USA TODAY International Edition
‘Will & Grace’ is back so what’s new 11 years later?
BURBANK, CALIF. “Minnows!” The reunited cast of Will &
Grace — Debra Messing, Eric McCormack, Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally — sit around a rectangular table covered in stacks of pink paper representing the day’s script, laughing over jokes about peaches and overpriced almond butter.
Then Minnie Driver walks up. It’s Hayes who spots her first, calling out the nickname. “It’s so surreal!” says Driver. Messing, clad in a ‘Dance Like Russia Isn’t Watching’ T-shirt, hugs her and takes a selfie.
Driver is reprising her role as Karen’s nemesis, Lorraine Finster, on an upcoming episode of NBC’s comedy (Thursday, 9 ET/ PT). Surreal, indeed: More than a decade later, the cast looks (amazingly) the same in person, and so do the sets.
So what’s changed here? First, forget the teary finale (and the kids who came with it).
Instead, it’s simply 11 years later. Grace is wildly successful but newly divorced from Leo and temporarily living with Will, who is burned out in his corporate law job but enjoying the single life.
Jack “is kind of stuck,” says Hayes, though he’s trademarked a new acting method called “jackting.” Karen still works for Grace, but now she’s “besties with Donnie and Melania, and she spends a lot of time with them at Mar-a-Lago,” says Mullally.
But TV has morphed dramatically since 1998, when the sitcom was considered groundbreaking for featuring unapologetically gay characters.
It begs the question: What can Will & Grace do for us now?
“What’s topical about it is these characters are living fully. Despite what happened a few years ago with marriage equality in 50 states, (gay rights are) more under fire than ever,” says McCormack.
After last fall’s impromptu election spot, NBC offered a 10episode season, extended it to 16 and, after early rehearsals, ordered a second season.
“It really sort of paralyzed me for a couple of hours, because I didn’t see it coming,” says Messing, who lives in New York with her 13-year-old son.
Still, the word “reboot” is shudder-worthy for creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan.
Kohan fretted over damaging the legacy of the show, which lasted eight seasons and took home 16 Emmys. But “what an 11-year absence will do is make you realize what you had,” he says. And so they began writing with the man-
tra to make this
Will & Grace “the same or better.”
On set, it seems to be working. Watching the foursome is like taking in a tango by professional dancers.
In a sense, they’re home again. “It’s almost all the exact same crew and everything,” says Mullally. “It’s down to the same camera guys, the same hair and makeup people. It gives it this feeling that we never left.”