He’ll take Manhattan

ERIC McCORMACK has hit the ground running since filming the finale of the Emmy Award-winning NBC comedy series “Will & Grace,” which airs Thursday evening in a special one-hour episode. A clip show will precede the finale.

During the run of “Will & Grace,” McCormack received five Golden Globe and four Emmy nominations for his performance as gay New York attorney Will Truman, winning the Emmy in 2001. The series also received a Screen Actors Guild Award for best ensemble.

But once it was over, it was over. “We did the wrap party one night,” said McCormack, 43, “and I got on the plane the next day.”

McCormack has moved with his wife of nine years, Janet Holden, and their 3-year-old son, Finnegan, to New York while he’s starring off-Broadway in the American premiere of Neil LaBute’s comedy “Some Girls” at the Lucille Lortel Theater. Previews of the play begin Wednesday, and the run continues through July 8.

The Canadian-born actor teamed up with Michael Forman to form a production company in 2004. Their first show as executive producers is the Lifetime improv comedy series “Lovespring International,” which premieres June 5 on the cable network. Jane Lynch and Wendi McLendon-Covey star in the comedy about an elite Beverly Hills dating service that is operated by a group of dysfunctional misfits.

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Was it helpful that everyone knew before production began that this was to be the last year of “Will & Grace”?

Yeah. The nice thing about the whole ending was that it was our own doing. A year ago we negotiated for this season and we decided it was going to be our last. We wanted to make sure that the rug wasn’t pulled out from underneath us -- that we were rolling up the rug ourselves.

As a result, we really cherished the episodes. You are aware and are building something and that finale meant something to us. It was earned.

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There have been very few series finales that have really been satisfying to viewers. What are your feelings about your send-off? Will fans feel that everything has been wrapped up or not wrapped up as it should be?

I think that the faithful will love this. I don’t know what the critics are going to think. It’s ambitious. It’s more ambitious, I think, than most finales -- certainly of sitcoms.

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Ambitious in what way?

The ground it covers. It doesn’t wrap things up in the way you would expect.

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It must have been a fascinating exercise as an actor to be able to explore a single character over eight seasons.

I can honestly speak for all four of us [McCormack, Debra Messing, Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally] that we never got tired of our characters, and we never got tired of the show. Ending it was wanting to protect the legacy of the show.... It wasn’t about we are done playing these parts. I love the freedom Will afforded me -- physically, dramatically, comically. It was a luxury to be that guy for eight years.

The incredible thing about the show is that it was a lot of things to a lot of people. It was a niche show and a hip show, but at the same time, in syndication it became a very popular show with all demographics. It was very broad, and yet it was nominated for awards all the time. We had the respect of our peers and the popularity, and for a while there, some critical acceptance. In the midst of all of it, we had this political thing -- we were a show that had two gay men in it. We were celebrated for increasing awareness. For a little sitcom, we got to be and do a lot of things.

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So your first post-”Will & Grace” assignment is starring off-Broadway in “Some Girls.” Had you been itching to go back to New York to do a play?

Exactly. There have been a lot of offers in the past couple of years to do theater here and in London.

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Describe your character.

I am a guy who is about to get married, and I go on a little journey to visit the four most influential girlfriends of my past and kind of make peace with them. A lot of Neil LaBute [male] characters are misogynists, but this guy is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He appears to be a very sensitive guy who is doing something altruistic, but ultimately, as the play goes on, we realize it is a completely self-serving thing. He just wants to have his cake and eat it too.

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The Lifetime sitcom you are executive producing, “Lovespring International,” premieres on June 5.

I was very hands-on with the development of it. My company is called Big Cattle Productions.

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How did you come up with that name?

When you shorten the word “productions” it says Big Cattle Prod. That is the only reason I thought it would be fun. The writer, Brad Isaacs, writes the scenarios, but the actors -- all six of them -- are improvisers.

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Are you in any of the episodes?

I am in the second episode as a guest star, and Sean Hayes is going to guest star on the fifth episode.

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You will be onstage Thursday night when the finale of “Will & Grace” is airing. Will you be TiVo-ing the show?

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We are trying to figure that out. The cast is going to be in town, so I am going to try to get them to come to a preview, and then we can watch the recorded finale at my house and cry....

-- Susan King