The two possible reasons Dax Shepard was fired from his guest role on Will & Grace.

Comedian Dax Shepard has shared the story of a disappointing career setback, revealing he was fired from the set of Will & Grace.

While chatting with one of the show’s stars, and his good friend, Sean Hayes, during a new episode of his podcast Armchair Expert, Dax theorised why he’d lost an opportunity to guest star in the rebooted series.

“I was fired from your show,” he told Sean, who plays Jack.

Sean said he “almost blocked” the memory of his friend’s firing from his mind because it was so “horrible”.

Dax, however, said he wouldn’t have been fazed by the sacking if it wasn’t for his friendship with Sean and familiarity with the rest of the cast.

“Had it been any other thing with a bunch of strangers, I would have been like, ‘Oh, whatever. I was at a table read for 45 minutes and then I got fired. Who gives a s–t?’,” he said.

“The only thing is there was no anonymity to it for me. I knew many of the people at that table read. I think maybe that was the only element that I was like, ‘Well, that’s kind of embarrassing. These are people that I know—and then, I got canned.'”

News circulated in November last year that Dax, who is married to actress Kristen Bell, would guest-star on the show. Then he didn’t. And no one really knew why.

Dax and Kristen make up one of our favourite celebrity couples.

But it turns out even the actor himself doesn’t know the true reason why he was fired. Although he and his podcast co-host, Monica Padman, did have some theories.

Dax guessed that it could have been he gave a “terrible” table read – the process of actors reading the script aloud at a table together before filming begins.

He said when his agent called with good news about a movie he’d landed, he guessed something was up.

“In the middle of her compliment parade, I go, ‘Did I get fired from Will & Grace?’ And she goes, ‘They’re going another direction.’ I was like, ‘I knew it! Something stunk’,” he said.

However, Monica, who is also an actor and friends with Dax, suggested that his firing could have had something to do with who he was replaced by.

Nick Offerman, the husband of Megan Mullally – who plays Karen on the show – stepped into the role of baker Jackson Boudreaux after Dax departed.

“They wanted a moment with him and his wife,” Monica guessed. “If [Kristen Bell] was doing something with someone, they might do that to a person to get you to come on, is my opinion.”

Dax, however, didn’t want to speculate: “I don’t know the machinations of any of that.”

“It could be as simple as I was terrible at the table read, and that’s fine.”

The firing did provide a moment of awkwardness between the two old friends, but it was soon forgotten.

As Dax reminded Sean, “you don’t ever do anything wrong; you’re not the creator of the show”.

“This all worked out exactly as it should.”