DEBRA MESSING
The Will & Grace star reveals the hardest lessons she’s learned.
Wearing a pair of glasses and a Hello Kitty baseball cap, Debra Messing looked like any other hip, California mom sharing a sunny afternoon with her son. “Arcade tickets galore!” the actress crowed to her friends on Instagram. “Playing games with my boy at the Santa Monica Pier.” For the Will & Grace star, these are the best of times. “Roman has boundless energy,” she gushes about her 13-yearold. The challenge is “just really keeping up with him.”
Staying in step with Debra, who turned 49 on Aug. 15, takes some effort, too. This month she returned to the role of Grace Adler to begin filming 12 new episodes of Will & Grace set to air this fall. “It was really like coming home again,” Debra says of the reunion with co-stars Eric McCormack, Megan Mullally and Sean Hayes, who all worked together in the show’s first run from 1998 to 2006. Though the ensemble will always feel like family, the busy actress and mother finds that balancing her work and home life can be trickier now than when the hit NBC comedy ended its run 11 years ago. “I never stop. I work all the time. I’m always involved with something,” admits the star, before adding that the hardest lesson she’s learned is “knowing your limitations [is] important — it took me a long time.”
FAMILY-FOCUSED
It’s no surprise that Roman remains her highest priority. “I never spend enough time with my son. Never. I always want more,” says Debra, who co-parents with her ex-husband, Daniel Zelman, 50. The couple, who were married for 16 years, divorced amicably in 2016. “Roman is always the focus for both of them,” says a friend. “They all want the best for each other.”
To that end, Roman often visits his mom on the Will & Grace set since their return to Los Angeles after several years in New York. “They’re very close,” Debra’s hairstylist, Luke O’Connor, tells Closer. “He’s a character! For his summer camp, he went to a stand-up school, so he was entertaining all of us. You can see Debra is just so proud of him.” Proud but wary. “He’s really, really funny, and that scares the crap out of me,” the actress jokes.
Debra finds inner harmony through yoga, meditation and a healthy lifestyle. “Even though Debra views herself as happily single these days, “There is someone in her life whom she likes a lot,” confides her friend. And she remains optimistic about love, though she says she doesn’t want to remarry. “She thinks that marriage is an antiquated institution,” her friend explains.
At this stage of her life, Debra feels confident and comfortable with the choices she’s made for herself and her son. “I am a success when I feel like I have a balance of the things that are important to me,” she says. “The times when I was not happy or not fulfilled were when I was neglecting certain parts of myself, whether it was neglecting being a great mom or being completely there at work. It’s an act of balance.”
— Louise A. Barile, with reporting by Katie Bruno