Debra Messing was told she needed bigger boobs to be on TV.
Debra Messing was told she needed bigger boobs for Will and Grace but refused
The 54-year-old actress was gearing up to shoot her now-signature role as Grace Adler in the NBC sitcom 'Will and Grace' opposite Eric McCormack in 1998 and claimed that the president of the studios wanted her to have a more ample chest, but she refused to comply.
Speaking on stage at 'The Magic of Will and Grace;' at the Paley Center for Media on Monday (05.06.23), she told the audience: "The very first fitting, they had the chicken cutlets to make me bigger. I just wasn't a fan of like the whole idea of it. I was like, 'You know what? I don't need that. And they're like, 'Well, it's the president of the network [saying this].' And I said, 'If he wants it, then he needs to come here and tell me to my face.'"
The former 'Smash' star went on to add that when she began working on 'Will and Grace' she was a size eight and ended up "hating her body" after certain costumes did not fit her and got "way too skinny" after losing weight for the sake of her job.
She added: "When I started 'Will and Grace', I was a size eight, and what happened was, every time I would go in for a fitting, I couldn't fit into clothes. Eighty percent of it I couldn't fit into, and I would just leave hating my body and hating myself. I loved my costume designer, she would always say, 'Don't worry,' and she would talk to her assistant and say, 'OK, can you call over and get a larger size?' And that was sort of the thing that was always on repeat all the time.
"So of course, I thought, 'My life would be so much easier, and it would be easier on everybody trying to do their job, if I just lost weight. So I started doing yoga every single day and I did one of those meal delivery services. I started to get smaller and then I was a six, and they were like, 'You're losing weight, you look amazing!'
"I got way too skinny. But, you know, going in for those fittings, I fit into everything. And all of a sudden, I literally could fit into anything that was high fashion. So all of a sudden, everything seemed to open up for me, because I was a two.
"For awhile there, I was maintaining that, and then I got sick. My body just could not hold out. My adrenals crashed, I was exhausted and it just became clear to me that I couldn't be healthy and a size two at the same time."
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