The split coincided with Debra – who has a seven-year-old son Roman with Daniel – relocating from Los Angeles to New York to shoot new TV show ‘Smash’ and she admits the amount of changes in her life were tough for her to deal with.

In an interview in the June issue Ladies’ Home Journal magazine, she said: ‘It’s like 20 years. It’s a very long time. When I say the move to New York was traumatic, it was traumatic because every aspect of my life was going through a huge change.’

Although when Debra said her vows she thought she was marrying for life, she thinks the concept of marriage is becoming outdated because of changes in modern society.

She added: ‘I think the idea of a partner for life is incredibly romantic. But now we’re living to 100. A hundred years ago people were dying at age 37. Till death do us part was a much different deal.’

Debra is now believed to be dating her ‘Smash’ co-star Will Chase – who separated from his wife, Broadway star Stephanie Gibson, last year.

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“Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV” is an insiders’ account of the greatest era in television history, told by the actors, writers, directors, producers, and the network executives who made it happen, and watched it all fall apart. The popular series during this era of TV included Seinfeld, Friends, Frasier, ER, Cheers, Law & Order and Will & Grace.

Warren Littlefield was the NBC President of Entertainment who oversaw the Peacock Network’s rise from also-ran to a division that generated a billion dollars in profits. In this fast-paced and exceptionally entertaining oral history, Littlefield and NBC luminaries including Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Kelsey Grammer, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow, Julianna Marguiles, Anthony Edwards, Noah Wylie, Debra Messing, Jack Welch, Jimmy Burrows, Helen Hunt, and Dick Wolf vividly recapture the incredible era of Must See TV.

From 1993 through 1998, NBC exploded every conventional notion of what a broadcast network could accomplish with the greatest prime-time line-up in television history. On Thursday nights, a cavalcade of groundbreaking comedies and dramas streamed into homes, attracting a staggering 75 million viewers and generating more revenue than all other six nights of programming combined. The road to success, however, was a rocky one.

View this morning’s interview on TODAY below!

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And while the Smash actress is thrilled that her fans are loving her seductive shoot (Anderson Cooper’s reaction: “Hubba, hubba!”), she can’t help but wonder why the mag wanted her now, even though she’s been on the Hollywood scene since 1995.

“This is Allure’s annual nude issue, and there are several of us, several actresses. Why they decided to wait until I was 43 to ask me, I don’t know,” she jokes to Cooper during an appearance on his show, which airs April 23.

ELLE: There’s barely a month left of Smash’s first season!  How do you feel?
DM: It has been such an adventure. It’s required 90% of the cast to relocate from Los Angeles, so there’s been a great amount of emotional investment put into the show. I believed in it from the first moment I read the pilot. I still feel incredibly blessed and grateful to be a part of that show and that world. I feel like there are just a lot more stories to tell. I’m so thrilled that we’re going to have another season ahead of us.

ELLE: What’s going to happen in the next season?
DM: I don’t know, that’s the brilliance of it. Every week we would be called together as a full cast to read the next week’s script, and every week inevitably I would exclaim in the middle of the reading, “Oh, my God, are you kidding me,” because there would be some revelation that was completely unexpected, and everyone would laugh, and it became like a running joke.  That’s kind of one of the wonderful things about television, the thing that makes television terrifying. It’s something that Uma Thurman and I spoke about because it was the first time she had done television. She was like when you’re in a film, it’s a finite thing, it’s a two-hour story, you know how it ends, and you can craft your character, you have all the information. In television you only have the information that’s been given to you so far, and at any moment your character can become something completely opposite from what you thought it was.  That requires a completely different kind of muscle, and I think it’s exciting.

ELLE: What are you up to now that season one has wrapped?
DM: I’m a global ambassador for YouthAIDS, a non-governmental organization under the umbrella of Population Services International. AIDS has been something that I have been focused on for a very long time. The last trip I made was to Zimbabwe. My next trip is in May and I’ll be going to Zambia. When I went to Africa it was an epiphany for me, it changed me. I’m going for twelve days.

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Magazine & Photoshoots > 2012 > Allure Magazine

Debra plays Julia Houston, a writer who struggles to balance the relentless demands of Broadway with the needs of her husband Frank and son Leo. Making things more complicated for Julia is the return of her old flame Michael Swift.

Raised in a quiet community outside Providence, Rhode Island, Debra devoted much of her childhood to musical theater, and performed in numerous productions at both school and camp, which ignited her interest in the stage. The fact that “Smash” revolves around Broadway aroused Debra’s interest in the show.

“My first love was musical theater. I took dance lessons and singing lessons. That was going to be my path,” says Debra.

Talking about getting the part in “Smash,” she says, “I am completely overjoyed. This is a new adventure for me because this challenges me in ways I’ve never been challenged before. It’s something that makes me excited to go to work every day.”

Best known as Grace Adler in NBC’s Emmy Award-winning comedy series “Will & Grace” and Molly Kagan in “The Starter Wife,” Debra is one of Hollywood’s most admired and respected actresses. In 2001, she won TV Guide’s Actress of the Year in a Comedy Series award. She also received various Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award nominations. In 2003, she won an Emmy award for her remarkable performance in “Will & Grace.” Despite the accolades, Debra still acknowledges certain challenges. In the show, she says the hardest part was when she and Anjelica Huston had to shoot in tandem. “That means we have to shoot two different episodes at the exact same time. And so one day we might be shooting one episode and the next day it might be, you know four days earlier,” says Debra.

A summa cum laude product of Brandeis University and London’s prestigious B.E.S.G.L. (British and European Studies Group in London) program, Debra also has a Master of Fine Arts degree from New York University, where she was accepted in the school’s elite Graduate Acting Program.

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Gallery Links:
TV Appearances > The View – 06.04.12

“I’ve had some fits and starts along the way,” Messing said of her attempts to make her Broadway debut. “There’s always been some scheduling issues.” Messing grew up starring in musicals like Annie and Grease, and attended New York University’s prestigious graduate acting program, before landing the breakout role of Grace Adler (opposite current The Best Man star Eric McCormack). “[Broadway’s] on my bucket list, for sure,” she said.

In the meantime, Messing is thrilled to be an honorary member of the Broadway community on Smash alongside Broadway favorites like Megan Hilty and Christian Borle. “We’ve been picked up [for a second season] and we’re over the moon,” Messing told Broadway.com. For the Broadway hopeful, the reaction from the theater community is the most exciting part about starring in the series. “The people who are Broadway fans, they feel like they’re finally represented in a way that shows the glory and the pain and everything that there is to being in this crazy world of acting on Broadway,” Messing said. “It’s been lovely.”

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