ShareThisEric McCormack has braced himself for the kind of comparisons "Trust Me," his new series, is getting.
McCormack isn't referring to how fans may compare it with "Will & Grace," his last series venture, in which he played gay uptight lawyer Will Truman. Instead, he's hearing how folks are stacking up "Trust Me" to "Mad Men" since both shows are set at ad agencies.
"People keep talking about the two (shows) as if it's 'ER' and 'Chicago Hope,' " he says of the series, airing 10 p.m. EST Mondays on TNT. "These are entirely different shows.
"One is an ensemble drama, a period piece, that is very stylized. I think of ours as a 'thirtysomething' with a slight 'Boston Legal' mischievousness."
McCormack, who won an Outstanding Lead Actor Emmy for "Will & Grace," plays Mason McGuire, a highly driven and more popular part of a duo at a Chicago agency. Mason is clearly a star, though his partner, Conner (Tom Cavanagh), is more talented with better ideas.
Though the opener leaned more toward the serious side, future episodes mine more comedy. "This isn't anything new for audiences," he says. "You can eat your cake and eat it, too. You can do comedy in a drama."
McCormack says he took his time before going back to series TV. In Mason, he has found someone who's more confident than Will. Mason is also straight and has children.
"I remember reading this script two years ago and thinking 'Ah! This is a grown-up show' and that's hard to do anymore," he says. "We live in a 'High School Musical' kind of world these days.
"Mason is the next logical step for me. He's the responsible one in a crazy world."
After eight years on "Will & Grace," McCormack, a self-professed "control freak," was certain of what he didn't want to do anymore. Scripts came, but they didn't inspire him.
Networks talked to him about doing hour-long dramas, and that surprised McCormack since his forte has been comedy.
"I didn't want to be a cop or a lawyer or a doctor," he says. "I wanted something else. I didn't want to do a sitcom because nothing could live up to the experience I had. So I waited for that thing, whatever it was, and hoped I knew it when I saw it. When I saw this script, I knew this was what I was waiting for."
(E-mail Terry Morrow of The Knoxville News-Sentinel in Tennessee at morrow2(at)knews.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
