How Will & Grace Beat Ellen's Gay Curse

i'm gay in september of 1998 the show will and grace debuted at what might have been the worst possible moment i thought i smelled gin and regret created by two young television writers who based the show on their real-life friendships will and grace arrive just one year after ellen's groundbreaking coming out episode and her show's subsequent drop in ratings and swift cancellation after ellen's show was cancelled many believe that any primetime sitcom with the gay lead was cursed to fail but not only did will and grace prove the critics wrong it went on to become a colossal hit putting beloved gay characters in front of millions of americans every week for eight years plus three more with a revival but the show also came in for heavy criticism particularly from gay viewers who said that it did real harm by deepening stereotypes using slurs and making queer people look bad where else can you see grown men in floral short shorts belting out show tones enjoy me across its run will and grace racked up 18 emmy wins was one of the highest rated shows on television for years and had an indelible impact on television culture and politics but was that impact a good thing or a bad thing hey i'm matt i make videos about pop culture and this is the story of how will and grace managed to overcome the ellen curse and wound up changing american television culture and politics the story of will and grace starts all the way back in 1978 when two 13 year old kids named max and janet met through their temple's drama program and quickly became best friends and eventually started dating in their teens it's a tale as old as time max was the outgoing drama club extrovert who always got the lead in plays janet was his fun best friend glad to have a boyfriend who loves shopping as much as she did the two were inseparable they dated all the way through college and then they moved to new york whereas a couple they did everything together but max wasn't happy he said he needed some time away and he moved to los angeles when janet came to visit him he confessed to her that he was gay the two stopped talking to each other for a year until finally their mutual friend david who they'd known since drama club days sat them both down and made them talk out their feelings with david's help max and janet rebuilt their relationship this time not as a couple but as a gay man and a straight woman best friend and all three grew closer than ever a relationship that would become an invaluable source of support and later inspiration years passed and all three found their way into the entertainment industry janet is the casting director max and david as writers all still close friends as writers max and david worked on shows like the wonder years and dream on and boston common and then in 1997 they came up with a concept for a new show with two characters based on max and janet a gay man a woman who used to date him until he came out now best friends but the concept wasn't quite recognizable as will and grace yet at first the show was mainly about two straight couples with the gay guy and his straight friend as minor next-door neighbors i'm just a pretty sidekick max and david started pitching their show to tv executives but the reaction wasn't great they got a lot of notes like this what do you think about not having will be gay as bad luck would have it this was a terrible time to pitch a show with gay characters the year before ellen had just come out on her show i'm gay she was the most prominent character ever to come out on a sitcom and her coming out episode was a massive raiding smash with 36 million viewers but in the weeks that followed viewers started to dwindle and the next season ratings dropped by 22 percent dragging down abc's other wednesday night shows and the woman who had been heralded as a brave trailblazer was now being accused of going too far too gay critics said that ellen had become too gay turning off viewers even gay viewers chaz bono who's then the media director of glaad said ellen is so gay it's excluding a large part of our society here's bob iger the head of abc at the time it became a program about a lead character who was gay every single week and i just think that was too much for people well she is gay every single week though abc also stopped promoting the show and added a parental warning to many of the episodes this program contains adult content what about this was adult content depicting characters who are gay on television in physical acts i believe is adult content so that might have contributed to the decline in ratings too but by the spring of 1998 abc canceled ellen and replaced the show with something that was much more heterosexual two guys a girl in a pizza place conventional wisdom at the time was that viewers just wouldn't want to watch gay characters on primetime sitcoms we're making a judgment about what our society is comfortable with and what they might not be comfortable with aren't we then just enabling a prejudice in the audience we're not telling people necessarily not to watch it so after taking a big step forward with ellen's coming out it looked like tv executives were about to take an even bigger step backwards and that wouldn't be the first time that it happened in past decades there were times when shows added lots of gay characters followed quickly by a backlash that got rid of all of them it happened in the 70s after a moral panic over sex and violence it happened in the 80s after reagan's election spurred a conservative shift and then after ellen's cancellation in the 90s looked like it was about to happen all over again so with all that going on max and david were starting to think that their new show was doomed but they reached out to warren littlefield president of nbc entertainment who liked to work on other shows he gave him a meeting and they started pitching their new show to him even though the specter of an anti-gay backlash was looming over everything at that time warren listened to their concept then told him he liked it but he wanted some cuts this time though he didn't want them to cut the gay character he wanted them to cut everyone else to retool it to make the gay guy and his female friend the leads and i said that's the center of the show that's the relationship i want to examine it turned out that warren littlefield had proposed a similar show