NBC was so certain its revival of Will & Grace would work, it ordered a second season of the resurrected sitcom nearly two months before the first new episode even aired.
The bet paid off: Critics raved, and nearly 16 million viewers checked out the September 2017 return of the show, giving the Peacock network its biggest comedy premiere numbers in a decade. While those sky-high ratings cooled over the course of the show’s seven-month, Olympics-interrupted run, the series still finished as one of the season’s top 10 scripted shows among the advertiser-coveted adults-under-50 demo. And NBC was so happy about the results, it ordered a third season of the revival back in March, ensuring Will & Grace will remain on the network through 2020. With season ten premiering Thursday night at 9 p.m. Vulture caught up with Will & Grace creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan to talk about the experience of raising the (sitcom) dead, why they no longer stress about ratings, and finding humor in the age of Trump. The following conversation includes very mild plot spoilers for season ten (and two different usages of the word “ball”).
Last year, the revival went better than even the most optimistic NBC exec might have imagined. Looking back now, is there anything that surprised you about bringing back this show?
David Kohan: Once we figured out how we were going to dispense with the finale and re-introduce them as four people who were not in other relationships and were not married, I’m surprised at how easy it has been to fall back into what it was. It felt more seamless than I thought.Max Mutchnick: There is something about the original architecture that was so complete, that it made it possible for it to hold its shape, as it were. We sit in the same chairs around a table, as we did 11 years ago.
There were no real challenges then?
Mutchnick: The challenges that existed would be the same as any challenges that exist in a decade that goes by. I just think everybody got a little bit richer emotionally, and complex, and …Kohan: And older. Except for Karen.
Mutchnick: I just look at this like it was a ten-year hiatus. But the show never went away.
You were basically defrosting the show after years in storage. Does this season feel at least a little bit different, because there’s a running start?
Kohan: This year the challenge is, how do we move these characters forward in their relationships, in their lives, professionally, personally? Defrosting is actually a good way of putting it. They’re fully thawed. Now we actually have to cook them.Mutchnick: To use a sports analogy, this season we needed to move the volleyball down the field. [Pause] I hope that registered as a joke.
What are some of the ways you’ve moved things forward?
Kohan: Grace is starting a relationship with this guy played by David Schwimmer. Jack is engaged. Karen’s gotten divorced …Mutchnick: And Will’s going to meet somebody. I think we can tell you that it’s Matt Bomer. He plays a character called McCoy Whitman, who Will accidentally meets at the gay coffeehouse that he and Jack go to.
Is it a tough balancing act to change those dynamics? When I talked to Friends creator Marta Kauffman earlier this year, she was against a reboot for many reasons, not the least of which is because she says that show was about a snapshot in their lives as single people.
Mutchnick: Yeah, it’s a snapshot of their lives until all six of them say to her, “Let’s do a reboot.” [Laughs.] But as to your question: If you do this the right way, you are just making the pilot over and over and over again. We just find new things for them to do every week, but we’re never going to break the fundamental relationships apart.You’re already renewed for a season three, since your former boss Bob Greenblatt gave you early pick-ups. Does that security let you plan ahead in a way other network sitcoms can’t?
Mutchnick: We don’t know what we’re doing in the third season, really. But Bob gave us a luxury that you don’t get when you make these shows anymore. We’re allowed to creatively be calmer, because we know we’re not living and dying [by ratings] every week. Having that is an incredible gift from Bob Greenblatt, who’s the No. 1 reason that all of this has worked out.Fear about ratings is one reason why creators like Ryan Murphy say they’re signing up with Netflix or Amazon. You premiered to huge numbers last September, then people started watching on a delayed basis so your same-day numbers took a hit, even if a lot of folks were still watching. How do you deal with Nielsen ratings in 2018?
Kohan: I don’t know if this is a function of getting older and hopefully wiser, but there’s no benefit in freaking out about ratings. There just isn’t. There’s nothing to gain from reading those tea leaves. I honestly try to avoid them. Every now and then, they’re thrust in front of my face, but it certainly doesn’t affect me the way it would have 20 years ago.Mutchnick: The truth is, it doesn’t matter for us because we are not motivated by it. It’s never driven us to work less hard or harder, right? That wiring is already in place — the withholding mothers do that for you. [Laughs.] We don’t need ratings to make us deliver the best product we can every week. It’s nice when it goes well, and it’s deflating when it doesn’t go well, but I care much more that each week works, looks good, and is funny.
Kohan: My sister [Orange Is the New Black creator Jenji Kohan], who’s a Netflix person, she doesn’t know how many people are watching. She doesn’t know it. But they know, and I wonder if that would be even more crazy-making: “My overlords know what the ratings are, but I don’t know. I’m the one in the dark.”
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