It’s Friday night in hot, swinging London town.

There’s a hotbed of drinks, dancing and decadence mere miles away from the DIVA offices but this particular gay boy sits alone – bar a couple of cleaners who aren’t so interested in the above vices – waiting by the phone for Karen Walker to call.

No competition.

Well, not exactly Karen Walker from the long-running queer comedy Will and Grace, but the lady who brought her to life, Megan Mullally.

But within seconds of exchanging late-evening pleasantries via a transatlantic call to Los Angeles it’s apparent that Megan is quite happy to play up to her audience. ‘Now, what’s the deal going on in Europe with these dark rooms I’m hearing about?’ she asks in response to my telling her that I’m slightly hungover.

I inform her that there might have been wine being drunk in an alley during the course of my previous evening’s entertainment but there certainly wasn’t any of THAT going on.

‘Not last night anyway,’ she laughs.

We’ve only just met, I say with mock offence, and she’s already accusing me of using darkrooms.
‘I know! Well, I can tell,’ she deadpans.

She brought it up readers. I was poised, ready to ask the many questions that DIVA readers had submitted via Facebook and Twitter but already she’s behaving like the character that saw her win two Emmys, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and four nominations for the Golden Globes.

Not bad for a character that was originally conceived as a supporting role, one that arguably got – and still gets – the most attention.

‘I’m not as sassy and naughty and controversial as Karen is,’ she says, in an apologetic tone. ‘Sometimes secretly I am, with people I know very well, but generally I’m much more sedate than Karen. But I consider it a great compliment.’

Suddenly there’s some shouting in the usually peaceful domain of DIVA HQ.
‘I love that the office is closed but there’s like a hoe-down happening,’ Megan jokes. I inform her that it’s our very own Rozarios, cleaning late into the night. She laughs. ‘I’m glad they’re having fun.’

This is rapidly descending into girl-talk. We need to discuss the new big-screen remake of Fame, that being the reason we’re talking, after all. In it, Megan plays singing teacher Fran Rowan. But was she a fan of the 1980 original?
‘Well I saw it at college, I haven’t seen it since but I’ve seen this one, they had a screening for us, like a cast and crew screening and it’s really good,’ she almost whispers, as though shocked. ‘I was almost like, I won’t say surprised but I was like, “Wow, I can’t believe I’m actually in a good movie for once!”’

My laughter sets her off. ‘Usually my movies are pretty bad! For this – I’m not saying it’s Citizen Kane, but for this kind of movie it’s really well done. It’s good, it’s entertaining, the kids are great, it has a great message. It’s really all about all the hard work and commitment that’s involved, getting yourself to the level where you get the kind of jobs you’d like to get and kind of have the privilege of entertaining people. The musical numbers seem very organic, it seems like, “Oh, they happened to start singing and dancing”. It doesn’t seem “fakey” and the music doesn’t seem “fakey”. I hate fake rock, like Rent. Rent can eat me. I don’t like that kind of fake rock musical thing. Not that this would be,’ she adds quickly.

‘It’s kind of interesting – I only worked on the movie for four days so I wasn’t around a lot but I’m real happy with the way my stuff came out. A lot of the dialogue was improvised around what was written in the script. They had asked me to kind of put in my two cents worth about my character, how she would teach a singing class and her reasons for not pursuing a career as a singer. They asked me to tell them what I felt the characters reasons would be, and then they put that in the movie, which I thought was really cool.’
And if it follows the same format as the original movie and becomes a TV show would she sign up? ’Oh, that’s so funny. Never thought of that. Hey, I’ll do anything, you know me. I never say never.’
Before I ask her some DIVA Twitter questions (she doesn’t use the medium herself, saying she can barely drag herself to the computer to send emails), I first have to check if something she allegedly told American queer mag The Advocate is true...

She laughs before I even finish the question. ‘Every time I do an interview...! I said that everybody is innately bisexual and I would still hold to that. I mean, I think that people really desperately wanted me to be a big lesbo, but I’m just simply not,’ she deadpans. ‘I’m married. You know, to a man. There’s a penis and a vagina involved. I hate to disappoint anyone but I’m just not a lesbian.’

I tell her that’s certainly going to disappoint one of our readers who wants to know if Megan will go on a date with her and her girlfriend…
She chuckles again. ‘Yes, I’m in. But I’m not a lesbian.’ She suddenly gets excited, as though she’s remembered something. ‘I have a very juicy titbit for you that’s going to please you and your fanbase. I’m going to do a Broadway show called Karen: The Musical.’
Shut up! You are not.
‘I’m not kidding. We’re doing a show. It’s being produced by Fox Theatricals. I don’t know when, it hasn’t been written yet but it’s going to happen. It’s when Karen decides to do a Broadway musical.

