The Point Radio: The Mysterious Debra Messing

Actress Debra Messing rolled the dice and came back to TV this season with NBC’s MYSTERIES OF LAURA. We talk to her about how the gamble paid off and what lies ahead for next season, and what about that WILL AND GRACE reunion? Plus this weekend may be the unofficial start of summer, but the season began weeks ago at the box office. Have we seen the summer’s biggest hits already? The folks at Fandango weigh in on that and more.

Transcript

The Point Radiance Mike Raub, actress Debra Messing rolled the dice and came back to series television this year with NBC's The Mysteries of Laura. The gamble paid off and now we talk about what's ahead for her next season and what about that Will and Grace reunion?

Plus it's the unofficial start of the summer movie season but has it already begun in the movie theaters? Have we seen the biggest movies already? We'll talk to Fandango to find out just what lies ahead. Let's get to the point.

This is The Point, The Point Radio, get The Point Radio. Actress Debra Messing has just wrapped up the first season of her show Mysteries of Laura and it'll be back again for a new season come to fall on NBC. It's been a pretty exciting year for Debra but the thing it may be most curious was what was behind the decision to bring her back to series television in the first place.

Oh it was definitely the pilot script. I read it and immediately I was struck by this homicide case, this mystery that really sucked me in. In my private life I love mysteries. I love watching all of the homicide shows.

It's just something that really fascinates me. So to sit down and to read a script and to get into this case and then all of a sudden to find myself laughing I was so confused and because I thought what's going on? This is, this is, you know, this doesn't happen. You don't have a, you know, a homicide procedural and then have comedy in it as well and by

the time I finished the script I thought wow this is really unique. You know they're trying to marry two genres and I thought you know what this is going to be a huge challenge but I was really excited by the possibility. So does she relate to Laura in any way? Oh gosh, I, you know, besides what she does for a living I really relate to her on all

fronts. I feel, you know, like being a single working mother is an incredibly challenging thing to do. You always have 12 hats in the air and you know you have to take it hour by hour and in one hour you know you succeed and the next hour you don't do so well and you just

have to keep going because you can't stop. And I also responded to and loved the fact that she's, you know, the best there is but she's the smartest one in the room and really, really disciplined and very dedicated to the work that she does do. So I think those are the things that drew me to the character and made me feel interested

and like I could relate to her. A big part of Mysteries of Laura is Deborah's relationship on screen with her two kind of precocious kids. I asked her what that was like in real life. Oh my goodness.

My sweet friends are so spectacular. They are the most polite, weak, gentlest boys and they are so professional and they come in and you know we hug and we play and you know the days that they're on the set are you know a highlight of the week for me because they really are wonderful. Days at the end of the season ended on pretty much of a high note for the cast and crew.

We just found out the wonderful news a week ago that the show is coming back and we're the only show on NBC that premiered last year that is coming back. So we are very grateful and excited. So the focus is really just getting on track for starting up in you know less than two months.

We want to show that we want to have as many exciting guest stars as possible. The better the guest star, the better the show in terms of just the quality and the investment that the audience can have in each episode. But specifically about Eric coming back I don't have any information. So was the show established in one year under their belt?

Will next season be easier? Oh yeah, yes. I mean certainly we have a much better idea of sort of the tone of the show and the balance of the show. But you know I think the trickiest thing is it will always be that even if we're lucky

enough to be on the air you know eight years it will always be finding that balance between you know the light humor and you know the sophisticated you know dark urban homicide cases. How about changes? What can we look forward to next year?

Everybody is very excited about making the homicide cases as marked and surprising as possible. You know much like Sherlock, the TV show Sherlock is you know we want to keep them as sophisticated as possible. And then of course find you know the light moment that has to come when her private life

sort of interjects itself. I think you're going to see more of Jake and Laura spending more time together. But besides that you know it's going to be the show that you know our fans have come to really love and be entertained by just making it a little bit sharper. NBC's had a lot of success this past year crossing over some of their nighttime dramas.

