Megan Mullally (born November 12, 1958) is a four- time Golden Globe nominee, a four-time SAG- and two-time Emmy Award-winning American actress, talk show host and singer, perhaps best known for her role as Karen Walker on Will & Grace.

Biography

Early life

Mullally was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Martha (née Palmer), a model, and Carter Mullally, Jr., an actor who was a contract player with Paramount Pictures during the 1950s.^[1] She is of Irish descent.^[2] Mullally moved to her father's native Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, at the age of seven.^[3] She studied ballet from the age of six and performed in a ballet company during high school. She spent her summers in Los Angeles because of her mother's work.^[4]

Following her graduation from Casady School, she attended Northwestern University, where she majored in English Literature and Art History. She became active in local theater and eventually left college without graduating. She worked in Chicago theater for six years.

Career

Television

Mullally moved to Los Angeles in 1981, after just two weeks as a client with the William Morris Agency, she began appearing in bit parts in films and television, such as Murder She Wrote with Angela Lansbury. She made her series debut in The Ellen Burstyn Show and guest starred in popular sitcoms such as Seinfeld, Frasier, Wings, Ned and Stacey (with future Will & Grace castmate Debra Messing, although the pair did not appear in any scenes together), Mad About You, and Just Shoot Me! She had auditioned for Elaine's character on Seinfeld but Julia Louis-Dreyfus got the job.

In 1998, Mullally landed the role of Karen Walker, Grace Adler's shrill-voiced, pill-popping, eccentric assistant in the NBC sitcom Will & Grace. She won Emmy Awards in 2000 and 2006 for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series (and was also nominated in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005), and also won three Screen Actors Guild Awards. In addition, Mullally earned four Golden Globe Award nominations for the show. Although she did not win the Emmy in 2005, she did, based on votes from viewers, win the "Emmy Idol" award for singing the Green Acres theme song, in character as Karen, alongside Donald Trump. Although her own voice has a fairly high range, she developed an exaggeratedly high one for the character. However, in the pilot episode of the series, she used her real voice. Will & Grace ended in May 2006.

In 2005, Mullally "discovered" comedian and actor Bill Hader while he was with the troupe "Animals From The Future," bringing Hader to the attention of Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels.

Following Will & Grace, Mullally hosted her own talk show, The Megan Mullally Show, which was launched in September 2006. It was canceled in early 2007 due to poor ratings.^[5][6]

Mullally was the host of the 2006 TV Land Awards. She has been featured in advertisements for M&M's candies and the website CheapTickets. Mullally has a voice cameo as the mother of Neil Patrick Harris' character in a recurring role on the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and guest starred on Campus Ladies. She was in one episode of the drama Boston Legal in 2007.

On July 3, 2008, Mullally appeared in an episode of Kathy Griffin's My Life on the D-List.

Theater and music

She made her Broadway debut in 1994 in a revival of Grease in the role of Marty, with Rosie O'Donnell and later appeared in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying with Matthew Broderick. She is heard in the cast albums of both productions.

In Los Angeles, she has appeared in her own one-woman show, Sweetheart, in 1999; in Charles L. Mee's The Berlin Circle, for which she won both the LA Weekly award and the Back Stage Garland in 2000; and in Kelly Stuart's Mayhem in 2003. She is a member of the Evidence Room theater company.

Mullally starred in the new Mel Brooks musical, Young Frankenstein as Elizabeth. The role was made famous by Madeline Kahn in the original film. She is featured on the cast album and performs "Please Don't Touch Me". Her character, Elizabeth, is the wealthy fiancée of the title character, who breaks her engagement with Frankenstein after falling in love with his monster. Her co-stars included Tony Award-winners Roger Bart, Sutton Foster, Andrea Martin, and Shuler Hensley. Rehearsals for the production began in June and a pre-Broadway run opened to mixed reviews in Seattle, Washington. The show premiered after previews on November 8, 2007. Megan Mullally performed her final performance at the Hilton Theatre on August 3, 2008 to focus on the new television series Bad mother’s handbook, in which she will play the role of Alicia Silverstone's mother.^[7] Michele Ragusa will take over the role of Elizabeth which Mullally originally portrayed.

Mullally is also a singer and performs in her own group called The Supreme Music Program. The band has released three albums, The Sweetheart Break-In, Big as a Berry and Free Again!. She recorded a duet with Carly Simon on the track The Right Thing To Do for the Will & Grace: Let the Music Out! soundtrack. The third album from the SMP was originally titled The Many Moods… Vol, 1. However, the title was changed before going to print. The third album, Free Again!, was released online on July 28, 2007.

Film

Her feature film debut was as a call girl in Risky Business and has parts in Stealing Harvard, Anywhere but Here and the Martin Lawrence comedy Rebound. She also is a voice actress who has done work on several cartoons, such as the 1990s version The Flintstones, Batman: The Animated Series, King of the Hill, the Disney feature film Teacher's Pet, and the Dreamworks film Bee Movie. She also had a role in the 2001 film "Monkeybone" as the sister of a character played by Brendan Fraser.

Personal life

Mullally commented in an interview in The Advocate magazine, "I consider myself bisexual, and my philosophy is, everyone innately is."^[8]

Mullally dated actor William H. Macy while in college.^[9] Her first marriage, in the mid-1990s, was to talent agent Michael Katcher. In 2003, Mullally married actor Nick Offerman (who guest-starred on Will & Grace during its fourth season). She currently lives in West Hollywood, California, with her husband and two poodles, Willa and Elmo.

She is also best friends with Laura Innes.

Filmography

• Risky Business (1983)
• Once Bitten (1985)
• Last Resort (1986)
• About Last Night... (1986)
• Queens Logic (1991)
• The Pact (1998)
• Anywhere But Here (1999)
• Best Man in Grass Creek (1999)
• Everything Put Together (2000)
• Speaking of Sex (2001)
• Monkeybone (2001)
• Stealing Harvard (2002)
• Teacher's Pet (2004) (voice)
• Rebound (2005)
• Bee Movie (2007)

References