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Debra Messing Says She Was 'Too Skinny' During 'Will & Grace'

Debra Messing Says She Was 'Too Skinny' During 'Will & Grace'

Debra Messing is looking back at her time on Will & Grace.

The 51-year-old actress spoke about her weight while filming the series on Jameela Jamil‘s I Weigh podcast.

PHOTOS: Check out the latest pics of Debra Messing

During the conversation, Debra admitted she felt “too skinny” while filming the series after dropping from a size 8 to a size 2.

“When I started Will & Grace I was a size 8 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,” she explained.

“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 6, and they were like, ‘You’re losing weight, you look amazing!’” she continued.

The message she heard “as a woman was, ‘Oh, this is making them happy, so I should do more of it.’”

“Then I was lucky enough to be invited on the red carpet to the Emmys and the Golden Globes, and that was the same time that Ally McBeal was at its height and Calista [Flockhart] was the ‘It’ girl and Portia de Rossi also was so so slim, and she’s spoken openly about her anorexia, so it’s all within sort of the same theme. I would try to fit into these gowns and of course they weren’t sample sizes and it was like, ‘OK, we have to let out the seams, etc,’” she went on to explain.

“This was supposed to be the greatest time of my life, being nominated for Best Actress in a TV show I loved for an Emmy and walking on the red carpet. I walked out and I immediately felt so incredible, and then I was standing next to all of these other actresses who were half my size, and I felt fat, and I felt ugly. I look back at those pictures and I was beautiful! I mourn the fact that that was my interpretation of reality and that was the torture that I put myself through.”

“I was 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 2.”

Debra recently revealed she’d do a Smash reboot with one condition…

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Photos: Getty Images
Posted to: Debra Messing, Will & Grace