Dialing it back: ‘Will & Grace’ picks up from before it left off

“Will & Grace” now stands as an example of “Never say ‘never.’ ” Though the sitcom had an apparent finale showing the characters’ lives years later, forget about it: Those circumstances largely have been wiped clean as the original starring quartet – Debra Messing, Eric McCormack, Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally, all of whom won Emmy Awards as Will, Grace, Jack and Karen – and much of the behind-thescenes team (including James Burrows, who directed every episode of the original show) return for an NBC revival that premieres Thursday, Sept. 28. And not just for one season: The reboot already has been renewed for another one. The second coming of “Will & Grace” began with the popularity of a presidential election-related online video that regathered the core cast last fall. Mullally recalls, “Max (Mutchnick, the series’ creator and executive producer, with David Kohan) just emailed the four of us and said, ‘Hey, guess what? I have this set (the one the show originally was done on), and we should do something.’ And within 45 minutes, all four of us had said, ‘Yes.’ “And he sent us the (election) script, and I was laughing and crying when I was reading it. I was like, ‘Well, this is what we should be doing.’ And I put the script down and I e-mailed Max and I said, ‘Why can’t we do the show again?’ And he emailed right back, ‘We can.’ ” As for the original show’s ending, Kohan now says, “That was more or less a fantasy. It was a projection into the future. I also think that one of the things when we thought about bringing this back was, what was it that we missed. I think what we missed was the dynamic between the four of them, more than we missed the possibility of seeing what their lives would be like as parents.” “Will inclusivenesscharactersWhile& Grace” topicality prominentlyin back, featuringhelpedthe – show’swhen bringgay that televisionstill wasn’t– also commonmade an for enduring impact. “We’ve always said that the good effects were fantastic gravy,” McCormack reflects, “but we set out to be funny. We set out to be a sitcom that brought as many people in as possible, and I think the effect was that we actually brought in people from both colored states, from a wide range ... still, first and foremost, the job is to be funny. Will that include political and cultural things? Of course it will.” “It was all on the page from day one,” Messing maintains of the show’s inception in 1998, “and when we sat down together, it just came to life in a way that I had never experienced with anything else or since. I think because we all started out in the theater and we sort of grew as artists, as collaborators, it very quickly became a place that was very safe to try things and to fail. ‘Funny’ happens when you take risks. I like to think of the four of us as I think of comedy – as music – and each one of us is a different instrument. And when we play together, we’re at our best.” Also a successful television producer now (“Hollywood Game Night,” “Grimm,” “Hot in Cleveland”), Hayes believes that what worked for “Will & Grace” the first time still does. “I think this show has always been relevant,” he says, “and under the umbrella of relevancy is ... everything. So it’s politics, it’s social issues, it’s sex.” And Hayes is ready for the big acting workout that at least two more seasons of “Will & Grace” will bring. “We’re going to shoot it like ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ ” he muses, “where we shoot all of it at the same time.”