I asked Deborah if she'd ever consider doing a crossover with another NBC show. Oh yes, SDU please. Mariska Harvitay is my best friend in real life. So you know I've been on her show as a guest star and that was just awesome. But you know I think it would just be wonderful and hilarious and a great win to the audience

if we were able to somehow interact with each other. And of course there's that one subject everybody talks about when they talk to Deborah Messing. Any chance for a Will and Grace reunion? No, there has never been. I know that every once in a while the theater explodes with these rumors that something

is in the works. But unfortunately no one has spoken to any of the castmates about it. So my assumption is that means that nothing is in the works. You know I always say never say never. And so grateful to our fans.

I mean the Will and Grace fans are really the most passionate fans around. And you know they write me that they watch it every day still. And so that is pretty wonderful. Catch episodes of the mysteries of Laura running on NBC all summer long. See more at NBC.com or catch episodes right now on Hulu Plus.

Welcome to the holiday weekend. Let's take a quick look at the latest in pop culture. David Letterman's farewell from late night TV left its impressions in a number of different places including on the internet. The Nielsen Twitter TV ratings for the week saw that Letterman had garnered an audience

of about 4.8 million people on Twitter with about 201,000 event related tweets and a total of over 31 million, almost 39 impressions on Twitter. Meanwhile in the world of more traditional ratings the show delivered some 13.76 million viewers making it one of the biggest in the history of the show including the 1993 premiere and two post-Olympic shows in 1994.

Movie and TV production finance company Demerist is now developing a new TV series based on George Romero's Marvel Comics series Empire of the Dead. That 15 issue series began last year. It's set to end here at the end of the summer. Demerist by the way has also been involved in things like A Most Wanted Man starring

the late Philip Seymour Hoffman and Kevin Smith's Tusk's as well. As a little bit of an eyebrow raising move Robert Kirkman has joined the writer's room for the Transformers franchise. Since a pretty good company already in there are Art Markham and Matt Holloway from Iron Man and Zach Penn as well.

The purpose is to find spin-offs and sequels for the characters over the next few decades. Right now by the way this is the first time that Robert has taken any job that does not involve a property which he created. We know a lot of people saw the night it premiered but a lot saw it afterwards. Fox's Wayward Pines gained a 90% increase in ratings when DVR numbers were added to

it bringing the total number of folks who saw the premiere up to about 6.2 million. As we've told you a couple of times so far in 2015 it's not been the greatest year for graphic novel sales at least until April where we had a 13.45% growth over when you compare it to what was going on in April of 2014. All that due in part to success from things like Walking Dead and The Avengers film as

well. When you look at the top 10 best selling graphic novels in comic stores in April it starts at number 10 with Lumberjanes volume 1. Number 9 The Walking Dead volume 1 still in the top 10. At number 8 Batman volume 6 a graveyard shift hardcover version there.

Harley Quinn volume 1 at number 7 Jupiter's Legacy from Image volume 1 at number 6. 4th volume of Sage is in at number 5. At number 4 Batman the Zero Year Dark City volume. Number 5 if you're keeping track of those. Furtigos Fables represents at number 3 that's volume 21 of that.

At number 2 Avengers Rage of Ultron the hardcover and the number 1 bestseller for the month in graphic novels Walking Dead volume 23 from Image. The point, the point. It's the unofficial start of summer but that season already began weeks ago inside the movie theaters.

But the box office of 2015 still has a lot more to offer. We talked to Eric Davis contributing editor for Fandango the nation's leading digital distribution for moviegoers. And the first question I had was well we've seen Avengers Pitch Perfect and Mad Max. Are the big movies already out?

No I think if anything that's a good thing. I think if the summer started off with a black. I love the Avengers. I love Mad Max and there's a ton coming out. Some of them I've already seen and I can tell you they are fantastic movies.

