Will & Grace

Did You Know?

• With the release of the ninth season, NBC also released Will & Grace: After Party, an aftershow hosted by Kristin dos Santos featuring cast and crew.
• Will & Grace entered off-network syndication in 2002 and remained in local syndication until 2008; cable rights were held by WGN America, then Lifetime Television, then WeTV and Logo TV.

Cast and characters

Eric McCormack portrays Will Truman, the male titular protagonist, a gay corporate lawyer who studied at Columbia University and met Grace there as a freshman. Will is precise and obsessive about cleaning, dressing, and decorating, yet patient and compassionate toward those close to him. He has a less expressive personality than Jack and sometimes chooses not to announce his sexual orientation. Several characters note that his relationship with Grace resembles a married couple, and at one point he considered having a baby with her.

Debra Messing plays Grace Adler, the female titular protagonist, a straight interior decorator with a fondness for food and a sometimes selfish attitude. She has been Will's best friend since college and his roommate for most of the series. Grace is Jewish but does not practice her religion staunchly, and she serves as a neurotic foil to Will's more everyman character, often relying on him for moral and emotional support after break-ups. Megan Mullally appears as Karen Walker, who works as Grace's assistant and uses her socialite connections to make Grace Adler Designs popular.

Karen is married to the wealthy but unseen Stanley Walker and does not need a job; she mentions she took the position to get away from her family. She is known for casually drinking alcohol and taking prescription medication, as well as her venomous personality. Karen is close to Jack, secretly adores Grace, and warms up to Will over the series. Despite appearing devoid of manners, she inconsistently shows intelligence in business, computers, and interior design, and is a certified public notary and an aficionado of liquors and prescription drugs, often unaware of her rudeness toward the working and middle classes.

Production

The real-life friendship between Max Mutchnick and Janet Eisenberg was the inspiration for Will & Grace. Mutchnick, who is gay, first met Eisenberg at age 13 while rehearsing a play at Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills. About three years later, she introduced him to David Kohan in the drama department at Beverly Hills High School. Kohan later said that Mutchnick and Eisenberg had a strong connection but were confused by the romantic aspect; they dated for a couple of years before going to different colleges.

When Mutchnick came out to her, she was shocked. Because they still cared deeply for each other, Kohan acted as a go-between. During this time, Kohan and Mutchnick started developing sitcom ideas and began writing together. They eventually got staff jobs on HBO's Dream On and executive produced the NBC sitcom Boston Common.

In 1997, they created an ensemble comedy about six friends, with two characters based on Mutchnick and Eisenberg. Meanwhile, NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield was looking for a new relationship comedy as Mad About You was ending. When Kohan and Mutchnick pitched their idea—centered on three couples, including a gay man living with a straight woman—Littlefield wasn't interested in the first two couples but wanted to know more about the gay and straight pair.

So the writers were asked to develop a pilot script focusing on those two characters. While working on the script, they spent four tense months faxing Littlefield the box office numbers from hit films with gay characters, like The Birdcage and My Best Friend's Wedding, to prove the concept could work.

Reception

Upon its debut in 1998, Will & Grace received a fair amount of criticism and negative reviews, many comparing it to the recently canceled ABC sitcom Ellen. One review suggested that if the show could survive a brutal time period opposite football and Ally McBeal, it might become a reasonably entertaining anomaly about a man and a woman with no sexual interest in one another, but doubted its chances. As the show grew popular, particularly among gay viewers, it continuously faced criticism for having a limited view of the gay community and for reinforcing stereotypes when some felt it should have torn them down.

The ninth season received generally positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds an 86% rating based on 37 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10, and the critical consensus states that the revival reunites the hilarious cast and picks up where the show left off, adding fresh relevance and sharply funny use of the passage of time. On Metacritic, the season has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 based on 26 critics, indicating generally favorable reviews.

The series finale was heavily promoted by NBC, with the cast appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Today Show. NBC devoted a two-hour block on May 18, 2006, for the send-off, including an hour-long retrospective titled "Say Goodnight, Gracie" followed by the hour-long finale. Series creators Kohan and Mutchnick, who had not served as writers since the season 4 finale, wrote the finale script. Mutchnick stated they wrote about what you want to have happen with people you love, and that all the things that matter in life end up having.

Ratings

Will & Grace first appeared on NBC on Monday, September 21, 1998, and its popularity grew steadily until it became a fixture of the network's Thursday night Must See TV block. The show was a major ratings success, finishing in the top twenty for four of its eight original seasons, with one season reaching number nine. Between 2001 and 2005, it was the highest-rated sitcom for viewers aged 18 to 49. However, after losing Friends as its lead-in following the 2003–04 season, the show's audience shrank, and it fell out of the top twenty during its final two original seasons.

The series finale attracted more than 18 million viewers, ranking eighth for the week and becoming the most-watched episode of seasons seven and eight. Still, the most-watched episode overall remains the season four installment "A Chorus Lie," which aired on February 7, 2002, and also ranked eighth for the week. During its peak in seasons three through five, top-ten finishes were routine, but the finale's top-ten rank was the only one for season eight and the first since the season seven premiere.

Despite its declining overall numbers, the show ended its eleventh and final season as NBC's most-watched comedy. Will & Grace was the first American prime-time series to feature openly gay lead characters, marking the highest-profile LGBT presence on broadcast television since Ellen DeGeneres's character came out in the 1997 "Puppy Episode." It is often credited with paving the way for later gay-themed programs like Queer as Folk, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and Boy Meets Boy.

In 2004, the cast was included in Bravo's 100 Greatest TV Characters. The Washington Post named it the ninth-best NBC comedy of all time in 2012. In 2014, scripts, props, and set decorations were donated to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. In December 2023, Variety ranked the series number 93 on its list of the 100 greatest TV shows ever.