NBC Chairman on ‘Will & Grace’ Revival: ‘I Hope There Is More to Come’

TCA 2017: Sitcom will return on Sept. 28

Will & Grace
NBC

NBC’s revival of “Will & Grace” was originally ordered as a 10-episode limited run, but was eventually expanded to 12 episodes. On Thursday, NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt said there could possibly be even more.

“I’ll say, I hope there is more to come,” Greenblatt said at the Television Critics Association press tour. “I think that would be the greatest outcome of this whole thing.”

The executive said that the reunion short the cast did ahead of the 2016 presidential election made it immediately apparent that the show still had some life in it, and he’s hoping the same thing could be said of the rebooted series.

“All four of them, once they did that episode, had a really great time,” Greenblatt said of the show’s original stars. “But it wasn’t an instantaneous yes let’s do more episodes. They’re all busy … it was a lot of jumping through hoops to put it together.”

Greenblatt also addressed the decision by creator Max Mutchnick to ignore the show’s original finale, which saw Will (Eric McCormack) and Grace (Debra Messing) married to other people and no longer living together in their famous apartment.

“I was totally on board with that because the rebooted episode they did on the internet was just like the old show,” he said. “There’s jokes about it in the first episode, I don’t think you want to see them with aging children.”

“We love the essence of the old show,” he said. “And there’s a really interesting and clever way to explain why they’re still living together. We just sort of wanted an old show, but we didn’t want to take the chance or the risk, I guess, of [making] ‘Will & Grace” but it’s so different.”

Greenblatt also hinted that the finale “may still stand at some point,” suggesting that the revived show could exist in a timeline before the show’s previous ending.

“Will & Grace” is set to return Sept. 28.

Comments