a decade earlier to nbc's then president brandon tartikoff at the time warren said tardikov told him get the [ __ ] out of here he just threw me out of his out of his office back in the mid 80s was too early for tv executives to greenlight a show with gay leads but now warren thought it might finally be time especially since max and david were drawing from a real-life friendship which gave the show an authenticity that other pitches lacked while tv was shying away from gay characters warren decided to give max and david a chance to buck the trend and prove everyone else wrong if they could shoot a solid pilot to prove that it had potential that was going to be tricky since other nbc bosses weren't on board the great fear was advertisers would run from it don ohlmeyer president of nbc's west coast division hated the concept he felt the country wasn't ready for a gay lead he kept derisively calling the show grayson gay donald meyer told me i was out of my mind to develop the idea i developed it anyway at first warren told dawn it's just an idea nothing usually comes to them then while max and david were working on a draft of the pilot warren told don it's just a script most of them don't go anywhere meanwhile warren was pulling strings behind the scenes to push the project forward the big break came when he got jim burroughs interested jim was a veteran tv director who worked on the mary tyler moore show and taxi and cheers and when he read the will and grace pilot script he decided he wanted to direct it i read will and grace in november of 97. i knew that the boys had captured a genre and a group of characters that i had never read before now they had sitcom royalty on board and don dropped his objections but getting the script approved was just the first step since will and greece was going to be highly character driven success would depend on finding the perfect cast without the right actors the whole show would likely fall apart so max david and jim bros began their search for just the right cast and by the way a lot of these details are from the official will and grace book by jim calucci and top of the rock by tr pearson and there's links to those in the description remind me to get you a bookmark max david and jim bros brought in a bunch of actors to audition and early on in the process it seemed like they'd lucked out in auditions eric mccormick is will and debra messing his grace had perfect chemistry together felt like they've been friends their whole lives just like the real life inspiration max and janet they also brought in sean hayes and megan malali to read for jack and karen and they both had everyone at the audition in stitches afterwards jim burroughs said about sean hayes he could be our kramer or our urkel these four actors were perfect together and nobody could imagine anyone else in the parts there was just one problem when they offered them the roles all four actors turned them down denied denied eric mccormack was worried about signing a contract for such a long commitment debra messing was exhausted from working on a recently cancelled show on abc sean and megan were more interested in playing leads so max david and jim all leapt into action to try to persuade them with phone calls meetings and showing up at debra messick's house one night with a bottle of vodka one by one all four came around and agreed to shoot a pilot they were finally ready to see if this crazy idea could work so they shot the pilot in spring of 98 pilot sets up the characters there's eric mccormick as will the straight-laced lawyer loosely based on max my bandana's back in because i didn't get that memo debra messing is grace the flighty interior designer based on janet you know i had this metaphor worked out earlier but i'm just very upset right now jack was a flamboyant best friend hi honey i'm home and megan mulally has karen the chaotic rich socialite i'm the boss i give you checks yes you do honey and i love them i do you know i keep them all right here in this box the night of the first shoot everything came together perfectly studio audience went crazy for the show jim burrows kept having to pause the scenes to let the laughs die down i've never heard laughter like that on any other show after they were done and everyone else went home eric and deborah were sitting exhausted on the sofa at the back of the set deborah was thinking about how she just hoped the pilot would at least get picked up but eric was more confident he took her hand and he said i think we're gonna be sitting here for a long time seemed like they might be on to something great but it was still far from certain whether audiences were going to give this show a chance nbc had will and grace scheduled for premiere in the fall of 1998 and over the summer the network sent the cast and the creatives out to do previews for tv critics the early critical reaction was alarming especially after the massive controversy over ellen critics were skeptical that nbc could get away with the show that had multiple gay leads they kept peppering the team with questions about how they could possibly expect anyone to watch it was like any show with gay characters was automatically cursed to fail max and david and jim kept trying to make it clear that will grace was an entertaining show about a bunch of friends not controversial or political but it was clear that ellen's cancellation was on everyone's mind behind the scenes there was a lot of concern at nbc that the premise would turn viewers off before they even gave the show a chance so the team came up with a novel solution they'd let viewers think at first that it might not be a show with the gay lead after all as the premiere approached nbc's marketing went out of its way to suggest it was actually a will they won't they rom-com with two straight leads like friends and cheers both of which have been directed by jim burrows will and grace they're not a couple they're a couple of best friends and jim recommended that they go even further in the pilot he had will and grace kiss so that audiences might think that he could eventually go straight i knew how difficult uh homosexuality would be to middle america so i told max and david i think we should try the first year to make america believe that will's gonna recant and marry grace once you got them in there then they could see how funny it is once you saw how funny the show went you're never going to stop seeing nothing anything sorry nice so finally on september 21st 1998 the show had its premiere and it did okay in ratings not great just okay managed to pick up a small devoted following but over the next few weeks will and grace started to draw criticism from gay viewers a lot of gay viewers complained that the show painted them in a negative light that it used too many stereotypes that it should take more of a political stance that will acted too straight and jack acted too gay the bay area reporter called will a token queer and a clone the advocate printed angry letters calling the characters neutered and the show just more of the same oh god this is worse than when i was caught shoplifting at lane bryant criticism from queer viewers continued to build over season one and then close to the end of the season the show did something shocking it ran an episode that made repeated use of the efsler something that seemed like it would anger gay viewers even more in the episode entitled will works out jack starts coming to will's gym and embarrasses him with how flamboyant he is hello press this will doesn't want to be associated with anything too gay in public he's worried what people will think of him if they see him with jack i don't know sometimes it's just such a jack overhears will lets him know that it hurt well you know the old saying well a rolling stone gathers no moss yeah you can lead a fat to water but you can't make him drink penny saved is a urn but then jokes aside jack lets will know why he doesn't self censor i'd rather be than afraid he delivers that line to will but it's also like he's talking to his critics showing them that he's more than just a shallow joke he's a complex character who overcame his own worries about how he's perceived to become comfortable being himself will realizes he was wrong and stops trying to distance himself from his friend this is jeff my best friend this episode was one of the best of the first season and it hinted at how the show could set itself apart by tackling topics that other sitcoms just couldn't touch but the language prompted one of the sponsors to drop out we did that show where jack said about eight times and i guess we lost a sponsor that really spooked nbc network sensors started watching the show closer than ever cracking down on anything that might cause more advertisers to flee especially since the ratings were still not great at this point will and grace was getting beat by reruns if everybody loves raymond we just get to know too many homo jokes those kind of comments like that make me crazy i just sit to the network that's what we do that's what the show can do so after that particularly strong episode it looked like will and grace might not get to do anything that daring again but despite floundering for an audience in season one nbc renewed it for a second here behind the scenes co-creator max muchnick wanted to get much more political at the same time that season 2 started in real life california was considering a ballot measure to ban gay marriage known as prop 22. it looked like prop 22 was going to pass by a huge margin so max reached out to the no 122 campaign and offered to have the cast record a tv ad asking californians to vote no the campaign was desperate for any help they could get so they said okay but privately they were worried putting an ad on tv in california is super expensive the campaign didn't have much money and what money they did have they were planning to use to build infrastructure that they could use for future campaigns that they had a better chance of winning max's well-meaning offer could turn into a massive drain on their very limited resources still in late 1999 the cast assembled and shot a short message proposition 22 known as the knight initiative would legalize discrimination against gay and lesbian americans and their families but as soon as they got in the can max got a worrisome call from nbc will and grace's ratings at the start of season two were so low the network was thinking of cancelling it and with the show in such a precarious position airing a political ad could attract exactly the kind of controversy they'd been trying to avoid and jeopardize the show even further max flew to new york to try to convince nbc to save will and grace and on the way he called the no on 22 campaign and begged them not to air the ad that was a huge relief for the campaign which was still short on cash but the outlook was worse than ever for will and grace and by the way i wrote about how the campaign came up with an ingenious solution to use the ad without spending any money in my book defining marriage you can pick that up on amazon in meetings with nbc max managed to talk the network into giving will and grace a little more time to find its audience and as season two progressed the writers started doing something a little different with the show well season one episodes tended to be the kind of wacky premises you could find on a lot of other sitcoms in season two they started incorporating more storylines about issues that were specifically gay in one episode jax excited that one of his favorite tv shows is going to show a gay kiss but then when it airs this is not it where is the camera going why are we looking at fireplace get off the flames and follow the flamers this was something that happened on real tv shows all the time a few years earlier melrose place was going to show a gay kiss but fox made them add a cutaway [Music] on cbs picket fences was going to show two girls kissing but the network made them reshoot the scene so it was too dark to see it's pretty clunky they had to add a line in voiceover to explain why the room is just suddenly dark pull down the shade let's make it dark okay i think the darkness makes it seem even more tawdry but oh well so when this happens to a fictional show on will and grace will and jack get mad and go to nbc to complain they get brushed off with language that is probably pretty similar to what max and david heard from real life nbc executives but you will never see two gay men kissing on network television it's a gay network for god's sake the symbol is a peacock but on their way out will and jack wind up in a crowd outside the today show and will angry that they weren't being listened to does this and i just want to know how long i'm gonna have to wait