FULL OF GRACE Messing
During a "Tribeca Talks" panel on Sunday in Manhattan, part of the Tribeca Film Festival, Messing joined Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee, SNL's Rachel Dratch, Curb Your Enthusiasm's Susie Essman, and VH1 regular and Notes from the Underbelly star Rachael Harris to discuss why women, are—despite Vanity Fair and Christopher Hitchens's recent proclamations—funny.
During discussions about the differences between male and female comedy, Messing described a Will & Grace episode where she played up her character's gas-passing by fanning her long dress. The studio audience was in stitches, but director Jim Burroughs told her to go back and reshoot the scene without, well, raising so much of a stink. "He said, 'Grace can't fart,'" Messing recounted.
Messing said she also raised the ire of her superiors when she refused to continue to wear breast-enhancing silicone pads—"chicken cutlets," she called them. "After the show was picked up, I said, 'I don't want to wear them,'" Messing told an audience of a couple hundred people at the Borough of Manhattan Community College auditorium. "I was called in by my executive producer, and they sat me down and said, 'We got a call from the president of NBC, and he said, 'What happened to the boobs?'"
Austin Powers producer Jay Roach, the moderator for the event, asked, "And what did you say?" to which Messing replied, "I said 'fuck 'em.'"
Despite sending the audience into uproarious laughter several times, the panel of funny women did consider at least one topic off-limits. During an open Q&A session, Radar asked how they'd handle an Alec Baldwin sketch if the recent tabloid target and SNL regular guest were to host next week's show. Dratch mumbled something about "cell phone dropout," and Essman spoke up to say, "We're not discussing Alec."
Requests for comment from NBC were not immediately returned.
Photo: Getty Images
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