Debra Messing's Lucillian Take on Grace
Messing’s take on the character of Grace is extremely reminiscent of the show. As Carla Hall from the L.A. Times writes in a 2001 article, “after three seasons of pratfalling, snort-laughing, crying, singing… flirting, and even occasionally cat-fighting… Messing is perhaps the only actress on TV at the moment who evokes the images of Lucille Ball playing Lucy” (Hall 1). In the interview with L.A. Times, Messing says, “I’m not trying to be Lucy at all… It’s just that you watch and admire certain performers when you’re growing up, and your comic sensibility is shaped by those performers. She happened to be a pivotal one for me” (Hall 2). Roach would say that Messing’s strong performative “memory” of Lucy led to a similar “invention” of how she takes on the role of Grace. From the images below, it is clear that Messing does an impressive job of fulfilling the Lucy figure.
The actors’ exaggerated down-turned corners of the open mouths along with their squinted eyes are even reminiscent of the Greek Tragedian mask – but with a new historically comic twist. Both actors mock the idea of an outrageously expressive woman without coming off as inauthentic. The fake crying, bad singing, and clumsy behavior are performance tools the actors use to draw less attention to visual appearance and make the audience laugh. Messing took this cue from Ball, who had to make the audience forget her “Hollywood glamour” in order to circumvent the “conventional TV wisdom [which] holds that a beautiful woman can’t really be funny” (Hall 3).
Co-creator David Kohan said, “Like Lucy, you can read the funny plot points on her face” (Hall 3). He and co-creator Max Mutchnick wrote for Messing’s talent at Lucy-style physical comedy when it fit with the way they structured Will & Grace – true collaboration. Writers wrote Messing’s version of abolishing “Hollywood glamour” into the show every time Karen comments on Grace’s flat chest or lack of fashion sensibilities and out of these insecurities comes comedy. The water bra episode, when Grace buys a specialized bra to make her appear more well-endowed and it ends up malfunctioning, spewing water everywhere, is comparable to any of Lucy’s classic physical comedy episodes (the wine-making episode, the chocolate-wrapping episode, the bread-baking episode, etc.). The difference is finding different opportunities to use physical comedy as a means of exploiting characters’ insecurities for comedy.
It is appropriate – from a new historicist perspective – that most of Lucy’s most iconic examples of physical comedy are related to home-making and Grace’s have to do with sexuality when you compare the historical vantage point of groups of women of each time period. Lucy is a housewife (as most women were in the 1950s) and relies on Ricky for money whereas Grace is an unmarried interior designer (an idealized creative role for women in the 1990s). Admittedly, the roles do not seem very similar at face value. But from an acting perspective, Messing’s talent for physical comedy and the Lucy-style hilarity in vulnerability she brings to her character is intertextual of and in itself. A counterpoint is that Messing’s use of a perhaps outmoded model for a modern female character, and creators’ (and audiences’) reinforcement of the actor’s “fulfilment” of iconic “figure” Lucy could represent a step back for how audiences view women due to “the relation of art to structures of power” (Carlson 76). But, any perceived regression on Grace’s part is written into the relationship between the two main characters on Will & Grace, just as it was for I Love Lucy. The intertextual nature of their relationship begs comparison to Lucy.
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