Eric McCormack and Steven Weber Reveal Past TV Firings: 'It Just Wasn't Working'

The veteran television stars talk to PEOPLE about jobs they've lost and former cast haunts as they team up for their podcast 'Eating Out with Eric & Steve'

Throughout the '90s and '00s, Eric McCormack and Steven Weber were two of the biggest names on primetime television — but the pair experienced their fair share of disappointments before obtaining that level of success.

“We all somehow or other got fired from a television show at some point,” McCormack, 60, says as the actors exclusively open up to PEOPLE about the times they got fired from jobs before landing their respective star-making turns on the NBC sitcoms Will & Grace and Wings.

“I was let go after the pilot of Jenny in 1997 starring Jenny McCarthy,” he recalls. “I never got a full reason why because nobody else took over the part — they just cut the part from the show. But a year later, on the night that we shot the pilot for Will & Grace, [former President of NBC Entertainment] Warren Littlefield came up to me and said, ‘Aren't you glad I fired you?’”

Related: 'Will & Grace' Reunion! Eric McCormack Surprises Sean Hayes at His Play in Chicago

“Well, I was fired from As the World Turns and my partner was Julianne Moore,” adds Weber, 62, about his one-season stint on the daytime soap opera in the '80s. “I was on it for about nine months and the producer brought me in and said, ‘We really love what you're doing, but your character’s going to die.’ I said, ‘Really? But you said you liked it.’ And essentially they fired me. It just wasn't working.”

“There’s actually videos of me on YouTube acting along with Julianne Moore and I'm absolutely, out-of-my-mind terrible,” he laughs about the early career gig.

It’s stories like these that inspired the longtime friends to launch their own podcast. Titled Eating Out with Eric & Steve, each episode finds the pair sharing a sitdown meal with an assortment of famous faces we know and love.

“Particularly in a theatrical setting, whether you’ve just seen a play or you’re in one, the stories that get told, and the way they get told when you see your fellow actors over a glass of wine and food, there's nothing better,”  McCormack says about coming up with the podcast. “We just thought, This is the energy we want to capture with each other and with our friends, this dining out energy.”

Weber adds, “Eric and I go way back, we always have fun, and it's a good medium to just chat. It’s when conversation flows most freely and when it can occasionally meander into witty, stupid or silly stuff that is always very listenable.”

Guests include stars like Bryan Cranston, Julie Bowen, Tony Shalhoub, Alfred Molina, Jason Alexander and Yvette Nicole Brown. The hosts dug through their Rolodexes of famous friends to invite, as well as those they regularly go to restaurants with. Every episode features more than one guest so that “no one is in the spotlight, in the hot seat, selling something” or feels like they’re being interviewed.

“Yacking and making each other laugh” is the goal of each conversation, something they’ve enjoyed doing with each other “for the last 25 years.” McCormack jokes that his friend is "the most himself when it's just us eating and drinking, so I wanted to unleash this on the world,” adding that the two wanted a project that felt organic to them and that could serve as a fun creative outlet when they’re so-often between projects.

“You're never really sure what the table's going to be, but it's always fun and there's always variety,” McCormack explains, while Weber notes that the hardest part of doing the podcast — like any good dinner party — is nailing down their very busy friends. The pair keep the conversations light and refrain from getting too in the weeds of the entertainment industry. They’re calling it “excited fan chat” and want to focus on the funny anecdotes of how guests got to where they are and the random projects of theirs' that they never talk about.

“The strong point is how casual it is,” Weber says. “We're an agenda-free meal and it's just friends getting together, which has proven to be the most compelling thing about it.” McCormack adds, “I think we all find ourselves being naturally self-deprecating. We want to tell the stories that are embarrassing, the stupid things we did or asked some big star, because those are the ones that are the most funny and the most humble.”

Related: Sean Hayes Says Shooting the Final Episode of 'Will & Grace' 'Was Really Sad ... Everybody Lost It'

While the conversations often flow naturally, they are still getting used to keeping things on track with the intent on having a produced product by the end. “Sometimes you need to be coaxed,” McCormack admits. “Sometimes I have to come right out and say, ‘OK, what was the high school production that's changed your life?’ My favorite things are the stories of how we got here — being a young actor in a theater company and some director was an a--hole. I mean, those are my favorite things and everybody has them. Everybody has got 20 great stories about somebody famous that was kind or was terrible, and that's what my mother used to call the fly-on-the-wall thing.”

“But more often than not, they're practical tales,” Weber weighs in. “Nobody is giving a symposium on how to act or all that stuff. There's something about finding compadres or comrades in arms and sharing those practical tales of survival that we have in common.”

Weber thinks back on the days of Wings and how the cast would all get together after shoots at a restaurant in Hollywood called Sunset Grill to bond and celebrate. “Let me tell you when Wings started in '89 and Cheers was still on the air, we would all shoot on Friday nights, so we would go meet the Cheers people and Woody [Harrelson] would be there and Kelsey [Grammer] and Ted [Danson], and it was f---ing incredible,” he reminisces. “It was so much fun, but that went away. And part of it has to do with age — we're tired and everybody wants to go home, so this has been a way to recapture that.” McCormack had similar experiences with his Will & Grace costars, saying, “We used to go to Mexicali, but that was really just the first year because we would shoot on Tuesdays, so we had a table read the next day and so it became less and less.”

The isolation of the coronavirus pandemic left the actors missing their nights out with friends, and they’re excited to have a reason to get their dinner gang back together — now with some fresh faces expanding the group. They hope the roster of guests continues to expand as the podcast continues. “Right now we're very actor-centric, and I would love to get some of my rock star heroes,” McCormack muses. “I'd love to get Elvis Costello and Elton John because those stories are the ones I'm the most hungry for.”

Meanwhile, Weber’s dream list includes an array of Hollywood titans. “Warren Beatty, I'd love to have Quentin Tarantino on, it'd be interesting to have someone like Viola Davis on — somebody who's regal and out of our league in a sense.” When McCormack points out that the Oscar-winning actress lives down the street from him, his podcasting partner exclaims, “Well come on man, get her and Michael Douglas. Bing Bang! The thing is that when you break them all down, all these big giant stars, they're all simply yearning like us in a way. That's what's most compelling about the premise. I'm always reading interviews with these people, and I want to find out if they're like me a little bit.”

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Eating Out with Eric & Steve is streaming now on all major podcast platforms.

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