A 'Will & Grace' Revival Could Really Be Happening

In the era of the TV revival, it should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention that talks about bringing back NBC's beloved comedy, Will & Grace have commenced. According to TVLine, NBC has reportedly been chatting with all of the sitcom's biggest influencers about a possible Will & Grace revival. Series creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, and stars Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Megan Mullally and Sean Hayes have all allegedly discussed doing a "limited-run of original episodes." No word on how many episodes that means, or when this would all be happening, but let's take what we can get, right? Bustle has reached out to NBC and Will & Grace writer Max Mutchnick for comment, but has yet to receive a response.

This news follows a sort-of mini-revival that happened with the cast in September. Just before the 2016 presidential debate, Will & Grace released a scene about the upcoming election. The whole gang was there — Will, Grace, Jack, and even Karen. If there was anything to be learned from the 10 minute clip, it was that the show's core four haven't missed a beat, chemistry wise. That was more than enough to prove to me that, even though 10 years have passed since Will & Grace went off air, this would be the time to bring it back. Strike while the iron's hot, an iron that, in this case, presumably never went cold.

Will & Grace was the first prime-time show to have two openly gay leads, and was, therefore, hugely influential in normalizing gay characters on TV. While appearing on Meet the Press in 2012, six after the show ended, Vice President Joe Biden explained Will & Grace's significance to the LGBTQ community. He said, “I think Will & Grace probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody has ever done so far." In 2014, The Smithsonian added materials from Will & Grace as part of an effort to document LGBTQ+ history.

Though many (but certainly not enough) LGBTQ+ characters have come and gone to TV since Will & Grace, there's something particularly timeless about the way these ones were handled. Maybe it's because they didn't set out to break any ground; they just wanted to make something real. And funny. They succeeded at both.

With streaming services like Netflix, where showrunners and creators have more freedom, perhaps Will & Grace could find even more room to grow. Debra Messing (who plays Grace) is certainly open to that idea. She told People,

"If there was a Will & Grace 2.0, my wish is that we did 10 [episodes] on, like, Netflix or Amazon or somewhere where it could be the naughty version of Will & Grace. Because you know we were on network television and there were certain lines of common storytelling that we were limited to so it would be fun to kind of go into that world where nothing is held back.”

While I'd definitely tune into that, I'd settle for a Will & Grace 1.0 any day of the week too.

Images: NBC