NBC comedy series enters seventh season with Grace

During the sixth season, the actress's pregnancy had to be concealed.
HARTFORD COURANT
LOS ANGELES -- When "Will & amp; Grace" returns for its seventh season this fall as NBC's most senior sitcom, it will be marked by at least one strong, new element: the return of Grace.
After a pregnancy that kept her growing belly hidden from cameras, and then gone from several episodes of the show -- including the finale -- Debra Messing, who gave birth April 7, will be back as Grace.
"It was a difficult season," the show's Sean Hayes told reporters at the annual TV critics summer tour -- especially because four of the season's scripts had to be thrown out when pregnancy meant Messing was out of the picture. "But I feel excited and confident that everything is going to go back to normal."
Hiding pregnancy
When she was in the series, she had to use increasingly elaborate devices to camouflage her growing belly, including a potted plant that made her look, co-star Eric McCormack says, "like Artie Johnson delivering the line."
The best method they used to deal with the belly, he says, "was to just start writing a lot of fat jokes. It was hysterical."
"My favorite line Dave Foley had on it was, 'Boy you eat a lot, don't you,'" says Hayes. "That was it."
It put Messing in an odd position of watching the sixth season finale at home.
"It was a really unique position to be in because I really felt like a viewer," Messing says. "I didn't know the story line because I wasn't reading the scripts at the end because I wasn't there. So I felt really like I was able to experience the show in a completely new way, and I thoroughly enjoyed it."
Plans
Now that she's back, new situations are planned for her -- especially as her doomed-from-the-start marriage to Harry Connick Jr.'s Leo (never listed as more than a guest star) ends.
"This is going to be a year of tremendous growth for Grace and for all the other characters because we're going to be dealing with her relationship not having worked out, and at the same time Will will be in a relationship," says executive producer Alex Herschlag, who says Bobby Cannavale will continue as Will's romantic interest. "We've never had that dynamic before on the show."
There are plans for the supporting characters as well, Herschlag says, including Hayes' manic Jack character becoming an executive at a fictional new gay network.