But if you're looking for action well it's coming. I mean beginning this weekend with Tomorrowland which I've seen is a really really great sort of imaginative creative movie that really fosters sort of creativity and imagination and also saving the environment. It's a nice little sort of break from all the apocalyptic disaster movies that we have

coming out. So I really like that. So George Clooney and Britt Robertson and if you like returning franchises the Terminator has a movie Jurassic Park is a new one Jurassic World. There's a new Mission Impossible movie which is my personal most anticipated film of the

summer. So we have a lot of those as well and some comedies that I think are gonna floor people. So yeah I think it's gonna be a good time. So have we become superhero weary? You know I'm not getting superhero weary as long as they keep doing different things with

them. Ant-Man I feel is going to be unlike any superhero movie we've seen before. I was actually on the set of Ant-Man in Georgia and I can tell you everything I saw really excited me. You know instead of having these big action set pieces where they're destroying cities

in Ant-Man you're gonna have an action set piece that's in a little girl's bedroom because they're all shrunk into the size of an ant and so instead of a giant robot that they're fighting maybe it's a vacuum cleaner bag that's sucking people up. So I'm really excited to see how the superhero movie sort of is injected into like a hottie I shrunk the kids-esque kind of premise and Fantastic Four looks really interesting too.

I really like what the director has said about the film. I think it's got a great cast. So as long as they evolve as long as they keep doing different things with these superhero movies which I think they're going to. They're not gonna just keep giving you the same movie over and over again.

Then I'm in it. I'm on for the ride. I'm enjoying them so far. So I'm getting. So as the summer gears up what lies ahead good or bad?

You know everybody is different. I am of opinion that there every movie no matter how bad it is there is someone out there that's like hey I like that movie. So you know looking at the summer I can't say offhand whether or not people are going to be disappointed.

I think like Ant-Man Fantastic Four that we mentioned these are movies that aren't proven. They don't you know they are the beginning of a franchise so we don't know yet Terminator the last Terminator movie didn't do that well. But I really like what they're doing with this one so I'm curious to see how that lands. You know you never know when you have these franchises that they're resurrecting after

years especially with Jurassic World. I mean we haven't seen a Jurassic Park movie in years. So you're always taking a risk when you're resurrecting. Do people still want these characters? Do they still want to live in this world?

I'm hoping that they do a good job. Everything that I've seen from these movies looks really good. So you know you cross your fingers. You want to hope everything is good. I go into every movie hoping that I love it.

What about indie films? Any surprises on the horizon there? Yes there's one that I adore. It's called Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. This was back at the Sundance Film Festival which is you know a big film festival in the

country. It was in January. It won big awards at that festival and it's basically about this boy who befriends a girl at a school who has cancer. His mom forces him to make friends with her.

And it's about sort of their relationship and their friendship. But it is so well done. And it's not really about the fact that she has cancer but it's more about the fact, it more celebrates movies and why we go to the movies. What they do to us, how they transform us, how they inspire us.

It's a movie that yeah it's going to leave you sort of crying. But you're going to be crying for a number of different reasons. And I think it's a film that you're going to walk out of and just feel really good and sort of really you really love the movie. When I saw this movie, the guy next to me, I sat next to this big guy who was just crying

and sobbing and I had to put my hand on his shoulder and say, it's going to be okay. But then when he walked out he just had this big smile on his face like he saw one of the favorite movies of his life. So I think it's going to be a film that really touches people in a number of ways and mark that on your calendar.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. All right, opinions and reviews are great, but what about the stats? What does Fandango see as some of the trends for the upcoming summer movie season? Well right now I know that Minions is the most anticipated family movie of the summer according to a poll that we did on Fandango.

So I think in terms of box office, Avengers, I don't think anything's going to top Avengers Age of Ultron. That movie's already well over a billion dollars. But if anything's going to come close, it's probably going to be Minions. Despicable Me 2 grossed almost a billion dollars worldwide.

So look for the Minions to do really well. That comes out in July. And also if you're at Fandango, we have a sweepstakes where you can win movie tickets for an entire year. We're giving out that every day this summer.

You can win movie tickets for an entire year. So definitely check that out as well. One of your box office surprises every weekend all summer long, which is good. And by the way, if you'd like to take part in the contest, Eric talked about, give more details right now at Fandango.com.

That does it for the podcast right now. Holiday weekend is upon us. We're going to take a little break, but we'll be back in the middle of the week next week. And there'll be plenty of pop culture to catch you up on. You'll find it all on websites like ComicMix.com, michaeldavisworld.com, getthepointradio.com,

and in the iTunes podcast directory. Keep in touch with us all over the holiday and more on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook under the point radio. Have a good Memorial Day weekend. See you back here in a few days.