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In 11 Questions, The A.V. Club asks interesting people 11 interesting questions—and then asks them to suggest one for our next interviewee.

Eric McCormack made an unforgettable turn on Will & Grace, but the actor has been staking his claim on more action-packed TV roles lately on shows like Slasher, The Other Black Girl, and, earlier this year, Elsbeth, in which he played a meditation-loving murderer. In McCormack’s latest series, the MGM+ thriller Nine Bodies In A Mexican Morgue, he takes on a dude stranded in the jungle who teams up with other survivors to figure out who is picking them off. As intense as that sounds, he tells The A.V. Club that the experience of filming it on the Canary Islands was like “an actors’ summer camp.” In our latest round of 11 Questions, McCormack reflects on his acting influences, learning who Jay-Z was while hosting Saturday Night Live, being starstruck by Alice Cooper, and why he wants to revisit his one-man show.  

1. Did you make a New Year’s resolution, and if yes, how is it going? 

Eric McCormack: I have a funny answer but it’s true. My New Year’s resolution, because I turned 60 last year, is to live more in the present and not be worrying so much about what happens next week or in four months. 

The A.V. Club: How have you been doing?

EM: It’s hard to keep up, but I’m getting better at it. The thing is, I’m a planner. I like a schedule and I like to have thought of everything. I’m trying to take a break from that occasionally and just tell myself, “Okay, if nothing else happens, just make a plan for today.” So that’s good. 

2. If someone gave you a blank check to make any one creative project, what would it be? 

EM: I was actually just talking about this with someone but it would be a one–man show that I once did, which was basically me talking about who I was in my adolescence. I was very much a kid in my bedroom pretending to be a rock star, and I put together a show with a great rock band. When I did it before, it was always done for charity, and I couldn’t afford to do more with it. I’d love to take that show on the road and share it with people. In many ways, that’s the most honest thing I’ve ever done because it was about my childhood. I feel like I’m an actor who learned everything I needed to know in many ways from the games I played when I was 10 and the musicians I pretended to be when I was playing a tennis racket in my bedroom. 

AVC: Who was the most influential musician or artist back then for you? 

EM: This is going to sound odd, but it started with a children’s television show in Canada I was obsessed with called Mr. Dressup. I was probably five or six years old when I saw it and I watched it for years. A man named Ernie Coombs, who had been a partner with Mr. Rogers in the early days, was the star. Mr. Dressup had something he called the Tickle Trunk. And every day he’d open it and take out a costume and he would beco*e whatever that costume was. He always seemed surprised by it. He could be a pirate or a doctor or whatever, and he’d make it work. I think I still approach work that way. I know actors are supposed to say much more dramatic or deep things about their acting guru. But for me, even on something like Nine Bodies In A Mexican Morgue, when I got to the island to film, I had to walk into the wardrobe department and immediately ask what I’m wearing as my character. I said, “Okay, let’s find those glasses or those frames.” I think those things inform me.

3. What discontinued food or beverage would you like to see brought back?  

EM: This is kind of a tough one. What’s something that’s discontinued? Well, I don’t know if this counts because I don’t know if it’s discontinued, but it’s getting harder and harder for me to find it. There’s a candy bar that I don’t think exists in America at all. I’ve only seen it in Canada, and it’s less and less now. But it’s called Eat-More. People either love it or hate it because it’s a little bit like eating chewy tar with nuts. I’ve loved it since I was a kid, though. I think it’s probably being discontinued because so many people go, “Oh, co*e on” when they bite into it. I love it.

4. Who was your first pop culture crush? 

EM: That one’s pretty easy. There are two. The first one is definitely Elizabeth Montgomery on Bewitched. I loved her character, Samantha Stephens. I was having all these feelings that I was too young to understand more about. I think I was confused because sometimes I wanted her to be my mom and other times I wanted her to be my wife. The other one is when I saw The Planet Of The Apes for the first time. There’s this human character who never speaks. Her name is Nova, and she has incredible hair and she’s dressed like a cavewoman. Yeah, that one was definitely se*ual. 

AVC: Have you gone back and seen either of those projects as an adult? 

EM: I mean, stuff from those projects co*es up on Instagram all the time. I see a lot of Elizabeth Montgomery clips because she was so beloved.

5. What would you consider your biggest pop culture blindspot? 

EM: Oh, virtually everything in the last 20 years with music. I don’t keep up with the recent stuff so much anymore. That’s something I did in my adolescence and my twenties. 

AVC: Are there artists whose music you’ve heard through cultural osmosis? 

EM: Okay, this is the most embarrassing story that I’ll tell you because it’s self-deprecating. When I hosted Saturday Night Live in 2002, and my musical guests were Beyoncé and Jay-Z, I had obviously heard of her but I remember asking people who Jay-Z was. Everyone in this New York world was going, “What?” There’s also this other guy, I’m not good at names, but he has this song called “Beautiful Things”? 

AVC: Benson Boone? 

EM: Yes, I heard that once or twice. But then his performance at the Grammys, where he stripped his jacket and then did that leap off the piano or something, I thought, “Okay, okay.”

AVC: I love that you keep up with Grammys even though you’re not that tapped into the current music.

EM: It’s my annual catchup, I suppose.

6. When were you the most starstruck and by whom? 

EM: Oh boy. Look, I got some good ones because there were so many people that came on Will & Grace. I’ve met Alice Cooper a number of times now, but the first time I saw him, we passed each other on the street in Chicago and I was so dumbfounded. I didn’t even know what to say. This is going back 30 years or so ago. He turned around to me and looked at me as if to say, “Go ahead, kid, just say something.” And I just didn’t say anything. I’ve told him that story since then though. Another one is the great director Sydney Pollack, who played my father on Will & Grace. Tootsie is such a huge touchstone for me co*edically that when he came on, I was flabbergasted. 

