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We have a two-week rule. We're never apart for more two weeks. Just not being separated for Jurassic periods of time seems to help. And no children probably helps a lot.
The ratio of celebrity divorces is probably about the same as non-celebrity divorces; it's just that the non-celebrity divorces don't get a lot of public scrutiny, normally.
I lived in Chicago in the early '80s and did a ton of theater, and then Nick lived there in the '90s and did a ton of theater. Then we both moved to L.A. and did a ton of television.
I certainly have gay friends, but I don't remember thinking, 'Oh my God, I have this friend, and they're gay, and that's so cool.' I mean, I was very naive until I got to a certain age.
My mom is elderly, and she's not doing too well, and I've literally never told her about 'Childrens Hospital,' because I fear that if she ever sees it, it will be like the coup de grace.
We already do a couple numbers with chairs - chairs being a classic, Bob Fosse-ish, showbizzy prop, but the punk element is that it's just me and Stephanie and this funky band from Austin.
Sean is so funny. One time he went to Ireland for two weeks with his mother, and Ireland is so beautiful, and he got back; we were like, 'How was it?' and he was like, 'Ugh I was so bored.'
Nick's just from this very Norman Rockwell-ish family. They're very 'American Gothic,' and his parents are so kind, and they're not brash people; they're very soft spoken, salt of the earth.
Nobody knew if the pilot would even get picked up because it had two gay lead characters, which has never happened before. And now every show has at least two gay characters, if not many more.
He is not like Ron Swanson at all because he's very emotional and vulnerable. He is all of the things that I guess Ron was really deep down. He's not a Libertarian, but he does like bacon and meat.
It's funny when you follow your own sort of bliss, then other people tend to respond in kind, meaning audiences. It's really weird how that works, but it does seem to apply to 'Nancy & Beth' especially.
Selling a band predicated on nothing is always an interesting proposition, and of course, the fact of the matter is that I really started out in music before I ever acted, and I've done a ton of singing.
Karen will never die. Max Mutchnick, one of the creators of the show, has always maintained that Karen is a bat who balls up and hangs from a rafter and sleeps during the day and that she'll live forever.
There's kind of a double standard: if a musician decides they want to act, everybody falls over themselves. But if you're an actor and you have a band, everyone's, 'Ugh, disgusting! It's a vanity project.'
John Cleese was my personal favorite because he played my husband for a whole season - and Minnie Driver. We almost had our own, like, show all living in a house together. And Gene Wilder was just so dear.
In terms of the first Christmas when I met everybody, I went over to Nick's grandfather's house where they were having the big Christmas dinner, and they have this tradition of this thing called oyster stew.
In real life, there's nobody more out than Sean. It was just in the press that he didn't want to say one way or another. I think he just felt it was nobody's business, but I feel like he came to it in his own time.
I started 'Will & Grace' when I was 39, and Nick started 'Parks and Rec' when he was 39. And he's really on the same trajectory; it's all happening with the same timing. It's so funny to see it all happening again.
Karen was always such a lawless rebel: carrying a gun in her purse, flirting with 14-year-old boys. She's the worst. You know that horrible guy Milo Yiannopoulos? She has about as many redeeming qualities as he has.
I had been watching the Emmys since I was probably 5 years old. Those shows, when you're a kid, it all seems like such a big, big deal, and only special certain people would win one of these big things like a Tony or an Emmy or an Oscar.
Multi-camera's fun because you have the immediacy of the audience and just being able to tell the story more or less straight through. The thing I like about single-camera is that you have the luxury of shooting a lot of different options.
I love Chicago - absolutely love Chicago. I mean, I'd much rather go to Chicago and do a play or a musical than New York, honestly. Because just probably for reasons that are obvious to you. It's just a little bit - it's a nicer, easier city.
One year at the SAG Awards, somebody practically knocked me over, and it was Helen Mirren. She was like, 'Oh my God - is it really you? I'm your biggest fan.' I was like, 'Wait, aren't you supposed to be home reading Shakespeare or something?'
Nick gets carsick if he's not driving - plus, he's basically a walking atlas. He can drive around any city without a map, which works out fine for me because I just become our entertainment director and pick out which audio book we'll listen to next.
I kind of connected the dots, like, 'Oh, we're just saying stuff. We're just saying things that make sense, so let's just say them like you say them in real life.' It was my first and one of my only acting lessons 'cause I never really studied acting.
Playing Karen was so satisfying that it almost cured my acting bug completely. Not that I had conquered the world of acting. It was just that I had something to prove to myself when I started Will & Grace. Now I feel like, okay, well, I've satisfied that.
Woody Harrelson played a long-term love interest of Debra Messing's; I think it was for a whole season. They almost cast Nick in that part. They almost had given to him. But at the eleventh hour, Jim Burrows put in a call to Woody, and he said he would do it.
I can understand everybody associates me with Karen, but beyond that, I think after time passes and a few years go by, that sort of becomes a non-issue. That character is far - I mean really, all the characters I've played are pretty far away from what I'm really like.
You can really shoot things you think might work on camera one way, then you can try it that way, and then if you think it could also work another way, you have that luxury of shooting a bunch of different steps, and then they can decide in editing what works the best.
I don't know other couples that work together a fraction as much as Nick and I do. We met in a play, and we've done TV and movies, and we just did 'Annapurna,' our off-Broadway show, and we've done theater together several times, so it's just a little bit of everything.
Isn't that sort of what happened with gay marriage? Right before gay marriage was legalized, everybody was just losing their minds and, like, the worst possible things were happening, and it was just all like it couldn't get any worse, and then it suddenly got a lot better.
Why can't I ever play a nice, normal, salt-of-the-earth type? Is there something I should know? It's fun to play villains and character roles, of course - but I'm sure it's also fun to be a really big star and play the lead in everything, where all you have to do is show up and not blink.
Nick is 11 and a half years younger than I am, so his mom is only, like, 11 or 12 years older than me. I didn't call her Mrs. Offerman because that would be weird because we're, like, the same age, so I think I went straight to Cathy, but there's a mom element, and his parents are so great.
I think of myself as a character actress, and Karen's just one of the characters I've gotten to play, but I feel like Karen takes on so much more weight because the show was on for eight seasons, and it was such a popular show. But you have to move on to telling another story in a different world.
Speaking theoretically, in a completely made-up world where 'Will & Grace' is coming back to NBC for 10 episodes - just in that made-up world - it couldn't be a better time. I think more so now than even when we started! And who would have ever - I mean, it's heinous that it's because Donald Trump is the president-elect.
We met in April of 2000, and we weren't really an official couple until June or July. His family has a fishing trip they go on every year in Minnesota, so he had invited me to go and meet his whole family. There was, like, no cell phone service at the time; people were using those giant cordless phones that looked like a brick.
I never had a burning desire to have children. But then I met Nick, and I thought, 'This is the only person I'd do this with.' So we tried, but I was a little long in the tooth for that sort of thing. But we didn't turn it into a soap opera. We tried for about a year or so, and it didn't happen and took that to mean it wasn't meant to be.
Madonna was very cool. I thought she was really nice, really present, and she worked really, really hard... She didn't necessarily know our real names in real-life, because why should she? Who cares? Some of the cast were really offended, like, 'She doesn't even know my name!' I'm like, 'Who cares? Madonna's doing our show. It doesn't matter.'