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

I think we all realize that anyone can - and has - gotten AIDS. So there's obviously still a lot to be done.

I think they [TV productions] were just kind of drying up. I'd done a couple of episodes, but nothing was happening. So I went to Vancouver to visit a buddy and see what was going on, and that year was crazy. Vancouver was on fire at that point. It was all these Stephen J. Cannell productions - The Commish being one of them - and in one I was a bartender, and I think I had five lines.

I grew up on M*A*S*H and All In The Family and Cheers. And then around this time, this would have been '95, '96, I was so into Friends and Mad About You, the idea of being on a sitcom became a very real thing that I wanted. It was not so much a relief. It was really exciting. It's an amazing thing to be in front of an audience.

Mental illness is the last frontier. The gay thing is part of everyday life now on a show like 'Modern Family,' but mental illness is still full of stigma. Maybe it is time for that to change.

[The Lost world] was a learning experience. I remember we were shooting a scene in which I dive out of a boat into a river to save the kid that's in the movie. And there's no mention of a stuntman, and I was like, "No, I'll go in." Nobody questioned. I never asked if maybe there was malaria in the water. And I was wearing these tall boots.

I had run into Kari Lizer at an airport, I think, and she said, "Would you come on the show [ The New Adventures Of Old Christine]?" And I said, "God. Absolutely."