Memories From The Set: Megan Mullally

For Mullally's stint as a spotlight-loving hippie on ABC's Vietnam War drama, she had to tap dance and sing while wearing a frilly nightie — but shooting the scene was a breeze compared to what it took to get there. She remembers that all of the women trying out for the role were made to audition in front of each other in the same room. "It was super nerve-racking and crazy," Mullally recalls. Even worse, the part was designed as a series regular role... but then it wasn't. "When they decided not to make it a regular part, I drove to [an executive producer]'s office and went in and cried," she says, laughing. "That's not what you should do."

Mullally played Susan in the short-lived 1991 ABC drama about an elderly man in the year 2035 reminiscing about the major events of his life (which would play out in extended flashbacks). Mullally's character showed up in the 2035 scenes. Michael Apted (Gorillas in the Mist) directed, and he had some advice for the young actress she recalls to this day. "He wanted me to keep my mouth closed when I wasn't talking," she says. "And it's so funny to me now, because you know how every actress has that thing where they never close their mouths because it's sexy to have your lips parted? That's all the rage now, so I guess I was ahead of my time."

When the now-iconic show about nothing was staffing up, Mullally read for the role of Elaine. "That went really great, and I thought I was going to get that — and then they went with Julia [Louis-Dreyfus]," she says. But Mullally had pleasant interactions with everyone involved, and they brought her back later to be George's grieving girlfriend in "The Implant" episode. Fast-forward to some years later, after Mullally had been cast in Will & Grace, when she ran into Jerry Seinfeld at an industry event. "He gave me a big hug and he said, 'Now the whole world will know how great you are,'" she remembers. "I thought that was such a really amazing, sweet thing to say."

Aside from passing her future co-star Debra Messing in the hallway ("She was coming down the hall [near] the dressing rooms, and she gave me a big smile"), Mullally's gig as Amanda's friend, Wendy, "was the very first time that I ever saw actors call the writers and everybody gathered their little directors' chairs around in a circle and had a confab about the script," she says. Prior to that, in her experience, "You were just the hired help, and your input was not encouraged or welcomed."

The Season 4 episode in which David Hyde Pierce's Niles fumbles an attempt to hook up with Mullally's Beth was "sort of like a bedroom farce, like Noises Off thing with doors slamming," she says. "When you get to work with somebody like David Hyde Pierce, you can learn a lot." First lesson: Don't think too hard. "I said something about the script, and [Pierce] goes, 'These kinds of things don't really bear a lot of scrutiny,'" she says, chuckling. "He goes, 'I wouldn't worry about it.'"

"That was the only cold show I ever worked on," Mullally says of her chilly reception at the NBC hit comedy, on which she guest-starred as a friend of Lisa's. Look, we don't want to rip open old beefs, so we're not going to name names, but Mullally says her part was much larger... until she ran afoul of a series regular and subsequently saw her role reduced to almost nothing. Long story short: "It wasn't very fun."

If you didn't know already, Jack/Karen fans, co-stars Sean Hayes and Mullally adored each other just as much as their alter egos did. "Sean is just so f—king funny, and we would laugh our asses off every day," she remembers. "Sean and I would be over in a corner, like, pulling our pants down and giggling hysterically... They didn't know it, but we used to call Eric [McCormack] and Debra 'Mom' and 'Dad' behind their backs because they were always like, 'You guys...'. And it's funny, because I'm the oldest, so I should have known better, but I didn't care. It was just too fun."

"I didn't really want to do it," Mullally says of her one-time voiceover as Barney's less-than-ideal mom in a flashback, adding that the reason it happened was "pure, 100 percent blackmail." While on the CBS comedy's set to shoot a piece for her syndicated talk show, Mullally reluctantly agreed to record the part because she felt bad about taking up so much of the production's time with her own show's shooting needs. But she rather would not have. "No offense to [How I Met Your Mother], but I never really was that familiar with it," she says. (Six Feet Under's Frances Conroy later played Mrs. Stinson on-screen.)

In retrospect, Mullally says, "I would have changed everything" about her eponymous 2006-2007 daytime talk show. "They wanted me to do a show just like Ellen, and I kept saying, 'Ellen's doing Ellen.'" Deeming syndicated TV "not my bag," the actress points to the genre's focus on the bottom line — rather than creativity — as a huge drag. "It's about the business, and there's a lot of pie charts," she says. "There's a lot of, 'The audience wants to see you wear jeans' or 'The audience doesn't want to see you wear jeans,' and I don't care." With a few years' distance, "I'm glad I did it, and I'm glad I'm out of it," she says. "What would I have done if that had been successful and I could never have been an actress again? I would have gone crazy!"

As Penny's mom, Dana, Mullally says she shot "probably one of the most fun scenes I've ever done": when the Hartz women sang all of their dialogue to each other. "We were just making up the melodies, and every time we did it, it was completely different," the actress says. "We did it as the blues, we did it jazz, we did it pop. We did all different styles."

Mullally felt really comfortable, really quickly when she guest-starred opposite husband Nick Offerman — as his character's captivating ex-wife — on his NBC comedy. The first shot of her first episode, the pair were in a car that careened into a motel parking lot, where they lustily ran into an available room. "So I said, 'I'm going to take my bra off,' to Nick," Mullally says, laughing. "And so we screeched in. I threw my bra out the window of the car, and then as we were running in, I lift my top over my head... And then the director came over and said, 'Hey, that was really funny. Nice to meet you...' I hadn't even met the director yet, or any of the crew." It must've worked: Mullally returned to Pawnee eight more times.

Mullally voices Gayle, Linda's needy sister, in the Fox animated series — and her next appearance is in this year's Thanksgiving episode, when Linda sends Bob to go pick Gayle up for the holiday dinner. Though the Belchers have their festive traditions, Mullally says, work means she and Offerman rarely celebrate in the same place from year to year. "But we went to Ellen Burstyn's house" — the two co-starred on The Ellen Burstyn Show —  "for Thanksgiving and Christmas last year, so that's pretty great."