Spotlight
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Fond Farewell
FTER 11 SEASONS AND 246 EPISODES, WILL & Grace broadcast its series finalé on NBC on Thursday, April 23, for the second time in its history (it ended its initial eight-year run on May 18, 2006). Created by Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, the sitcom centered on a quartet of friends, including the neurotic yet loveable gay lawyer Will Truman and the wackily flamboyant and equally loveable Jack McFarland. The hit show, through a perfect blend of sharp verbal and stunningly physical humor, as well as deep relatability to its core gay characters, changed network television history by putting the LGBTQ community’s issues front and center into millions of homes on a weekly basis. We reached out to Alphonso David, President of the Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation’s most influential LGBTQ political organizations, to discuss the show’s legacy. What follows are excerpts from our conversation. —Randy Shulman METRO WEEKLY: What do you think Will & Grace has meant to the
LGBTQ community? ALPHONSO DAVID: Will & Grace arose at an important time in our nation’s history. It changed how LGBTQ people see themselves, how their stories are represented on television. I remember being in law school in 1998 and reading a case called Bowers v. Hardwick — it was a Supreme Court case that upheld a sodomy statute in Georgia. Will & Grace premiered in 1998, Bowers v. Hardwick was still good law, which meant that LGBTQ people
could be considered criminals in several parts of the country. The Defense of Marriage Act, which is a federal law that defined marriage as being between a man and a woman, was good law. DOMA, a federal law that prohibited LGBTQ people from serving in the military, was good law. So when Will & Grace became the phenomenon that it became in the late nineties, we were in a very, very different political landscape for LGBTQ people. It also was a very different media landscape. Only a year before [it premiered], Ellen came out on television. And that certainly was a watershed moment, but there was also a significant backlash. Her show was canceled. So for me, Will & Grace felt as if it was the next step forward in advancing LGBTQ visibility on television, even though our lives were not being respected in the political landscape and in law. MW: Why do you think NBC took a risk on the show, given what happened with Ellen’s show? DAVID: I can speculate. You had some very, very creative producers and writers who thought that they could take the opportunity for another shot at bringing LGBTQ people into the living rooms of people who live in this country and thought they could potentially do it in a way that wouldn’t be confrontational, wouldn’t be adversarial, wouldn’t be off-putting. They were going to take a different approach and try to humanize LGBTQ people. I’m speculating, of course. But when I saw the show, that’s what I saw. I saw two different gay characters — one who was an arguably openly, out gay but not really with many people, APRIL 30, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM
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