Interview with "Will & Grace"’s Max Mutchnick

W&G sometimes seems a little dated now.  Especially the persistent inability of Will, a handsome, successful, lawyer living in NYC, to get a boyfriend.

But overall it was a groundbreaking series and I think that it helped us as a community.  Mutchnick deserves a lot of credit for that.  When we look back in time it was really the defining point in gay visibility on TV that changed everything after.

I have my issues with W&G, but at the end of the day, it was one of the funniest sitcoms in TV history (Especially during seasons 2 and 3...sheer brilliance, they were).

 

Hey Max...how about casting Bobby as one of the characters? The gay one or the straight one, I care not...I just want his sexy mug back on my TV!

I really miss WAG... The quality might have slipped towards the end but it still stood as a popular and successful comedy. And I also will let the fact that Will's ability to get a serious relationship slip. It was a different time when it started - and America is, afterall, the most homophobic Western country.

Will & Grace was "the gay show" when there was next-to-nothing gay anywhere on TV. So in that iwas "daring" but in everything else it was cautious. Still it pleased the public and ran for years. Because it broke the ice we've got shows like Ugly Betty and Brothers and Sisters -- overflowing with the sort of gayness that wouldn't have been possible on Will & Grace. I'm very interested to see what his new show will do.

I think that what killed Ellen was that, after she came out, her sitcom became more of a PSA for gay tolerance.  People generally don't watch sitcoms to broaden their horizons.  They do it to laugh.

So to some extent W&G exploited and played with gay stereotypes, especially with Jack, but also with Will too.  This was an established formula for comedy.  Seinfeld was self-referential humor about about neurotic Jewish New Yorkers.  Friends made fun of twentysomething slackers.  Going back in time All In The Family made fun of socially-conservative but working class Archie Bunker and his relationships with people different from himself.  The Jeffersons made fun of a lot of aspects of African-American culture, especially those who had moved into the middle class or married white people.

Thus W&G really wasn't breaking from the sitcom mold because it made fun of gays.  Jack was a funny stereotype in the same way that Archie Bunker or Jerry Seinfeld was.  Will was more problematic because his situation often seemed odd given his circumstances.  But while he didn't do much kissing on-screen we also knew that he wasn't celibate and I personally related to him as a gay professional.  It was really refreshing that Grace was the interior designer and not Will. 

More importantly, W&G raised the threshold for people's acceptance of gay characters on TV shows in non-background roles.  A large part of why we can have characters like Kevin Walker on Brothers & Sisters is because of W&G.  

At the time a lot of conservatives complained that W&G was "shoving homosexuality down America's throats".  In actuality, not much shoving went on.  People tuned in by the millions of their own accord because W&G was a funny show and they liked it for the same reasons they liked Seinfeld, Friends, All In The Family and The Jeffersons.  It wasn't because of a "message", even though the message was clearly there, as it had been in those other shows.  It was because it was entertaining.  And by poking fun at gay stereotypes, some of which were true, W&G opened up a lot of people's minds.

I don't understand this whole problem with Will apparently 'not having a serious relationship'... In the first episode we find out that he had just broken up with his long term boyfriend. And then said boyfriend even returned for an episode. Then later in the series (yeah it is quite later on, but in terms of a gay man's lifespan there are going to be periods when he's not getting any action at all so therefore it was quite realistic in the grand scheme of things, remember he was in his late 30s afterall!) he finds Vince. That was a serious relationship which as far as we know has lasted for the rest of Will's life. Not to mention that Will did have the odd boyfriend here and there throughout the series. I think you guys are just replaying a broken record if i'm honest.

Anyway, I'm really really looking forward to this new show! My best friend is a straight man, so it will be interesting to watch :D.

