‘Will & Grace’: Major Character Reveals Past Assault

Will & Grace revealed a tragic event from one of its main character’s past, serving one of the revival sitcom’s most compelling episodes yet.

The action begins with Grace (Debra Messing) dreading to go on a road trip with her dad and trying to get Will (Eric McCormack) to help her get out of it. Will, however, believes that this is the perfect chance for Grace to get closer to her father, as they have always had a loving, but distant relationship.

In the end, Grace has no option but to go with the her dad (Robert Klein) — the episode marks the return of the character since he and Will’s mom got married off-screen — on the trip, which involves stopping to visit her mother’s grave.

On the way to their destination, Grace and her dad stopped at a diner he frequents, and Grace started to get uncomfortable when her father repeatedly flirted with their waiter and calling her “sweetheart.”

Martin tells Grace to not be so sensitive and that he doesn’t understand all the #MeToo rhetoric going around, which leads Grace to get angry at her father. The conversation leads to them bringing up a mistake from Grace’s past, when she stole money from a summer job her dad had secured her with a business associate. Grace, however, started to allude that there was much more to that story.

She told her father that she always believed the man to be “creepy,” but he never listened to her at the time. He said that he realized that the man could be a little flirty, but that it was a different time back then. Shocked, Grace reminds her dad that she was a teenager when she worked for the man, and that is when she goes into detail about being assaulted when she was 15.

Grace tells her father that on the day it happened she was wearing her mother’s nice earrings that made her feel like an adult. She then said the man led her into his office, closed the door, told her to be quiet when she tried to scream and then he assaulted her. Martin interrupts her before she gets more graphic. She adds later that she stole the money from the register because she didn’t know how else to get home after it had happened. Martin then apologizes for not being there for her and for making Grace feel like she could not tell him sooner.

After the tragic reveal, Grace is seen at the site of her mother’s grave and she tells her about “finally” telling her dad what happened, and how he took it better than she thought he would.

In the end, Grace returns home feeling that her relationship with her father might have changed for the better, now that her years-long secret was finally out in the open.

Will & Grace airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.