Eric McCormack reflected on a contentious episode that cost the program sponsors.

Eric McCormack is discussing what happened following a contentious Will & Grace episode.

McCormack recounted a Will & Grace episode that was so experimental that it never made it to reruns during the The Magic of Will & Grace event at The Paley Center for Media in New York City on Monday night.

The 60-year-old actor described to the audience an incident from the second season in which Will McCormack and Jack McFarland, played by Sean Hayes, joined each other at the gym.

McCormack remarked about the infamously (and hilariously) flamboyant Jack, “He was being very homosexual. “I also used the F-word at him. And they didn’t do that again.

“That’s the one episode that’s never ever ever ever been aired again,” he said. “However, it contained such truth. Furthermore, it was the only episode in which we lost sponsors. So, we did tackle that problem. However, the LGBT community was particularly affected by that problem. We dared to sort of display the degrees and emotions that existed.

After an original eight-season run on NBC from 1998 to 2006, McCormack, Hayes, Debra Messing, and Megan Mullally starred in the show’s third return to primetime from 2017 to 2020.

The show’s creators discussed another scene that, if broadcast today, would probably cause some controversy at the gathering on Monday. Even though it wasn’t in the script, McCormack and Messing, who played interior designer Grace Adler on the program, made out during filming the series pilot.

“At the end of the pilot, they kiss. Grace then asks Will, “Anything?” Is there anything? The performers and audience chuckled as one producer on the panel remarked, “That would never, ever fly today.

The two actors, who “didn’t keep in touch that much” after the series ended, according to McCormack, have just reconnected. We reconnected just before COVID, he continued, and ever since then, our friendship has grown.

A podcast about Will and Grace reruns will shortly be released by McCormack and Hayes, both 52. He continues, “Sean and I are really just watching the minutia while watching the show.”

“Relearning who we were and the decisions we made. Sometimes in a season, you shoot 24 episodes without pausing to think. You’re not pausing to take a breath. You kind of feel like Back to the Future, marveling at your youthful self.

“We’re watching ourselves going, ‘Huh, would I still make that choice?,” the actor continued. Have I gotten funnier? Have I improved? “