35 years later, Eric McCormack returns to his stage roots (via Zoom) for a good cause

Will & Grace star Eric McCormack is starring in a virtual reading of a production called Wil and ironically enough, isn't playing the role of Will. 

The Toronto-born actor first began his career at Ontario's Stratford Festival in 1985, and now over 35 years later, things have come full circle. 

Wil is a Shakespearean style comedy which McCormack describes as "Shakespeare in Love, meets Princess Bride" alongside many of his old friends and castmates from The Stratford Festival. 

Since leaving the Stratford Festival in 1989, McCormack has starred in a number of film and television productions in addition to his most iconic role as Will Truman in Will & Grace. These include Netflix's Travelers series, Perception and many others. 

The virtual reading of Wil will be available from March 19 to 23 and all donations will go to The Actors Fund and The AFC (The Actors Fund of Canada).

McCormack says it all began when he received an email from Sara Botsford the director and co-producer of Wil, and a castmate from his time on E.N.G., a Canadian television drama from 1989.

"She emailed me and said 'Hey, you want to raise some money for The Actors Fund?' And I said, 'Well hello to you too, and sure,'" says McCormack.  

He explains that at the time he hadn't realized that Botsford had enlisted so many of his old friends but was pleasantly surprised to be working with them once again. 

Many of them he describes as "the young Stratford stars" from his time there. 

"They were playing the Romeos, and I was just an apprentice, I was starting my career. I was 21, right out of Ryerson," McCormack says. 

Due to the pandemic, each cast member recorded their parts in advance from their homes, something that McCormack and his castmates found challenging at times. This presented a number of audio and visual issues to work out and he says on many levels taping it felt "like any Zoom meeting that anyone's had over the year".

"The hard part is it's a virtual reading, so I'm not really getting to engage with my fellow actors and my old friends the way I would if we were in person," he says.

"So you're looking at the screen reading your lines, trying to engage as much as you can with everybody else so that the end result feels to the audience like they're really seeing us at a table read."

However, McCormack says the production team has done an excellent job of combining each actor's parts and producing something that is entertaining and fun. 

He says something unique that he truly enjoys about Wil is the fact that it's not technically Shakespeare. 

"It sure helps to know Hamlet and King Lear and a few of the other ones because there's a lot of hidden jokes, but essentially this is a really funny, easy to access comedy," he says. 

"It's very silly, and I'll show you how silly it is. I play Shakespeare's agent Bernie Shylock, who doesn't of course have a cell phone yet in the time period so he has carrier pigeons. And he's constantly having a pigeon land on his shoulder and saying, 'Sorry, I gotta take this'."

McCormack says his character Bernie Shylock is a "New York" agent and during rehearsals, he received distinct instruction from Botsford.

"Sara literally said, 'Other people will be English, don't be English, be a New York agent.' So I said 'Say no more, that's what I do.'"

McCormack laughingly explains that during his time at The Stratford Festival he was cast in a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream and the directors kept telling him that he "sounded New York," so playing his character in Wil came quite naturally to him. 

"So this was for me a coming together of two styles, one which I was very trained in and the other one is a lot more me."

Participating in the virtual reading and raising money for The Actors Fund and The AFC is important to McCormack, especially during the pandemic.

"I've been raising money for a lot of stuff for a lot of years. There's almost nothing you can say that doesn't deserve to make a little extra money. But during Covid all charities, all foundations were hurting, particularly in the theatre world," he says.

"Film production and television production eventually went back to work even during the pandemic but theatres are still closed, Broadway is still closed. Theatres across Canada… And it's devastating for not just actors, but anyone in the theatre business."

McCormack says in addition to raising money, Wil is a way to connect people in a time where human interaction is sparse and allows performers and theatre-goers alike to enjoy the art form. 

"I think we miss the theatre. We miss doing it, there's a lot of people out there who miss going to see it. We miss being in a big room together and enjoying great performances," he says.

"This is kind of the closest we can get for another few months anyway. So there was certainly a bigger purpose there to just entertain as best we can and bring people together."