According to Will & Grace co-creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, their show is “the Susan Lucci of the Golden Globes.” Why? Despite now having been nominated 29 times, the NBC comedy has yet to bring home a gold statuette. Could that change this year? Perhaps—but either way, Mutchnick jokes, “we do get to drink and we do get to eat chocolate, so that’s nice.”
Last Monday morning, the ninth season slash revival achieved something none of its contemporaries—shows like Fuller House and Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life—has managed to do: clinch nominations for star Eric McCormack and for best comedy. Naturally, Mutchnick and Kohan are reluctant to tout themselves too much, but NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt is more than happy to say that the revival’s success would have been impossible without them.
“This, to me, in some ways, is just an extension of the show that everybody loved—with like, a 10-year hiatus in there,” Greenblatt tells V.F. “Virtually everybody is back, from the four amazing stars to almost everyone in that crew was on the show originally. But more than anything, it’s these original creators who are geniuses, who have just picked back up where they left off.” It helps that Mutchnick and Kohan have been friends since high school, which gives them the sort of close rapport few co-creators enjoy.
“Everybody knows that Dave and I have been hanging out since we were 14,” Mutchnick said. “We really are like family. Specifically, like brothers—and with that, there’s a combustible component to our relationship as writers.” The dynamic between all of their characters—but especially Will and Grace—is inspired by their relationship, and various discussions and conflicts they’ve had over the years: “Just like with the two of them, we also don’t have sex, so we duke it out with words a lot.”
Another crucial part of the process? Writerly anxiety. As Kohan put it, “The fear of not doing justice to these actors and these characters, it drives you.” Another way to look at it? As Mutchnick says, “high anxiety has a Groundhog Day effect on us.”
NBC first announced the revival of Will & Grace after months of anticipation, thanks to interest stoked largely by a viral video short that Mutchnick and Kohan made for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The short was a surprise to everyone, including NBC itself; Greenblatt said he only found out about it shortly before it aired, for obvious reasons. But the minute he did, he knew he wanted the series back on air “immediately.” His only worry? “I just was concerned, as were Max and David, that this shouldn’t become the big soapbox,” Greenblatt says. “It wasn’t that the first time around. People ascribed that quality to the show; it wasn’t the show’s mission. And I just wanted to make sure we didn’t suddenly make every episode about a political conversation or a specific thing happening in our very divisive world.”
That’s is understandable; in its original run, Will & Grace never felt mission-driven. “We understand what our job is, which is to entertain the largest number of people that we can get a hold of every week and make those people laugh,” Mutchnick says. “That’s the prime objective of making this sitcom. But we also put inside the body of this thing that these characters are socially and politically current, and they talk about what’s going on . . . They’re mostly just funny, and you mostly just want to hang out with them, but they also talk about the shit that you care about.”
The reception for the show has been warm: positive reviews, strong ratings. Like most creators, Kohan says he’d planned on avoiding reactions to the revival—a promise he recalls breaking “five seconds into the first episode.” He was particularly gratified by the response the show got for its second episode, in which Will dates a younger man. The story line captures Will and Jack—both of whom are trying to navigate a dating scene in which they’ve become old fogies—in a new light. Kohan was especially pleased to see how viewers appreciated Will’s impassioned speech about the struggle for gay rights—and how, if people forget about that struggle, those gains could quickly disappear—one he delivers to his young, clueless date.
To Greenblatt, that episode—which features the classic juxtaposition of Will hopping on his soapbox while Jack frantically tries to pretend he’s younger than he is—speaks to Mutchnick and Kohan’s gift at being topical without becoming heavy-handed: “Will will deliver a really great, pointed speech . . . and then it was undercut with a huge joke. And then you kind of move on.”
So, what might Will and Grace (and Jack and Karen) be up to when the season returns next year? Prepare to see a few fabulous guest stars, meet Grace’s sisters, and witness a tribute to Grace’s now-deceased mother—who was memorably played in the show by Debbie Reynolds. Oh, and also, there’s this tantalizing little nugget from Mutchnick: “We’re ending the season with Will and Grace in a dynamic that we have never seen them in or written them near in the entire life of the show. We surprised ourselves that we were even able to find a new place to put them—but we are doing that, and we’re very excited about the finale.”
