Will & Grace will return to NBC at the end of the month. But first, the network is giving excited fans a sneak peek of what they can expect from the unprecedented revival.
Hollywood’s reboot fever has taken many forms. There’s been the gender-swapped reboots like Ghostbusters. There’s been the next generation reboots like Fuller House. There’s been the live-action reboots like The Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast. And now we’re getting a reboot like we’ve never quite seen before—the same cast, picked-up-where-we-left-off reboot of Will & Grace.
In a new trailer the Will & Grace gang (and the actors who play the four main characters) make it clear the intention behind this revival is to be just as good, if not better, than the show’s original 16-Emmy-award-winning run which ended in 2006. It’s an ambitious goal, but one actresses Debra Messing and Megan Mullally insist the reboot will accomplish.
“The episodes we’ve shot so far are just as good if not better than anything we had done,” Mullally says in the trailer. Messing echoes a similar sentiment, saying in the video: “We just hope we can make everybody laugh as hard as we did before, or more.”
As a devoted fan to the original series, I hope they’re right, but worry they’ll have a tough time delivering the way they think they will. Yes, they’ll be playing the same characters, not grown-up versions of the characters they played as children (which has its own lingering air of inherent lameness), but still The Fuller House syndrome of relying on winks to the original series’ jokes and fans unwavering support regardless of the show’s quality seems to loom as a possibility here as well.
Then there’s the fact that the reboot will be arriving in an entirely new cultural climate than the original. It is what prompted the reboot idea for the series in the first place, as it came about after the four characters reprised their role for a Hillary Clinton support video during the 2016 presidential campaign. But will the late ’90s early ’00s show translate to contemporary times? In a video interview the cast and creative team did with Entertainment Weekly recently, they insist it will. Politics and national tension seem to pop up often, judging by the trailers and promos we’ve seen so far—Karen, for instance, is seen jamming out with headphones in to what we later learn is Fox News. “I think while we won’t be backing away from this…existence at the moment, we’ll also be overcoming it and having a lot of fun,” Eric McCormack said in the interview.
Modern day cultural references were a big part of the original show and it seems they’ll continue to play that role in this iteration.
“I want to make other people laugh right now,” Debra Messing told EW. “That’s the reason I wanted to come back, because I was like, ‘I really need to laugh.'”
If the cast and crew are able to reach the high bar they say they will, we’ll be ready for that laugh. Here’s hoping they can pull it off.
Watch the new First Look trailer below:
Do you think the new Will & Grace will be able to live up to the original? Let us know in the comments.