Brad Wright, who created Grant MacLaren, had me in mind. We'd actually worked together 20 years ago. He wrote an episode of The Outer Limits that I was in in '96 or '95? So we'd been aware of each other for years. I'd lived in Vancouver off and on, where he's based. And it just came to me, and I'm always looking for something different. Perception was a different show than Will & Grace.

I had played many gay characters before, but they were finite - guest characters in TV shows or characters in plays.

Growing up, my father was a financial analyst for an oil company. He was just a regular dad. And when I would say, Hey, come see my play, hed say, Sure. Hed see one, Oh, good play - you know, very typical dad reaction.

We didn't, with 'Will & Grace,' set out to change the gay world. We just set out to be funny.

The thing you realize pretty quickly, though, is that being in front of an audience whose job it is to laugh is a big pressure if the writing is not hilarious.

I remember I had scenes with Melinda McGraw in "Ides Of March" that I didn't have in "Video Vigilante," but I can't quite picture that other character. But it was Vancouver, and that year was crazy

As much as I loved [Al] Pacino and [Robert] De Niro and wanted to be a dramatic actor, I also grew up on sitcoms.