action with an episode filled with hot romance and awkward multi-generational hookups. But there’s one part of the latest episode, titled “Three Weiss Men” after the trio of suitors Grace finds herself involved with, that might have you rushing to Google with a question or two.

Throughout the episode, Jack talks about his mother. Jack’s not Cliff Clavin or Al Borland, the kind of character that goes on and on about mother, so it really stands out. At the top of “Three Weiss Men,” Jack says his mom isn’t on board with his new, committed relationship with a cop because it “gets in the way of her dream of us retiring together.” A little later, we drop in on Jack returning a phone call from his mom, one where he gets into a heated back-and-forth about his BF; the call ends with him sassily growling his mother’s name while unlocking the door to his apartment (“Judiiith!”).

If you haven’t rewatched all of Will & Grace since it was added to Hulu, the sudden reemergence of Jack’s mom (albeit unseen on the other end of a phone call) might make you wonder if we’ve met Judith McFarland before. Here’s the answer to that question: oh yes, yes we have met Judith McFarland!

Jack’s mother only appeared in one episode of the original Will & Grace run: the all-time great and rare tear-inducing episode “Homo for the Holidays.” The Season 2 Thanksgiving episode revealed that the out and proud Jack was actually not so out to his mom. And when Jack’s mom (played by Veronica Cartwright) spends Thanksgiving with Jack and his friends, the entire gang bends over backwards to keep his secret (oh, the layers of jealousy between Jack’s fake lovers Karen and Grace!). We also get a glimpse of Jack and Judith’s relationship, and the two are a lot alike.

Yeah, you can really believe those comments in the new episode about Judith wanting to retire with her son.

But who is Veronica Cartwright, you ask? If you’re like me, you can’t see Jack’s mom without also seeing a chest-burster spraying blood on her face. Yep, Cartwright was one of the Nostromo crew members in Ridley Scott’s definitive sci-fi/horror masterpiece Alien. She played Lambert, the ship’s navigator who becomes more and more emotionally frayed as crew members are murdered by the alien stowaway.

Aside from Alien, Cartwright has appeared in other sci-fi/horror films like The Birds and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and she also had a recurring role on The X-Files in the ’90s as Cassandra Spender, the ex-wife of the Cigarette Smoking Man.

After spending so much time talking about his mom in the latest episode, one has to wonder if we’ll actually see Cartwright return to Will & Grace and meet her son’s new beau face-to-face. The show’s brought back a lot of past guest players in its return season, so it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility! After all, she’s dealt with a xenomorph before, how scary can Jack’s boyfriend really be?

Watch Will & Grace's "Homo For The Holidays"