At any rate, he has never felt anything but accepted in the role – on screen and off. "The show has given me a chance to give back," he says, citing some recent gay-related charity events at which he has appeared. "I get to be the straight-guy ambassador to the rest of the world for a community that has been shouting for a long time to be heard and to be recognised." The cast of Will & Grace: Eric McCormack (left), Debra Messing, Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally. Credit:Stan Australia McCormack and his co-stars are chatting in a room hastily constructed within a soundstage at the enormous Universal Studios complex in Los Angeles. Last night they recorded episode six of the 10th season of the show. Today they've come straight from a table read for episode seven, which is still being written and which they will record in front of a live studio audience in six days' time. "It's incredible, really," says Sean Hayes, who plays Will's outrageously camp best friend Jack McFarland. "We do a 45-page play every week. The only difference between this and theatre is that there are four cameras between the audience and the actors.

"It gives you energy," he says of recording live. "You feed off the audience – as soon as there's a laugh, you maybe milk that moment or it gives someone else an idea to do something. It's the best feeling. The laughter is the greatest reward." The fact they're getting to do it at all is something of a bonus. The show went off air in 2006, but came back in 2017 on the heels of a short Will & Grace get-out-the-vote video made for the 2016 presidential election, on which everyone – cast, crew, writers – worked for free. Sean Hayes lathers his face in banana as an antidote to a numbing cream in a hilarious scene from season 10. Credit:Stan "When we got together for that little video the four of us had not been in the same room all together for 10 years," says Debra Messing, who plays neurotic interior designer Grace Adler. "Afterwards Megan [Mullaly, who plays arch Republican Karen Walker] went up to [show co-creator] Max Mutchnick and said, 'Why can't we do this all the time?' And he said we can." One week – and 7.5 million YouTube views later – the boss of the network took Mutchnick to lunch, where the main dish on the menu was the prospect of a ninth season, which would pick up 11 years after the last one ended (a passage of time explained away in a frantic and hilarious rush by Jack in the season opener).

We're now nearing the halfway mark of season 10, and an 11th has already been ordered by NBC, putting Will & Grace alongside some of the longest-running sitcoms in American broadcast history. Loading For Messing, it's no accident that the show's second coming had its origins in a bit of political messaging. "The election cycle of 2016 was incredibly traumatic for all Americans, regardless of your political orientation," she says. "It was very divisive and scary and confusing and I think there was a depression after election day. I know I felt it. "I felt shell-shocked. I wanted to get back to a place where I could laugh again, that would be a salve, and I knew there must be other people out there who felt the same way."

But while it's clearly in the liberal camp, it's important for Will & Grace to not be too narrowly political, insists Mullally. It is and should remain above all a comedy that aims unashamedly for the masses. "It's great that we're on network television – even though all the 'cool' shows are on cable or streaming. It's great that we will reach an audience that's much more diverse and broad in their ways of thinking, their politics, their personal beliefs, than we would if we were on the groovy cable or streaming [services] ... that only appeal to the more liberal NPR-listening crowd." Mullally’s Karen is the counterpoint to the show's overarching air of inclusiveness. It is one of its great paradoxes that she gets many of the best lines and, along with Jack, most of the funniest moments. Former Friends star David Schwimmer has joined the cast as Grace's new love interest. Credit:Stan "I love playing Karen, she is such a brilliantly written character," she says. "She has so many crazy quirks and unappealing qualities and yet she is filled with joy.

"You've got to represent both sides," she adds, in reference to Karen's politics. "It's sad that we have two sides to represent but there's always going to be people looking at things in a different way." For McCormack, though, it is "crucial" that the show aspire to a kind of political currency, even though the six-to-eight-week gap between writing and broadcast makes it a challenge. "I had a very funny Melania [Trump] joke last night – 'Your best friend is in the basement of the White House trying to tunnel her way out with the heel of her Jimmy Choo'," he says, citing a line Will uses on Karen. "And I wanted to add, 'In a pith helmet'. But we will have forgotten how ridiculously she dressed in Africa by the time it airs. It's too current. But the other one – she'll always be trying to tunnel her way out of the White House, we know that." Clearly, then, America's current political climate wasn't just the fuel for Will & Grace redux, it is also an ongoing source of material. Is that some small reason to be thankful then? "I would happily trade having easier jokes for a different situation, where we're not living in a dictatorship," says Mullally sadly. "I would trade that."

Karl is co-host of the weekly pop culture podcast The Clappers.

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