How 'Will & Grace' Revival Will Deal With That Finale Time-Jump
How will the "Will & Grace" revival address the 20-year time jump in the show's 2006 series finale when it hasn't been 20 years since the show wrapped?
Talking to E!Online, series co-creator David Kohan said that fans who've been scratching their heads over when exactly the series will be set should "keep scratching."
Co-creator Max Mutchnick was more forthcoming, saying, "We just come out of a story camp that lasted about three months... almost more than anything, more time went into figuring out how are we going to reintroduce the show and what were the rules going to be and how were we going to address that finale."
So, no, the show won't be set in 2026. Explains Mutchnick, "They are very much living in that apartment in 2017 in the month of September, on the 28th of September at 9:00. [When the revival airs on NBC]. That's when you're going to meet up with them again and they are going to explain to you exactly what happened so you know the rules moving forward and you won't feel like anything is left open."
The two creators are also not too concerned about the show's "legacy," only with not repeating themselves.
Says Mutchnick, "I'm not concentrating on the legacy part at all. I think I can speak for Dave on that, too. We are writers who are going to a writing room every day and trying to write the best episodes of this comedy that we can. The only thing that we have to watch out for these days is repeating ourselves, you know, or borrowing from material that we had forgotten because there are 197 episodes of story and we just don't want to step on our own work. But we're not really thinking about the legacy per se because that's not our job, to talk about the legacy."
Kohan adds, "It doesn't feel like a brand new thing. It feels very much like a continuation, as if the show was going on, it just hadn't aired for the last 10 years, you know what I mean? It doesn't feel like, OK, well here we are with a completely new concept."
So just as in the promo that was released last month, it appears nothing much has changed for Will (Eric McCormack), Grace (Debra Messing), Karen (Megan Mullally) and Jack (Sean Hayes) in 11 years.
Kohan says he was thrilled to hear how excited fans were to have the show back: "It's very encouraging. The way I read it is that it's like people miss an old friend that they haven't seen in a while. And we want to be able to reintroduce them to an old friend that they like, that's comforting to that. And I feel like that's the goal of this."
"Will & Grace" returns with 12 episodes beginning September 28.