In the 11 years since Will & Grace went off the air in 2006, much has changed in America. Gay marriage is now legal nationwide; transgender citizens have gained visibility; the country elected its first black president, Barack Obama; and, of course, in 2016, Donald Trump won the presidency in a surprise upset.
When the beloved NBC sitcom about gay lawyer Will (Eric McCormack) and his neurotic best friend Grace (Debra Messing) returns this fall, the show will reflect the shifts in the landscape. “It’s gonna be truthful,” Messing, 48, told ET Canada, Thursday, April 20. “In every episode, we’re gonna be addressing, you know, what’s happening
in real time. Always our number one priority is to make people laugh.
But from day one, you know, we were shining a light and holding up a mirror to people and saying, ‘This is who we are now.’ So it’s all right
there. There’s lots of comedy to be mined from the chaos that’s
happening in our world.”
The Emmy winner, who returns for 12 episodes with all of her costars, including Sean Hayes as sassy Jack and Megan Mullally as boozy Karen, told the Huffington Post the series will likely cover trans rights too. “There’s an opportunity to now celebrate all the other initials of LGBTQ.
It will be great to come out of this next round and feel like we’re
normalizing an even larger segment of underrepresented people on
prime-time television.”
NBC announced in January that it is bringing back the fan-favorite sitcom, which ran from 1998 through 2006, for 12 episodes this year. Messing, a CoolSculpting spokesperson, told Us April 5 that shooting is set to begin in August. “We know that [the writers are] coming up with a very quick and clever way of addressing the time that’s past,” she said. “I have heard some story lines and I’m just very excited. It’s not going to disappoint.”