‘Since I don’t have an understudy I can do it wherever I want. I can bring it to the UK and do it there. I had to get the approval of the creators of the show and they said yes; we have everybody’s approval.’
I get a little bit too elated at this point, but at least I’m not alone.
‘I know, I’m so excited! Karen is returning.’
She is, however, remaining tight-lipped about anyone else from Will and Grace putting in an appearance.
‘There will be one other person from the show but I don’t want to reveal who it is yet. We have really funny ideas, it’s going to be crazy and outrageous. In the theatre we can do whatever we want, there’s no standards or practices to tell us... It’s not television where you can’t say certain words or you can’t do certain things.’

If you hadn’t already guessed, Megan’s also a singer and performs with her husband in a band, Supreme Music Program, an offshoot of which – internet site the Supreme Story Program, which takes one subject and has people tell their experiences on it – she admits to neglecting of late. ‘I really dropped the bomb on that one. I was very, very naughty,’ she says, noting that she still may go back to it, but would like to continue the idea as a radio show. In addition she has plans for a new album, is currently appearing in a play in Los Angeles (‘It’s a real character role. If you saw a picture you’d be mortified. Karen would just drop on the spot. Or throw up. Or both; it’s not a glamorous character’), is filming a new TV series and then popping over to Broadway in the spring.

But I can’t help myself. I need to talk about the guest stars on Will and Grace. Madonna? She’s genuinely fond of her, but hasn’t seen her for a while. ‘The week she was on Will and Grace – and I can say this for a fact – she worked harder than any other guest star we ever had on that show. She’s such a perfectionist, she kept wanting to run the scenes and run the scenes. She’s got a great attitude, not difficult, didn’t have an entourage, didn’t have anybody with her except her manager – just one person. Couldn’t have been nicer, very forthcoming.’
So of course I’m going to ask who was difficult...
‘Nobody was difficult. Nobody was difficult, but,’ she pauses, ‘there were a couple of people who...’ She trails off. ‘I don’t want to say. There was one person who had a big entourage and it wasn’t Janet Jackson and it wasn’t Cher.’
Oh, yes. We’ve got to talk about Cher.

‘You know, I love Cher and whenever I hear her interviewed I think, “Oh my god, she sounds like such a cool broad, I’d love to know her and be friends with her and hang out with her”. Cos she’s really cool. But we didn’t really get to know her. I mean, I barely met her. I shook her hand. She was kind of like...’ she pauses again, ‘lowered down. She was kind of airlifted down and airlifted out for her scene, you know? So nobody got to spend a lot of time talking to her except for Sean [who played Jack]. She invited Sean to her castle or something in England for Thanksgiving, but then he didn’t go... I don’t know, some crazy story. She loved Sean but she didn’t seem to want to spend a lot of time with the rest of us so we didn’t really get to know her.

‘But I’ve always thought she seemed really cool so I was slightly bummed about it.’
I tell her that out of respect I’ll go home and burn my Cher doll.
‘No, don’t do that. She’s really cool whenever I see her on a TV show or something. But she’s Cher, you know? I figure at that point it just gets to the point where you just don’t want to get assaulted by fans and so you just try and keep it all to a minimum.’

Whereas Megan presumably just gets assaulted by gays.
‘Yes. Exactly,’ she laughs. ‘Gays and young women. Oh my god, young women are just... They love them some Megan Mullally. But I mean not even gay women, just young women. It’s interesting to me. It’s nice.’
And might young British women have a chance to get them some Megan Mullally in the flesh in the near future?
‘I would love to. I’ve been offered a lot of things there. I got offered Guys and Dolls a few years ago with Ewan McGregor but I couldn’t do it because of Will and Grace. But I’d love to come and do something in the theatre. I’d like to bring Karen: The Musical there.’

Our conversation draws to a close and she adopts a mock serious tone.
‘Darren I’m worried about you because this is Friday. Are you going to be in an alley again?’
I tell her that I’m off to meet a friend. Hair of the dog, I suggest, might be the best tactic. She laughs as I inform her we drink quite a lot in Britain.
‘I know! Well, you’ve gotta have a gimmick.’

Fame is on general release from 25 September. See meganmullally.net