TV Mysteries: Where Did Grace Go to College?

Today we start a new blog segment called "TV Mysteries" where we will tackle some mysteries within our favorite TV shows. Today's mystery, "Where did Grace from Will & Grace go to college? As we were watching Will & Grace episode "Alive and Schticking" last night, a particular line grabbed our attention. This was the line:



GRACE: Jack, you've had affairs with married men, right?
JACK: I am insulted you would even ask. Of course I have. That's like me asking you if you rely too much on your hair.
GRACE: Guilty. It even got me out of my math requirement at N.Y.U.

Now, this, may seem like a normal exchange of dialogue, but what's interesting about it is that throughout the series, it had been stated that Will and Grace met while attending Columbia University, so therefore, why would Grace have needed a math requirement at NYU? We had a few hypotheses. 1) Grace didn't go to Columbia, Will went to Columbia and Grace went to NYU, she just hung out with Will at Columbia. This was proved false, after we saw episodes where they explicitly said they both went to Columbia, such as in the finale (they met during orientation, there rooms were across from each other) and in the episode where they visit an old college professor (they obviously went to the same school, if they had the same professor) 2) Will and Grace did go to Columbia, as we thought, but then Grace went to grad school at NYU, to get her degree in interior designing. However, we were able to find no evidence of this in any of our research. 3) Debra Messing, the actress who plays Grace, actually went to NYU to get her graduate degree in acting. Perhaps she just said the wrong line. It turns out, we think this is actually correct. That particular episode of Will & Grace, which was the 8th season premier, was a special live episode, that was actually filmed live twice, once for the east coast and once for the west coast. The version that we saw on the DVD (and the version that we saw when it aired live) was the East coast version. However, we found a transcript of the West coast version online, and that line about NYU is apparently not there! In the West coast version, the line is:

GRACE: Jack, you've had affairs with married men, right?
JACK: I am insulted you would even ask. Of course I have. That's like me asking you if you rely too much on your hair.
GRACE: I know, it's good right?

So, it seems that either Debra Messing improvised the line in the East coast and then after it aired live, they told her that Grace didn't go to NYU, so they got rid of the line for the live West coast airing, or perhaps it was actually in the script, but they realized between filmings that it is wrong. Either way, I think we solved the mystery! Grace never went to NYU, she just said the wrong line. Mystery Solved!