With only over 20 acting credits under his belt, there’s no doubt that Matt Damon is an incredibly talented actor. In fact, the Good Will Hunting star has been ranked as one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood by Forbes magazine. All because most of the films in which he has appeared have collectively earned over $3.88 billion at the North American box office, making him one of the highest-grossing actors of all time.
Despite having played the leading role in so many blockbuster hits, fans think that one of Matt Damon’s most iconic roles remains his small guest appearance on the beloved sitcom Will & Grace. Well, Sean Hayes, who portrayed Jack McFarland on this NBC sitcom, revealed exactly how he convinced Damon to appear on the show.
Before Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon Made His Feature Film Debut in This Julia Roberts Movie
During the late 80s, Matt Damon attended Harvard University while also trying to get his big break in Hollywood. During his time at college, Damon appeared in several student theater plays, including Burn This and A... My Name is Alice. Then in 1988, he made his film debut in the romantic comedy Mystic Pizza, starring Annabeth Gish, Julia Roberts, and Lili Taylor.
Although Damon only had a single line of dialogue in this movie, it was his first professional acting gig. In an interview with Sam Jones, Damon revealed that he’d originally auditioned for this role alongside Ben Affleck.
“We went in and did the reading, and it turned out we were both good, but I was 17 and he was 15. It was a night shoot, so it went to me because I could work through the night legally if my mom was there. So my mom came with me and it was three nights of shooting this dinner table scene in Mystic Pizza. … It was so great. I mean, now I’d be like, ‘Why the **** is this taking three nights to shoot,’” the actor explained.
Following his one-liner in Mystic Pizza, Damon landed small roles in the TNT original film Rising Son and the ensemble prep-school drama School Ties, in which he appeared alongside Ben Affleck and Brendan Fraser. Then, in 1992, he decided to quit college to pursue his acting career after he landed a role in the film Geronimo: An American Legend.
Damon erroneously thought that the movie would be a box-office success. But ultimately Geronimo: An American Legend made only a little over $18.5 million at the box office. It took Damon four years for his career to recover from this failure. It wasn’t until he appeared as an opiate-addicted soldier in 1996's war film Courage Under Fire that critics started to pay attention to his acting.
A year later, he wrote and starred in Good Will Hunting, a movie he had worked on for almost a decade and that would help him gain international stardom, as well as the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Matt Damon’s Guest Appearance in Will & Grace Soon Became a Fan Favorite
In 2002, Matt Damon made a small guest appearance on the sixteenth episode of the beloved television series Will & Grace's fourth season. Titled "A Chorus Lie," this episode includes the guest performances of Damon, Leslie Jordan, Patrick Kerr, and the real-life members of the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles.
In this episode, Jack (Sean Hayes) competes against Owen (Matt Damon), his life-long rival, to be the final entrant in a gay men's chorus. After learning that Owen is straight, Jack tries exposing the lie to knock him out of the running with help from Grace (Debra Messing).
"It was just a smart twist on an old story, the guy who pretended to be gay to get into the gay chorus as opposed to a gay guy pretending to be straight," Hayes explained to Entertainment Weekly why he thinks Damon's guest appearance is still a fan-favorite. "I think that was a really smart twist."
The episode was not only a success with the fans but also with the critics. According to Nielsen ratings, "A Chorus Lie" was watched by more than 25 million viewers during its original broadcast, making it the most-watched episode in the history of the show. Additionally, this episode got three Emmy Award nominations and won one in the "Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Series" category.
Will & Grace Star Sean Hayes Didn’t Have to Do Much to Convince Matt Damon to Appear in This Beloved Sitcom
According to IMDb, Matt Damon guest-starred on Will & Grace as an opportunity to promote his then-upcoming movie at the time, The Bourne Identity (2002). Plus, it turns out that the Good Will Hunting star didn’t need much convincing to play this small role.
When Sean Hayes and Eric McCormack appeared on PeopleTV's Couch Surfing to talk about the Will & Grace series finale, Hayes revealed that getting Damon to make a cameo on the show was actually very simple.
"Matt and I used to play softball, a long, long, long, long, long time ago back then," Hayes explained. "We were just playing and I was like, 'Did you want to do the show?' And he was like, 'Yeah, why not?' Literally it was that easy. He was like, 'Yeah, I'll come on the show.'"
