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Will & Grace star Debra Messing revealed her time on the hit NBC sitcom began with a rather tense moment, thanks to the president of the network at the time.
Speaking at The Magic of Will & Grace panel at The Paley Center on Monday (June 5), Messing revealed that the president of the network requested she “have big boobs” on the show.
“The very first fitting, they had the chicken cutlets to make me bigger,” she told the crowd, per People. “I just wasn’t a fan of, like, the whole idea of it.”
Messing told the audience she pushed back on the request.
“I was like, ‘You know what? I don’t need that. And they’re like, ‘Well, it’s the president of the network [saying this],'” she recalled. “And I said, ‘If he wants it, then he needs to come here and tell me to my face.'”
Messing starred on the hit NBC show as interior designer Grace Adler. The sitcom ran for eight seasons from 1998 to 2006, during which it earned 18 Primetime Emmy Awards. The cast later reprised their roles for a revival that lasted three seasons from 2017 to 2020.
The Wedding Date actress has been open about struggling with her body image during her time on Will & Grace. Messing made an appearance on Jameela Jamil‘s podcast I Weigh in 2020, in which she spoke about going from a size eight to a size two during her time on the show.
“When I started Will & Grace I was a size eight, and what happened was, every time I would go in for a fitting, I couldn’t fit into clothes. Eighty percent of it I couldn’t fit into, and I would just leave hating my body and hating myself,” she said on the podcast.
She added, “So of course, I thought, ‘My life would be so much easier, and it would be easier on everybody trying to do their job, if I just lost weight.”
The actress admitted she became “too skinny” after taking up yoga and a strict diet.
“For a while there, I was maintaining that, and then I got sick,” she said. “My body just could not hold out. My adrenals crashed, I was exhausted and it just became clear to me that I couldn’t be healthy and a size two at the same time.”
