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On the art-imitating-life front – or at least art acting as a cautionary tale for life – Eric McCormack has been busy lately. There’s the recent Will & Grace reunion, which, unlike much of what you watch about the U.S. presidential election, is intentionally funny. There’s also a new TV series that looks at this time in history as critical to the future of the planet, and a new film about a couple building a house. The Architect, which has its Canadian premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival on Tuesday, stars McCormack and Parker Posey as a couple who set out to build their dream home, but wind up with a nightmare architect (James Frain).

“I lived this. I built a house in Vancouver with my wife eight years ago,” McCormack says on the phone from said house. “When I met with Jonathan [Parker], who wrote and directed the film, I said, ‘Dude there are things in your script that I said, I said them word for word; I am the man for this.’ It was incredible to realize how common it is to have a couple’s dreams that are already kind of conflicting and then you bring in that third party [the architect] and sometimes it can become just a hurricane of needs and ideas but something amazing comes out of it.”

In McCormack’s real life, what came out of it was a large house he describes as having a lodge or cabin-like feel – lots of wood that fits into the Vancouver landscape with extraordinary views.

Eric McCormack in The Architect. (VIFF)

It’s big on paper, he says, but feels “homey and cozy.”

Also, unlike his character in the film, he loved his real-life architect – James Bussey at Vancouver’s Formwerks. In The Architect, the dream home was a CGI creation that was a class project for film-school students in California.

The film was shot two years ago, north of Seattle.

Eric McCormack and Parker Posey set out to build their dream home in The Architect. (VIFF)

The Architect is set in Seattle, but would feel right at home in any real estate-obsessed city – including Vancouver, where McCormack lived for many years and where he has been spending a lot of time these days, shooting his new series Travelers. On the series (which premieres next week in Canada on Showcase and will later stream internationally on Netflix), people from the future travel back to the 21st century and occupy the bodies of people who are just about to die. This is in an effort to change the course of history: events – including certain elections – that have turned the world into a bleak, dystopian mess.

The U.S. presidential election was the catalyst for that surprise Will & Grace reunion. McCormack says the reunion was “entirely” about voicing their concerns about Donald Trump in an effort to get the vote out. The group had always felt a reunion would be anticlimactic, he says, because of the way the show ended, in the future. But 10 years after the show went off the air, this was a chance to do something important.

“It did come about absolutely because just of a dire time when the people that can change this election – the millennials; the people who don’t realize the power of their vote – are thinking of sitting it out,” McCormack says. “A surprising number of them grew up on if not the original show, then the reruns for the last 10 years.”

The Architect is set in Seattle, but would feel right at home in any real estate-obsessed city. (VIFF)

It was done in total secrecy; McCormack and his old co-stars very quietly – their agents didn’t know, the live studio audience didn’t know, even the network didn’t know – got together under the direction of the show’s co-creator Max Mutchnick, who had the original set in his possession and saw an opportunity. About 100 people were gathered (including TV legend Norman Lear) to see what they told was a new idea of Mutchnick’s, but instead the big reveal was the Will & Grace set – right down to the original props – the four actors in character, standing there. “It was pretty emotional,” McCormack says. “People kind of freaked out.”

For the actors, it felt like home. “It was just like riding a gay bicycle. It was right back to where we were. There wasn’t a hiccup,” McCormack says.

The less-than-10-minute “episode” pits best friends gay lawyer Will (McCormack) and straight interior designer Grace (Debra Messing) against Trump devotee Karen (Megan Mullally) as they each try to convince friend Jack (Sean Hayes) where to place his vote. (It’s much funnier than it sounds here.)

McCormack and Posey wind up with a nightmare architect (James Frain) in The Architect. (VIFF)

“What better way to show how insane everything Donald Trump says is than by putting it in the mouth of Karen Walker?” McCormack says.

Messing has been particularly vocal on social media with support for Hillary Clinton – and concerns about Trump. McCormack admires Messing for that; he withdrew somewhat himself after being stung by the reaction when he posted something on Twitter praising Barack Obama for his stance on gun control. “The hate that I got from people on the right was incredible. It just made me think I’ll fight this fight in other ways. I’m not going to get into arguments with people sitting in their mother’s basement raging about guns. I can’t do it. So I’ve tried to find a middle ground in terms of how outspoken I get,” he says.

“But with every day you have to start shouting louder and lately on Twitter I’ve been saying what else do people need to see to realize [what] Trump is? We’ve been using gentler phrases for some time; even unfit for the presidency is not enough. He’s a truly hateful human being and I have to say that out loud no matter what befalls me.”

In The Architect, the dream home was a CGI creation that was a class project for film-school students in California. (VIFF)

The Architect plays VIFF Oct. 11 at 6:30 p.m. (Vancouver Playhouse), Oct. 13 at 11 a.m. (International Village) and Oct. 14 at 9:15 p.m. (Vancity). Travelers premieres on Showcase Oct. 17 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.