Debra Messing: 'I was too skinny for Will & Grace'

Debra Messing has spoken up about being too skinny during the first run of TV sitcom Will & Grace.

The actress revealed she dropped from a size eight to a size two after realising she was too big to squeeze into outfits picked out for her Grace Adler character.

"When I started Will & Grace I was a size eight and what happened was, every time I would go in for a fitting, I couldn't fit into clothes," Debra told Jameela Jamil on her I Weigh podcast.

She recalled: "I loved my costume designer; she would always say, 'Don't worry,' and she would talk to her assistant and say, 'OK, can you call over and get a larger size?' And that was sort of the thing that was always on repeat all the time."

Debra said she felt so guilty she tried to change her body to fit the garments: "I thought, 'My life would be so much easier, and it would be easier on everybody trying to do their job, if I just lost weight'."

Explaining that she lost shed pounds by doing yoga every day and dieting, Debra said: "I started to get smaller and then I was a (size) six, and they were like, 'You're losing weight, you look amazing!'", praise which reinforced her determination to slim down.

Debra now reflects on her time in the spotlight with some sadness that she couldn't see her true beauty: "I felt fat, and I felt ugly. I look back at those pictures and I was beautiful! I mourn the fact that that was my interpretation of reality and that was the torture that I put myself through."