Interview with Megan Mullally

AE: I remember the commercials that ran to advertise your talk show. They had you dressed as Karen on one side and you dressed as yourself on the other. Do you think people are expecting to see Karen when they tune in to your show, or do you think they are comfortable with Megan at this point?
MM: Karen doesn’t have anything to do with it. So if people are still expecting to see Karen, then they should go watch some reruns of Will & Grace. Karen may appear here and there, but this is a daytime talk show, so it doesn’t have anything to do with Will & Grace, outside of the fact that I was an actor who was on it. … People didn’t know Karen before they saw Will & Grace and they got to know Karen, and now people are getting to know me, and that’s just what it is.

AE: I know why Will & Grace had such a strong gay male fan base, but I feel like Karen had a very strong gay male fan base also.
MM: Yeah, I totally do, and I love that. I think that’s great.

AE: Why do you think that’s so?
MM: Well, I think that Karen was very outspoken, not afraid to speak her mind, and didn’t care what anybody thought about her. I think that if you are a member of the gay or lesbian community, that you are — to a certain degree — still a member of an oppressed minority. You identify with characters that don’t care what anybody thinks, are what they are, and are not going to apologize for it.

AE: Would you ever consider doing a comedy series again?
MM: Yeah, definitely. I’m open to anything. You know, I was going to do Karen: The Musical on Broadway before this came up. And they were going to spin my character off from Will & Grace. But [after] they spun Joey off of Friends, [I think] they were maybe a little gun-shy. At the same time, the talk show [idea] came up. … When they approached me about it, it was a really great synchronicity, because I’d been wanting to do one for a couple of years.

AE: Do you know yet if your show is being renewed?
MM: It looks really good. We have the second youngest demographic in daytime. … The people who have found the show love it and stay with it, and we’re building our audience every day. The show just has such a great feeling about it that it makes me feel good that we here at this show have created something out of nothing. We’ve created this thing from the ground up.

AE: What do you like better about doing this show versus doing Will & Grace? And what is harder?
MM: Will & Grace was just completely different. … [The talk show is] a lot more hours and more work than Will & Grace, but it’s easily equally as rewarding. I won’t say it’s more rewarding, because I loved playing Karen, and I loved goofing around and humping Sean Hayes all day.

AE: Who wouldn’t love that?
MM: Yeah. But this thing is almost more rewarding in a lot of ways because it’s just incredibly creative. … I know that might sound like an odd way to describe it, but it’s very, very creative and it’s totally spontaneous. … We’ve been on the air for two months. The learning curve is gigantic. I’ve learned so much about myself, about performance, about television, about the audience, about everything. I love it.

The Megan Mullally Show airs weekdays on NBC.
Check your local listings for show times.