until i can see two gay men kiss on network television not as long as you think that moment was also based on a real life incident about a year earlier two guys did this on the actual today show i have something i have to tell you i'm so happy that i love rich when that happened here's how al roker responded oh lovely there you go let's take a look show you what your weather is right now see they wouldn't do that on will and grace so naturally when the will and grace writers saw that they took it as a challenge and eroded into the show this was the first same-sex kiss on will and grace something that a lot of people had expected would be super controversial but the show cleverly used it to comment on how timid all the networks had been about showing same-sex kisses is a point that only a show with gay characters could make and did it with smart comedy showing off what made will and grace so special you can also see the writer's increased focus on gay issues on a thanksgiving episode the same year entitled homo for the holidays that episode includes a big coming out scene for a lead character similar to what many people believe to doomed ellen's show but not only did nbc air the episode they believed in it enough that they gave it a tryout on a special night thursday instead of its usual tuesday and on an all-new willing race will jack's mom discover his secret that table setting is exquisite like it's fit for a queen that was huge thursday was nbc's must-see tv night where they put the shows that they thought would be the biggest hits and appeal to the widest audience it's home to frasier seinfeld friends er the top-rated shows not just on nbc but on all of television to put a coming out episode on that night was a big roll of the dice for the network so in the episode jack's mother is coming over for thanksgiving and jack's nervous because she doesn't know he's gay somehow grace did you know i was gay when you met me my dog knew his friends encourage him to come out to her tonight at dinner i'll tell my mother i'm gay but i would think after 30 years it would be kind of liberating oh no we're not telling her i'm 30. but he's worried about how she'll feel hello sarah jessica parker hide me finally will takes him aside and gives him some advice about being honest and authentic advice that's pretty similar to what jack told will in the gym episode a year earlier i admire you jack because you are more yourself than anyone else i have ever known and jack's coming out winds up going over pretty well you could never disappoint me i just want you to be happy both of these episodes were very well received the baltimore sun called the coming out episode twice as smart and funny as friends quote one of the comedy high points of the fall season it wound up being the show's single highest rated episode for the entire second season will grace was finally finding its voice by incorporating real-life gay experiences that no other sitcom could touch and after struggling with mediocre ratings starting to get attention in season one television academy had barely recognized will and grace for any awards just one emmy nomination something that frasier's david hyde pierce criticized on live tv that year i'm also also very proud uh to be nominated with peter boyle and peter mcnichol and david spade and sean hayes oh he wasn't really should have been but in season two the show was nominated for 11 emmys and sean hayes won david hyde pierce thank you for single-handedly nominating me last year this added prestige was great but it didn't help with their main problem ratings stuck on tuesday nights will and grace still didn't have enough people watching but for season 3 nbc moved the show to a permanent slot on thursday hoping to replicate the success of its tryout this was a huge vote of confidence from the network executives many of whom had rejected the show when it was still just an idea they were clearly thinking of it very differently now and believed in will and grace so much they bumped frasier to make room for it thanks to that move the show's ratings soared sitting between friends and er will grace went from drawing around 11 million viewers to nearly 20 million it went from the 44th rated show to the top 20 and the next season top 10. thursday was clearly where will and grace belonged in the middle of the american institution that was must-see tv formerly assumed to be devastatingly niche written off before it was even aired by critics now wildly popular reaching more people than nearly any other show on television after season three it was smooth sailing for will of grace they had eight successful seasons with classic bits like the time grace wore a hydro bra look at that time jack met cher and when karen caught her husband's mistress smuggling some valuables celebrity guest stars started lining up to appear there was matt damon but who cares right because i'm gay elton john i'd hate to see you banned from every gym in america and what end up in a fitness protection program don't joke it's real george takei britney spears madonna i mean you must never know if people are really liking you just for you or the 80s hits here's the show's casting director lori opened him it was the only show i remember the time where the guest stars called us and it just became a very cool in thing to be on will and grace and by the way if you want to hear more about those guest stars i'll be posting bonus videos over on patreon including story about madonna's one condition for doing the show how molly shannon came over from snl to play a weird neighbor and the incredibly dirty joke that debbie reynolds told when they asked her to dye her hair red i've got those and hours more bonus videos over at patreon.com mattbaume so once will grace was a hit other networks tried to launch gay focused sitcoms of their own but that tended not to go well most of them just didn't have the authenticity that will grace was able to get from the real-life friendship that it was based on and the experiences of the writers many of whom were openly queer all the imitator shows either failed to make it past a pilot or got cancelled in their first year it was starting to look like will and grace might just be an anomaly as successful as it was it was still hard to shake the feeling that shows with gay leads were still somehow cursed by season eight will grace's audience had started to