Watch Live: Holiday Yule Log

Eric McCormack of 'Will and Grace' Pushes the Envelope in New Series

The actor talks about transitioning from a comedy to a crime drama.
2:57 | 07/22/13


Coming up next:



Skip to this video now

Now Playing:


More information on this video
Enhanced full screen
Explore related content
Related Extras
Related Videos
Video Transcript
Transcript for Eric McCormack of 'Will and Grace' Pushes the Envelope in New Series
we all loved him in "will & grace." NOW eric McCormack has another hit, "perception," pushing the envelope in all kinds of ways and amy robach sat down with eric McCormack before heading to london. So glad to have eric back with us. Back for a second season of tnt's hit drama "perception." Eric plays a highly functioning paranoid schizophrenic whose day job is neuroscience professor but he also moonlights for the fbi where his hallucinations help him solve crimes. Take a look. You just hallucinated your virtual girlfriend. Are you jealous. I'm concerned. You're not sleeping. You've abandoned your routine. You know where this lead, daniel. No, I don't. With you unable to tell the difference between the real world and this lapd of make-believe. It's not going 0 happen. It's already happening. You were with us almost one year ago today talking about this new hit drama which has turned out to be "perception." Now you're back for season two and I see dr. Pierce is still hallucinating. At the end of season one he completely decompensated and had to be admitted to a hospital so we started season one quite healthy on his meds but he doesn't actually do very well on his meds for very long. He's a guy that needs to own it, to own his disorder and to almost use it for him rather than working in spite of it. How do you prepare for a role like that if you aren't suffering from that condition and you don't tend to have hallucinations, how do you prepare for it. Well, I mean if you're the sitcom guy who says I'm going to do this role and people aret looking to knock you down so you need to make sure you can say, i did the homework here and I'm not -- and I'm -- particularly want to be able to go to the mental illness community and say I'm not taking this lightly. We're approaching this with accuracy and empathy. Let's lighten things up. I'd like to play a twist on word association called words with co-stars. We'll throw out eye name. Talk -- just say the first word tass come to mind when I say the person's name. So I'm going to start with deborah messing. Partner. Oh, nice. Sean hayes, can't use the same one. Restraining order. Julie louise dreyfuss? Secret crush. Ah. I got to tell you this is pretty funny as we were looking at all you've done in your career which is quite tremendous you were the kool-aid guy like did you say, hey, hey, hey. No, if I had said that, no one would have heard me because, no, it wn't like a commercial. I was just wearing the suit. I wish I had a shot to cut to. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was like 20. Between years in theater school. Got to pay the bills. And kids -- you'd think they would have a lot affection for the big red jug, no, it was very violent. They wanted to push and punch and knock me down. Look how far you've cook. eric McCormack, thanks for joining us. We appreciate it.


{"id":19734302,"title":"Eric McCormack of 'Will and Grace' Pushes the Envelope in New Series","duration":"2:57","description":"The actor talks about transitioning from a comedy to a crime drama.","section":"GMA","mediaType":"Default"}