Ben Platt will play Will's love interest on 'Will & Grace'

Sept. 25 (UPI) -- Tony Award-winning actor Ben Platt will play Will's love interest in Season 9 of Will & Grace, which starts Thursday after an 11-year hiatus.

"I think he's comfortable with himself as an older gay man," Eric McCormack, who plays Will on the show, replied when asked at New York's Tribeca TV Festival about how Platt's guest appearance gives Will the chance to explore dating someone much younger.

"We're all going to get to date cool guest stars and that was always the fun of the show. Who could we get that will bring out new things in these characters?" the 54-year-old actor said, adding the age gap between his and Platt's characters comes up early in the new season.

"I have a line to Ben Platt, who is much younger than me, and I say, 'Look, when I was growing up, the only gay man on TV was Bea Arthur.'"

McCormack also talked about where the series will pick up since both title characters were married when the show wrapped in 2006, but are single when Season 9 begins.

"As with Debra ending up with in the [Season 8] finale Harry Connick, Jr., I ended up with Bobby Cannavale, who is magnificent and expensive and booked, so it wasn't like we were going to continue the marriage, but we will address it in a wonderful episode that we just shot," McCormack said. "What I love is that Will and Grace have come back to each other. It's not like we have been living together for 100 years. We went, we married and we had our hearts broken and now we've come back and it's a different relationship."

Platt, 24, is best known for his performance in the Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen.