‘Will & Grace’ Finale Script Scrapped: Will And Grace Won’t Be Married With Children On NBC Reboot

Will & Grace won’t be killing off characters when it returns to TV more than a decade after it signed off—it will just pretend they never existed. That’s the plan for the revival of the long-running NBC comedy, which ended its original run with a controversial flash forward finale that had Grace Adler (Debra Messing) married to Leo (Harry Connick Jr.) and raising their daughter, Laila, while her former bestie Will Truman (Eric McCormack) was husband to Vince (Bobby Cannavale) and father to a son named Ben. The shocking finale dropped the unthinkable bombshell that longtime BFFs Will and Grace hadn’t spoken to each other in 20 years after a falling out.

Now, in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Will & Grace producers reveal that the reboot will ignore all of the unpopular storylines from the series finale that aired in 2006.

“That finale really caused us a lot of grief,” Will & Grace executive producer/creator Max Mutchnick told EW.

“You write a finale because a show is over. You never think that it’s coming back again.”

Co-creator David Kohan said producers didn’t want the focus of the reincarnated Will & Grace to be on parenthood, so they cut the kids from the show and put Will and Grace back where they belong: As single, childless roomies living in an apartment in the Big Apple.

“If they have children, then it has to be about them being parents because presumably, it would be a priority in their lives. And if it wasn’t a priority in their lives, then they’re still parents, they’re just bad parents, right?” the Will & Grace EP said.

“We frankly did not want to see them being either good parents or bad parents. We wanted them to be Will and Grace.”

Fan favorites Jack (Sean Hayes) and Karen (Megan Mullally) will also be back to Will & Grace, with Jack teaching an acting craft called “Jackting” and Karen still hitting the bottle (although she still has her maid Rosario in her life).

The Will & Grace creators’ explanation of where the show will pick up comes after series star Debra Messing previously said there would be a real-time time jump, not a fantasy 20-year one, when the show returns.

“All I know is that I was told that they’ve come up with a very creative way of dealing with how the show ended and that it will be in real time. So it will be 11 years after,” the Will & Grace star on Sirius XM’s The Bill Carter Interview, according to TV Guide.

Eleven years after Will & Grace ended on an unpopular note, Mutchnick confirmed that the characters will still have career success as a lawyer and an interior designer, but that their love lives will still need some help.

“It’s relationships that Will and Grace have always had the trouble with, and they still do,” the EP said.

While Grace won’t be married to Leo when Will & Grace returns, Harry Connick Jr. will turn up in the reboot of the series. We’re just not sure if it will be for better—or for worse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY10pANm4eM

The Will & Grace revival premieres Thursday, Sept. 28 at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.

[Featured Image by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images]