I’ve been friends for 45 years with David Furnish, who is Elton John’s husband. When I met Elton for the first time, of course I was starstruck and excited. But then I went to their wedding in 2005. I walked into this absolutely stunning Windsor home. It was just unbelievable, and people were standing around with champagne, and the first person I saw was Elvis Costello. I had met him once briefly, but I was already saying, “Oh my god, it’s Elvis, I get to talk to him again.” He then looked at me and he knew who I was. What a moment. And then I realized he was standing beside record producer George Martin, who worked closely with The Beatles. I spoke to them and walked away with a feeling of, “Oh my god, did Elvis Costello just introduce me to George Martin? Did that just happen?” 

AVC: Have people co*e up to you and said they’re starstruck by you? 

EM: Oh, sure, but usually what I get is a lot of “I grew up with you” or “My mom loved your show.” [Laughs] And then last week, somebody came up to me and said, “Oh my god, my grandmother loved your show. She just died.” It’s weird to realize that you’ve been around so long that the thing you did is influencing somebody. It’s cool to be part of something like that.

7. What piece of advice that you received co*ing up in the industry would you say is no longer applicable to new artists? 

EM: Something that I and a lot of us did back then is wait by the phone a lot. I’ve got an agent who’ll call me and tell me about the audition I’ve gotten or what’s happening with a callback. Nowadays, if you’re a young person, you can make movies on your phone or music in your room and put it out there. I tell my son that all the time, to not just wait for someone else to discover you. Discover yourself and take advantage of these outrageous tools that the rest of us are trying to catch up with and launch yourself.

AVC: Do you ever wish you had these tools when you started? Or are you grateful that you had to go about it differently? 

EM: I’m still grateful for the way everything rolled out. I wasn’t a kid when Will & Grace came along, I was in my thirties. In a way I’m grateful that I had a real apprenticeship and a real journey through my twenties in theater, mostly in Canada. By the time the good stuff came along, I was ready. I’m also grateful it came during the whole must-see-TV period. I can see my son, he’s 22 now, co*paring himself to everyone because everyone has all the tools and can do anything. Some people are releasing music when they’re 11, and I guess it can also get too sped up. People aren’t given a little bit more runway before fame or the pressures of a career hit them. This is all supposed to be fun. You’re supposed to not worry about money all the time, and you’re supposed to just be happy to be in an acting co*pany. So, I wouldn’t change it for me, but I do wish that I had a little more access to these tools when I think about the kind of things I might have been able to do with an iPhone when I was 25. 

8. Who’s someone new in your field that everyone should be paying attention to?

EM: I’m going to name a few people I got to work with on Nine Bodies. Adam Long, who plays Dan, really is the one to watch. Lydia Wilson is fantastic. There’s young Jan Lee, who hasn’t done much yet, but she just lights up the screen. I’m excited for them and I’m hoping that the show launches them into bigger careers. 

There’s also a wonderful young actress named Sadie Laflamme Snow, who is the star of a show on Hallmark called The Way Home. I worked with her on a series called Slasher and then once in a Toronto production of A Little Night Music. I take responsibility for the second project because I heard her sing during Slasher, and I went to the director and said, “You have to listen to her,  she’s your girl.” I think she’s also a star in the making.

9. What is your biggest travel pet peeve?

EM: This is a trait of my character in the show, too, but I think it’s someone being pleasant. I don’t want my being pleasant to suggest that I want to talk to you for five hours. It’s just that thing of being conscious that for whatever reason, we all need to be in our little bubble for a while. I think my biggest pet peeve is when people sitting next to you turn and ask, “So, what brought you to New Orleans?”

10. Who was the last person that you FaceTimed?

EM: The last person I FaceTimed was my son because we’re both in different cities right now.

11. What is your earliest memory?

EM: I am pretty sure this is real because with the earliest memories, you look at people and go, “Do you remember that or is this just something you were told?” But this is one, there’s no photographs of it, so I know it’s my memory. I had a hernia when I was two years old, which is weird. The best they could figure is because I had this heavy horse toy, not a rocking horse, that I would carry up and down the stairs all the time. That must have done something. I had an operation, and my uncle was an anesthesiologist. He was in charge of that, back when you could do that for your own family. I do remember sitting up later in a ward with other kids crying for whatever operations they’d had. I could see my parents and my uncle behind the glass, and I remember saying, as much as a two-year-old can, to the other kids, “It’s okay, you guys, it’s okay. Why are you crying? You’re going to be fine.” I remember doing it vividly. 

AVC: That’s wild. Do your family members remember this too?

EM: I’ve talked to my parents about it. They’re gone now, but it has co*e up over the years and they kind of confirmed like, “Yeah, you were all piss and vinegar, you were happy.” I don’t know why I wasn’t crying or why I felt it was my job to make everybody feel alright. But I can picture it as real as any other memory.

12. From Michaela Watkins: What toy or collectible did you have as a kid that you would put in your go-to bag if you had to pack up and run? 

EM: It’s hard to describe it, but where other kids might use G.I. Joes, I loved this toy called Big Rubber Guys. In my mind, I would give them human characteristics and stories. There was a strange creature I called Bravo because that was the name written on his leg. Bravo must have been a co*pany 50 years ago that produced these little rubber toys you buy for five cents or from a gumball machine or something. Anyway, there was this little purple guy I called Bravo. I lost him as a kid but I would love to have him back. Weirdly, I think it would explain to other people who I am and what I was like a kid. 

Without knowing who the next person we speak to is, what would you like to ask them? 

EM: When you were 14, what musician did you want to be?