CULTURE

Billie Lourd Will Play Debbie Reynolds’s Granddaughter on Will & Grace

The actress will honor her late grandmother by playing her granddaughter on screen.


21st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards - Press Room
Jason LaVeris

With a role on this season of American Horror Story Billie Lourd has been quite busy, but she has still made time to pay tribute on television to her grandmother, the late Debbie Reynolds.

Lourd will get the chance to honor Reynolds next week by playing her real-life grandmother’s granddaughter on Will & Grace. The actress confirmed the news on Instagram, where she also shared a carousel of screenshots of her grandmother as Bobbi Adler on Will & Grace.

“I have watched and loved Will & Grace since I was (probably too) young. So getting to watch my grandma play Grace’s mom was one o’ the coolest things to happen to my young willandgraceobsessed self,” she wrote in the caption of the Instagram photo. “Next week I get to play my real life grandma’s on-screen granddaughter on one of my favorite shows and there are not enough happy adjectives in the world to convey the excitement I feel.”

During the original run of the NBC series from 1998 to 2006, Reynolds appeared occasionally on the show as Bobbi Adler, the witty mother of Grace Adler (Debra Messing) and Janet Adler (Mary McCormack). When the series was revived in 2017, many original characters returned on screen. However, after Lourd’s mother, Carrie Fisher, passed away in December 2017, Reynolds passed away the following day.

Per reports from Deadline, Lourd will play Fiona Adler, who, in case you didn’t do the family math, is also Grace’s niece.

This would not be the first time the 27-year-old actress has honored her late grandmother and mother. Last year, she dedicated a song to Fisher on the anniversary of her death. She ahs also followed in her mother’s footsteps by playing Lieutenant Connix in the latest Star Wars films.

Related: Billie Lourd Dedicates a Song to Late Mom Carrie Fisher on the Anniversary of Her Death