Memories From The Set: Eric McCormack

Silk Stalkings

McCormack played a love interest for Mitzi Kapture's Rita Lee Lance in a Season 1 episode that opened with the pair doing some sexy fencing. "You couldn't tell it was her, you couldn't tell it was me, because we had the helmets on," he says. But that was just the beginning of his travails with the garishly hued drama's wardrobe department. "Everything they were putting on me was orange and reds, and it was like real Miami Vice stuff." His requests for muted tones weren't met; after all, he had to fit in. "Everyone on that show... we were dressed like we were in a Broadway musical."

Lonesome Dove: The Series and Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years

Like the sweet 'stache McCormack sported as Col. Francis Clay Mosby? It was 100 percent real and 100 percent fitting for a "vicious bastard" (the actor's words) like the former Confederate soldier. "This was the first time I played a guy who was dangerous and had a gun and a horse, and so I got the girl sometimes... if I kidnapped her." The Western dramas, which continued the story of the popular 1989 miniseries, lasted just two seasons combined; McCormack thinks they were ahead of their time. "Ten years later or something, I'm watching Ian McShane on Deadwood, and I'm like, 'Oh, I've been there, done that – and nobody noticed!" he says, laughing.

Townies

This flop of an ABC sitcom could also be titled These People Are All About to Become Huge Stars. The cast included Jenna Elfman (Dharma & Greg), Molly Ringwald (The Breakfast Club), Lauren Graham (Parenthood) Ron Livingston (Office Space) and McCormack, who came on for a handful of episodes as Elfman's character's boyfriend. He remembers the experience as enthralling ("I felt very at home doing it") and frustrating ("I was pretty much a cog in a wheel that was everybody else's show. I remember thinking, 'This is tough. It's tough to have four lines or one good scene in an episode like this.'") He carried the memory with him to Will & Grace, where the four main cast members agreed to welcome guest stars warmly, "because we all know how it feels to feel like you don't fit in."

The Outer Limits

Every episode of this mid-'90s restart of the '60s sci-fi classic was self-contained; McCormack's hour follows a spaceship commander desperately trying to figure out whether the hellish scenarios he encounters are real or hallucinations. Though Commander Virgil has a very rough time of it, McCormack says he loved working alongside Rocky's Burt Young, who played one of Virgil's crewmates. Rocky was one of the first things I went to see by myself, with friends, in '76," he recalls. "So it was exciting to work with Burt."

Dead Like Me

Reality TV producer Ray Summers is "probably the most dangerous part I've ever played," McCormack says of his three-episode arc on Bryan Fuller's Showtime drama. "He's one of those psychotic guys that smiles a lot because he's going, 'Let's do some evil.' I made some choices that I'm very proud of, because it was just not what I ever get cast in."

Ally McBeal

"I remember Gil Bellows was really sweet," McCormack says of his stint as a lawyer on the Fox legal dramedy. As for the rest of the experience, he'll pretty much plead the Fifth. "For the most part, everybody else was just wrapped up in what was going on in Ally McBeal-land that week, so I didn't feel like I was a real part of it." And though there was talk of McCormack continuing the character, it soon became clear that the verdict was: Nope. "By the end of the episode, it was like, "Yeah, no. You're not that guy,'" he says, laughing. "I think it was soon after that that Robert Downey Jr. came on. Oh well."

Will & Grace

The best moments from McCormack's run on the NBC sitcom are those no one was ever supposed to see. "I've often said that if you really want to see what Will & Grace was, go online and look for the bloopers," he says. "I certainly realized early on that the audience loves you when you f—k up. So I'd do it on purpose. I'd throw in F-bombs just to get the crew laughing, to get the audience laughing. I'm not sure how much of the dirtier stuff made it online, but the bloopers make me very happy."

Will & Grace (Cont'd.)

"We were in this weird bubble for a while when NBC realized they could have a guest star every week, so we did," he adds. Big names who visited for an episode or two included Glenn Close, Lily Tomlin, Madonna and Cher."We became this crazy Love Boat of guest stars. But sometimes, it was so magical. I mean, the Kevin Bacon one, the Michael Douglas one, the Matt Damon one..."

Law & Order: SVU

Vance Shepard, a not-as-sleazy-as-he-first-appears dating website CEO, meets a grisly end in the final moments of the NBC procedural. And McCormack thought the illusion involved in him taking a pair of scissors to the neck needed to be shared. "I remember getting home from New York and saying to my wife, 'Finn's got to see this! The special effects are so cool!' And she said, 'Are you out of your f—king mind? You want to show your 6-year-old you getting stabbed in the neck and dying?'" Guess who won that argument? "To this day," McCormack says, chuckling, "he has never seen it."

Pound Puppies

When the animated series – which is "like Ocean's Eleven in a dog pound" – wanted a smooth talker to voice lead dog Lucky, McCormack got the call. "I ended up just loving it," he says, mourning the Hub series' demise. "It was a well done show, and people seemed to love it. I mean, I [encountered] a lot of grown-up people who clearly didn't have kids, they just were fans of the show."

Perception

"I didn't see this character coming," McCormack says of his current alter ego, "a guy that lectures and he is completely inappropriate in public and hallucinates people and is deeply in love with a woman he can't tell and in love with another woman who isn't real." Three seasons in, and with a midseason finale coming up on Aug. 19, McCormack's enthusiasm is evident. "I love being that guy."