Will & Grace Cast Career Timeline: from Sitcom Pioneers to Modern Entertainment
By Marcus Vance
In September 2016, the quartet secretly reunited inside their old Stage 17 facility to film a ten-minute election-themed sketch. The video accumulated over ten million views within forty-eight hours. The staggering audience engagement signaled to NBC Chairman Robert Greenblatt that an insatiable appetite remained for traditional multi-cam comedies anchored by trusted legacy stars.
NBC greenlit a full revival for the 2017, 2018 season, initially ordering ten episodes before expanding the deal to sixteen, followed quickly by two additional seasons. Max Mutchnick and David Kohan returned as showrunners, retconning the divisive 2006 series finale that had originally split the characters across a two-decade flash-forward. Instead, Will and Grace were back living together in their Manhattan apartment, single and childless once more.
The revival averaged 9.8 million viewers in its comeback season once multiplatform delayed viewing factored in. However, the production faced standard modern broadcast headwinds. By season eleven, which finished in April 2020, live linear ratings dropped closer to 2.3 million viewers per episode. High per-episode salaries for the four leads, estimated around $250,000 to $350,000 per episode during the second run, made extending the revival financially unviable compared to cheaper unscripted alternative programming. The cast walked away on their own terms, closing the book on 246 total episodes.
Marcus Vance is a cybersecurity auditor and technology writer dedicated to educating the public about online safety, data privacy regulations, enterprise security, and emerging cyber threats.
