In an interview with The Huffington
Post, Debra Messing said that the upcoming revival of Will &
Grace will “celebrate all the other initials of LGBTQ.”
Messing, Eric McCormack, Sean Hayes and
Megan Mullally will reprise their roles as Will & Grace
returns to NBC with 12 new episodes. The show's creators, David Kohan
and Max Mutchnick, and director James Burrows are also returning.
Will & Grace, which
premiered in 1998, was the first prime time network sitcom to feature
a gay lead in McCormack's uptight lawyer, Will, and has been credited
for helping advance the LGBT rights movement.
When asked why now, Messing answered,
“It's a scary and confusing time in our country and we just felt
like we wanted to make other people laugh right now. And also
continue to do what Will & Grace always did, which was to
push the envelope, take chances and be a little bit outrageous.”
“It's a whole new world now where
being gay and lesbian is not something that people are hiding like
they did when we started almost 20 years ago.”
“I think that there's an opportunity
to now celebrate all the other initials of LGBTQ. It will be great
to come out of this next round and feel like we're normalizing an
even larger segment of underrepresented people on prime-time
television,” Messing
added.