After the eight-year run of Will and Grace ended, we've never heard much from Eric McCormack.  That guy who played uptight gay lawyer Will Truman may have been occasionally appeared elsewhere in the time after the much loved sitcom bid farewell, but it's only now that he's returned to almost everybody's collective, as a highly-driven advertising executive in TNT's latest drama, Trust Me.

So why has it taken long for him to return to series television, and become his latest character, Mason McGuire?  “I remember reading this script two years ago and thinking, ‘Ah! This is a grown-up show!' And that's hard to do anymore,” he said.  “We live in a High School Musical kind of world these days.  Mason is the next logical step for me.  He's the responsible one in a crazy world.”

Also, he thought the role was a challenging one, after doing another arguably challenging character for eight years.  “I didn't want to be a cop or a lawyer or a doctor,” he said.  “I wanted something else. I didn't want to do a sitcom because nothing could live up to the experience I had.  So I waited for that thing, whatever it was, and hoped I knew it when I saw it.  When I saw this script, I knew this was what I was waiting for.”

For those who missed Trust Me's premiere, which hit the airwaves earlier this week, here's a sneak: the series is about friends Mason and Conner (Tom Cavanagh), who happen to be colleagues in a prominent advertising agency in Chicago.  Mason is popular but Conner's got a lot of ideas, and their relationship—at odds, yet not so—takes a twist when the former gets a promotion.  (Of course, you can read the recap here.)

For a moment, that felt a little bit like AMC's acclaimed Mad Men.  Well, that's what I thought—both shows are set in advertising agencies, after all.

“People keep talking about the two [shows] as if it's ER and Chicago Hope,” he observed.  “These are entirely different shows.  One is an ensemble drama, a period piece, that is very stylized.  I think of ours as a thirtysomething with a slight Boston Legal mischievousness.”

And perhaps he'll be in perfect form for this role.  As serious as the program may seem, the Emmy-winning actor—for Will and Grace, of course—insists it's a comedy in the same way as it is a drama.  “This isn't anything new for audiences,” he said.  “ You can eat your cake and eat it, too. You can do comedy in a drama.”

Trust Me returns to TNT next Monday from 10pm.


-Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: Scripps-Howard News Service
(Image courtesy of TNT)