Debra Messing became a household name as Grace Adler on Will & Grace. While she rose to fame on the NBC sitcom, it was her role in the 2002 thriller The Mothman Prophecies, playing Richard Gere's wife Mary Klein, that Messing thinks defined a turning point in her career.
"It was a very, very dark drama. And that was the very, very first time, while doing Will and Grace and being in this raucous, funny world that I stepped into something very, very, very dark and realized that there were challenges there that I wanted to work on that were different than the challenges of comedy,” The Wedding Date star tells Parade in an exclusive interview.
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Messing had the chance to flex those dramatic muscles in her latest film, The Alto Knights, starring alongside Robert De Niro as Bobbie Costello, the wife of mob boss Frank Costello. The actress laughs, "If you had told me at any point in my life that I would be playing a mob wife boss opposite Robert De Niro, I don't think I would have believed you."
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The Alto Knights, directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Barry Levinson, follows notorious organized crime bosses, Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, both portrayed by De Niro, as they vie for control of the streets of New York. Messing calls the script and her character a “gift,” admitting that the movie has “definitely ignited my passion again for the work, and excited me about the future, and the other worlds that I might step into that I've never done before.”
Working with De Niro was a dream come true for the Smash alum, whose mind was blown by the experience of improvising with the legendary actor. "He just started going off script," she recalls. "And I thought, 'Oh, my God, I am improving with Robert De Niro.' And I thought, 'All right, it's dive in, sink or swim.'"
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The actress had to remind herself that she has a master's in acting from NYU and had improved before. "So, I was ready," she says. "And it made the work more fun and more free, and the whole experience was better than I ever could have imagined it being."
Every day that she was on set, Messing found herself learning from De Niro, whom she dubs "the greatest of all time." "I will absolutely be approaching my work differently now that I have had the opportunity to watch him and to act opposite him," she shares. "There is an effortlessness and a self-trust that he has that was so inspiring, and I hope that I can endow my work with just a little bit of that going forward."
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For Messing, her role in The Alto Knights was "unlike anything" she's ever been given the opportunity to, as she says, sink her teeth into. Though, Bobbie was a departure from other characters that Messing has played, she and the mob boss wife had something in common: both are Jewish.
"I am Jewish, and it was very important to me that a Jew was able to play this Jewish character. There are not a lot of great Jewish women characters that are really rich. You know, it's usually comic relief," Messing says. "So to see this opportunity, I felt that she had a dignity and a strength and an intellect and a softness that I just really loved, and I loved showing this particular Jewish woman."
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The activist, who executive produced the documentary October H8te: The Fight for the Soul of America—which examines the rise in antisemitism following the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel—believes that, especially today, more Jewish representation is needed in pop culture.
"We absolutely need more stories about Jews. The stories that are told are usually about the Holocaust. It's usually about the killing of Jews, and it would be really great and I think at this point, it's necessary to have creatives to write stories that highlight the humanity and all the multifacetedness of the Jewish community," Messing says, noting much like how that was done with the "gay community in media, in storytelling."
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"There has been this great outpouring of amazing stories over the last two decades, and representation matters, and there should be representation for every marginalized group," she continues.
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Messing has seen firsthand how a character can serve as a tool for social change. "I had the opportunity to play Grace in Will & Grace. And even though that was never the intention, it brought about social and political change that was very important and meaningful in terms of bringing equality to a group of people that had not enjoyed that until that point," she says. "I think storytelling is the most potent way to change hearts and minds, if you will."
Messing adds, "I think that social change comes directly from what we imbibe in terms of media and content."
The Alto Knights hits theaters March 21.
Related: Debra Messing Describes Her Dream Will & Grace Reunion
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