Debra Messing: 'Will & Grace' Network Wanted Her to Have 'Big Boobs'

Debra Messing said Grace Adler, the character she played for 11 seasons on the hit comedy "Will & Grace," would have had a very different, and bigger-breasted look if NBC execs had gotten their way.

According to Messing, the president of NBC at the time of the show's launch wanted Messing to have "big boobs."

Messing recounted the story during a Paley Center for Media panel on Monday celebrating "The Magic of 'Will & Grace,'" People reported.

Messing said the creators of the show presented her with breast padding known as "chicken cutlets" to make her boobs look bigger.

"The very first fitting, they had the chicken cutlets to make me bigger," Messing told the audience. "I just wasn't a fan of, like, the whole idea of it."

"I was like, 'You know what? I don't need that," she continued. "And they're like, 'Well, it's the president of the network [saying this].' And I said, 'If he wants it, then he needs to come here and tell me to my face.'"

Messing shot the pilot with the chicken cutlets in, but after the show was picked up, she told an audience at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2007, she stopped wearing them.

"I said, 'I don't want to wear these. I actually like the idea that she's completely flat-chested. I think there's comedy in that.' We shot three episodes, and then I was called to my executive producer's office, who sat me down and said, 'We got a call from the president of NBC, and he said, "What happened to her boobs?"' They were not happy. The show [was about] gay men, and I had to be the woman."

Eventually, though, the network dropped the issue, and the "Will & Grace" writers would often write jokes related to Messing's flat-chestedness into the story.

This wasn't the first time Messing's chest became a topic of conversation among network brass. In a 2018 conversation with Sharon Stone for Variety's Actors on Actors series, Messing said that early in her career, another network executive demanded she wears chicken cutlets on her first sitcom.

"'I look stupid.' I was like, 'I'm not going to wear these,' to which they responded, 'The president of the network called and said he wants you to wear those,'" she told Stone.

"I was in shock. I was new to the industry and I just thought I can't say no, you know." Messing recalled also getting criticized for the way she sat and what she wore.

"Now, no one comes at me with those things. I'm like, 'I'm flat-chested, I love it.'"

"Will & Grace" initially ran for eight seasons — from 1998 to 2006 — and then returned for another three seasons in 2017.

A representative for NBC didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

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