Will Truman  

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William Pierce "Will" Truman is a fictional character on the American sitcom Will & Grace, portrayed by Eric McCormack. He is a gay lawyer who lives in the Upper West Side of New York City with his best friend, Grace Adler.

Contents

Fictional character history

Will was born on October 23, 1966 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to WASP parents Marilyn (Blythe Danner) and George (Sydney Pollack); he has two brothers, Paul and Sam. Will came out in 1985, during college, when — after being accused of living in denial by Jack McFarland, who refused to take it back — he found himself attracted to a poster of Kevin Bacon (he saw this as a sign that his relationship with Grace masked his true sexuality).

After graduating from Columbia University and NYU School of Law, he worked for a big-time law firm on track to make partner but decided to quit and start his own practice. This fell through in the show's second season, and he began working for Doucette & Stein, a firm that he worked for until the end of the seventh season. His next job was working for the mysterious Malcolm (Alec Baldwin), but that came to an end when Malcolm revealed that he was an FBI agent. In the eighth season, Will took a job at the Coalition of Justice, a business providing legal support for people who cannot afford it, though he ultimately returned to Doucette & Stein, having taken back his old job after being offered a partnership by his new boss at the firm, played by Lily Tomlin.

Will is usually the straight man of the show, being the most calm and down to earth in contrast to Grace's many neurotic tendencies, Jack's camp behavior and Karen's drunken snobbery. He also has a dry sense of humor, often making jokes about the other three characters.

Relationships

Will's relationship with his parents was always prone to issues, particularly his father, who, though outwardly supportive of Will's lifestyle, was uncomfortable with his son's sexuality for years. In season eight, the two had a fight in which George confessed he wished Will weren't gay. A few days later, having not spoken with Will since the fight, George died of a heart attack.

Will has had romantic relationships with three women: Grace; his high-school girlfriend Claire (Megyn Price); and Diane (Mira Sorvino), the woman with whom he had a one-night stand after he and Grace broke up. Diane is the only woman with whom Will has ever had sex, and, incidentally, was the only time Diane ever reached orgasm.

At the beginning of the series, Will's most successful relationship with a man was said to have been with long-term boyfriend Michael (Chris Potter), whom he was together with from 1989, to November, 1996. In the 2004-2005 season, however, he became involved in a serious relationship with a NYC police officer named Vince D'Angelo (Bobby Cannavale). Their relationship was put on hiatus after Vince, who lost two jobs in a row because he couldn't resist trying on gloves while on duty, needed to take some time off from the relationship. Towards the end of the final season (2006), the two reunited after Will's father's death. In the series finale, it was revealed that he and Vince were raising a son named Ben, who eventually marries Grace and Leo's daughter, Lilah. Thus, by the end of the series, Will and Vince's relationship has been strong for nearly 20 years.

Much of the comedy on the show is at Will's expense. Many of the characters (especially Jack), play off his many unsuccessful relationships between Michael (and sometimes including the failure of that relationship) and Vince. Jack also has a thing for calling Will "fat and bald" (which he clearly isn’t), also claiming in a Season 4 episode that Will is "strange looking" and has an "odd kind of shellacked look" about him. However, on several occasions Jack has confessed his love for Will in different ways.

Birthday and age

Throughout Will's life, every birthday has ended with someone - or everyone - else stealing the limelight. This is the plot of several episodes of the show, including "Will On Ice," "Gypsies, Tramps and Weed," and "Key Party." The conflicting nature of the air dates for these episodes puts his birthday somewhere between October and January, although October is the most probable. In two different episodes, Jack has said that Will is a Libra, which means his birthday is between late September and mid October. It is therefore the most correct to think that Will was born in October.

Although there are a lot of signs that Will is born in 1966, some episodes say different. In a late 2005 episode, Will says that he is 41, which means that would have been born in 1964. But if so, he and Grace wouldn’t have been in college together, due to a 3-year age difference, so it is therefore believed that Will was exaggerating his age. He also says that he came out when he was 19. Will came out in November, 1985, and if he was born in 1964, that wouldn’t be correct. It is therefore believed that Will was born in October, 1966.

Children

Will almost donated sperm to his high school girlfriend Claire (Megyn Price) so she could have a baby but Grace didn't want Claire to have a baby with Will because that would have ruined her "B-Plan".

In the final season, Will reunited with Vince and has a son, Ben, who Will fathered through artificial insemination with a young woman who sold her eggs for rent money. Ben only appeared in the series finale in 2006. He was raised by Will and Vince until he went to college and married Grace's daughter, Lilah. This reunites Will and Grace. He was played by actor Ben Newmark.



Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Will Truman" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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