Will & Grace put a lot of effort into re-creating I Love Lucy

The Hollywood Reporter

Thursday's I Love Lucy tribute was a 20-year fantasy for Debra Messing, who got to use the original Lucy Ricardo's original Vitameatavegamin bottle. Every department on the NBC comedy had to bring their A-game, from production and wardrobe to hair and makeup, to props, set design and postproduction, reports Jackie Strause. "Those teams created 45 custom-made costume pieces; built exact replicas of the Ricardo apartment, candy factory, Italian wine vineyard and television studio from the Vitameatavegamin commercial; and brought in 14,000 pieces of the same milk chocolate-covered buttercream from See's Candy, 1,200 pounds of black grapes for wine-stomping and 48 bottles to match the original Vitameatavegamin prop," says Strause. "Each actor spent three to five hours in the makeup chair to complete their transformations." Co-creator David Kohan adds: "The crew was the most amazing thing — how each department really took this seriously and made it a point of pride to do the best possible job of recreating it that they could — they found the original-shaped Vitameatavegamin bottles on eBay."