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There's nothing wrong with the sound on your television. Daytime's newest talk host isn't helium-voiced hellion Karen Walker of NBC's Will & Grace. It's her real-life alter ego, the lower-pitched Emmy-winner Megan Mullally.
On Monday, she kicks off The Megan Mullally Show (syndicated, check local listings), a light entertainment mix of interviews -- both celebrity and civilian -- comedy sketches, taped field pieces and interaction with the studio audience.
An admirer of Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and Dinah Shore while growing up in Oklahoma, Mullally filled in for David Letterman in 2003. "I just had so much fun doing it. I was so not nervous, I took a nap before the show."
With positive feedback from a few hosting gigs, Mullally, now 47, started thinking that a talk show might be fun down the road. That inkling came to fruition faster than expected when daytime giant King World and then NBC Universal offered talk shows. The Will & Grace alum signed with NBC Universal.
"That two gigantic corporations picked somebody who played an alcoholic, pill-popping, racist, gun-toting, child-molesting (witch) on TV to host a daytime talk show is pretty interesting," she says.
The fact that many viewers know Mullally as Karen is an asset, she says. That's more recognition than she had when she started Will & Grace, for which she recently won a second Emmy.
"What's great for me, since it's a daytime talk show, is that I'm starting at the level of Karen of Will & Grace," which concluded in May after eight seasons, she says. "I don't have to start as Little Mary Sunshine. What people really want in this talk show is (for) me to be naughty and edgy. We're doing it."
The show will start with "a 'Megalogue,' a term way too stupid to let go of," Mullally says during a taping break in Los Angeles. "It involves me coming out and introducing a subject or telling a story about something that happened to me, and morphing to a sketch or a pre-taped video piece or a funny song."
Mullally, an established singer with band Supreme Music Program, will occasionally perform with the show's five-piece band, primarily "in a comedic vein."
Early guests include Will Ferrell, Felicity Huffman, Carol Burnett, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will & Grace co-star Debra Messing, with Eric McCormack and Sean Hayes appearing later, she says.
And viewers might occasionally get to hear a familiar voice. "I would love to have Karen appear here and there," Mullally says. "It would be fun, sort of: 'Just when you thought it was safe. ...'"
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