Former Will & Grace star takes on new character as a discarded spouse
Alex Strachan, Canwest News Service
Published: Friday, November 14, 2008

Debra Messing isn’t starting over exactly in The Starter Wife. The risk-taking, occasionally risque satire about a Hollywood divorcee rebooting her social life after being cast aside by her rich, self-absorbed TV-producer husband is a world removed, though, from her last gig as Grace in the long-running sitcom Will & Grace.

In the seminal, groundbreaking sitcom Messing called home for eight years, she played single, straight interior designer Grace Adler, best friend to Will Truman, a gay lawyer looking for love and a comfortable life in the big city.

In The Starter Wife, she’s the centre of attention as Molly Kagan, a struggling writer of children’s books who finds herself divorced and forced to scrape by without the comfy settlement she’d always expected, and believed was her right.

“This is so different from my last experience,” Messing said.

“In the miniseries, Molly’s life begins again, really. The miniseries was kind of like summer, and now school begins. It’s about how she feels about her new love life, about entering the Hollywood world and trying to make a living, and interacting with (her) ex-husband much more than she expected.”

Molly’s ties to her ex-husband are hard to break, because they share a seven-year-old daughter and because he’s a power broker, kingmaker and decision maker in the very world she’s trying to break into as a fledgling scriptwriter, now that she’s on her own.

Being dumped unceremoniously and without warning is a situation many once-married women have found themselves in, Messing said.

“What was most surprising to me, after the miniseries, was how many women would come up to me, and not just in Los Angeles,” Messing said.

“I would be in airports in the middle of the country, and women would come up and say, ‘I’m a starter wife.’ It was validating. It was validating to see it really is as universal as we thought it might be, even though our story is specific to Hollywood.

“I think a lot of these women feel like, ‘Wow, I’ve never been represented before. There’s never been a TV show or movie about this phenomenon.’ I think it makes them feel like they’re not alone, and yet, we can have a lot of fun with it.”

There will be pitfalls and missteps along the way but life will work out for Molly in the end, Messing said. Molly writes a mean script, for one.