drift and in 2006 the time came for everyone to take a bow does anybody have a pilot i could read after it wrapped there was a vacuum left behind when it came to gay leads in prime time there were almost none aside from occasional story lines on desperate housewives and a fred savage show that only lasted five weeks and got cancelled before they even got to air the episodes that focused on his character being gay but in that vacuum new shows with prominent gay lead started to appear glee modern family ugly betty that's the gay flag gays do not have a favorite color they like them all these shows tended to feature more diverse queer characters than will and grace with a wider range of backgrounds and relationships and they were hits among the top rated shows on television especially with younger viewers winning tons of awards and running for years seemed like maybe the post ellen kerson shows with gay leads had finally started to lift but that's not the end of the story for will and grace or its impact on tv ten years later the cast reunited for a special video encouraging people to vote it's all gonna come down to undecided voters in pennsylvania anyway that's right the unemployed uneducated angry white man do we even know anyone like that i am 11. and it was so popular nbc brought the series back for three more seasons during which time it explored even more aspects of queer life like ex-gay camps i could kiss any male counselor in this camp and not feel a thing well that is the most challenge accepted gay weddings great wedding yeah want to fool around yeah uh the thrill of the chase and flight attendants is this chef's lounge taken are you and just as before it won numerous awards drew tons of guest stars and was watched by millions of people so looking back at the 20-year span from the airing of the pilot to the final episode of the revival was the show's impact on balance good well on one hand there were all the early criticisms about the show perpetuating stereotypes making queer people look bad avoiding politics but on the other hand across the show's run the casting crew heard from lots of viewers whose lives had helped some were gay like a 14 year old who wrote to tell him that the show helped him come out to his mother so he he thanked me because he said that he felt like for the first time he was represented on television and in a way it made his mother feel more comfortable other viewers at impacted were straight like jim bros's son and his friends who he drove to school every day and i would pick up four or five other 13 14 year olds and they'd get in a car with me and they'd talk to me and they'd say what's on the show tonight what's on will and grace and i say oh my god they don't see it as a problem so i maybe i have four 14 year olds here who won't be prejudicial when it comes to homosexuality stories like these just kept popping up and made it clear that the show provided something that a lot of people needed whether it was helping gay viewers feel like they weren't alone or helping straight viewers be better allies and on top of that will grace had a major impact on american politics that wasn't even acknowledged until years later in may of 2012 then vice president joe biden appeared on meet the press and was asked unexpectedly if he supported gay marriage you know the president has said that his views on gay marriage on same-sex marriage have evolved but he's opposed to it you're opposed to it have your views evolved this was six months before obama and biden were up for re-election and no presidential administration had ever supported marriage equality which was still seen as a deeply controversial topic biden shocked everyone by not only answering yes he did support it but also he explained why he thought attitudes on the subject had shifted i think will and grace probably did more to educate the american public than almost anything anybody's ever done so far the year that biden credited will and grace with shifting public attitudes was also the year that for the first time polls showed that a majority of americans supported the freedom to marry up from just a quarter of americans in the late 90s when will grace premiered so was biden right that will and grace was really a factor in changing minds well fortunately while the show was on the air a media studies researcher at mit did a study to see how the show had impacted viewers research had already shown that knowing queer people in real life makes you more likely to support equal rights and they wanted to see if that held true if you only see queer people on tv what their study found was that over time people who watched will and grace became more supportive of gay rights the more people watched the bigger the effect and because the show was so popular the effect was huge spread across the entire country millions of people across now more than two decades will grace happened to come at a pivotal moment for television when executives were swept up in a fear about gay characters and could have wiped away the progress made by ellen's coming out but instead will grace was able to pick up the work that ellen started and impacted millions of viewers then led the way for more shows each one holding the door open for characters to keep that impact going the baton was passed to us we twirled it a little bit and now we're going to pass the baton on to other people here's modern families jesse tyler ferguson acknowledging just how much change will and grace made possible there would be no modern family without will and grace they held the door open for us and once we were in the room for a few years we turned around and saw that they were still holding the door open we plan to hold the door open for those who want to come after us and personally i'm so excited to see what future towns do with that opportunity there are still so many stories to tell in making this video i came across lots of great stories i didn't have room for in the script like how sean hayes landed the role of jack with one unexpected joke and his audition i'm posting those stories and bonus videos over on patreon you can head over to patreon.com mattbaume to watch those now if you'll excuse me i gotta pick up some new sweatpants at the top that's a fat jack

Channel: Matt Baume

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Length: 28min 8sec (1688 seconds)

Published: Sun May 15 2022