You do have a point with the whole smooching issue...but, correct me if I'm wrong, a TV show with a gay man as a lead was a major achievement in the US wasn't it? And the little amount of physical affection that did happen between Will and his boyfriends, regardless of how chaste it was, was another major step away from the sexless image of a homosexual that the US public was used to right? I remember vividly the kiss between Will and Taye Diggs character in season 8 I think. Surely getting to that point considering how the american audience is, is amazing in my opinion. So I think Will & Grace should be praised not chastised for pushing the envelope for a fully rounded gay character on television that didn't include outdated stereotypes. Will embodied that and I believe that if it wasn't for him we wouldn't have characters like Kevin Walker on Brothers & Sisters who was able to carry on and push the envelope wide open. 

No lol. What I meant was that because Will was in his 30s it should have been a given that he had had fully sexual relationships during his 20s and that it would have been totally unbelievable if the series started when he was like 20 and finished when he was 28 with no relationships whatsoever under his sleeve. Heck I'm 20 and I haven't had a proper relationship yet...I think what I was trying to get at was that not every gay man will have men willing and ready 24/7 and that it is totally realistic for one to have periods of dry patches when it comes to sex and relationships if you know what I mean. Especially one that is busy with his career and has already experienced relationships before. Also I think considering Will had his heart broken by whatshisname he probably didn't want another relationship for a while. And yes that could possibly include years and years of singledom in my opinion.

Will & Grace embarrassed me with my black friends by its near-total absence of black characters (aside from the Gregory Hines season).  How can you show people in New York City and never have a black person enter the scene?  It was insane!!  And the only Latina is a MAID?  VERY embarrassing. No Asians of ANY sort either.  In NYC!

I recall how all my friends met every week to watch Will & Grace at my apartment the first couple of seasons.  It was THRILLING to finally see ourselves on TV.  But in time the jokes became all ANTI-gay jokes.  Very rarely were they jokes aimed at heteros.  And it began to feel like we were watching normal anti-gay sit-coms that ridicule US again.  That PLUS the excessive use of lame "guest stars" made the show become a complete joke in short order.

Not only that, a straight friend (who is urban and sophisticated - not a dummy) seriously told me once: "Will is not gay.  JACK is gay."  She described to ME that it was "OBVIOUS" that the intent of the show was for Will and Grace to "get together romantically" at the end.  And I found that MANY straights shared that absurd notion.  Sadly, the show never did anything to teach these people better.  They still think that gays are "the other" - weird, weak, and worthless - and straights are anyone of substance.

For the good or for the worse, Will & Grace was the show that helped me as I was coming out to myself.  It had been taboo for years in my parents household, but as I began to feel more and more a stranger there, downloading episodes through Kazaa or on bittorrents gave me a little glimpse into a world where I was normal.  I even managed to get one sister hooked because of the humor, and she subsequently has accepted me more than the others have it seems.  I still miss the show, but I am so grateful for what that show made possible by its trailblazing ways.

Thanks Max.

Why did none of these characters have good solid mates? Seems a simple answer, they were all horrible humans. Nothing to do with gay or straight, stereotypes or not. They were self absorbed to the tenth degree. Being a drunk or druggy is not funny. Leaching off others for your life’s work is not funny. Being shallow arrogant and controlling is not funny. If people really identified with these characters they too must be lacking.  Gay or straight, yucky people.

You're totally right Psionycx, I mean if Will & Grace was a UK show, I'd be arguing the exact same thing like I am with Paul and Jonny in Emmerdale. But because the US is very different in terms of gay acceptance, I just see the chaste kissing and that between Will and his boyfriends during the show only really as something very positive in the grand scheme of things, so I don't feel the need to critisize it. That and the show was just genius in my opinion. The 4 characters made me laugh so much, even in the latter seasons when people were saying it wasn't as funny.

Mike, I totally disagree that they were 'horrible humans'. Yeah Karen was addicted to drugs, but at heart all of them were good people. Will and Grace the most I think.

I wonder how many gay men your age found Will & Grace a touchstone in the same way. Lots of us may have felt it was too cautious or too timid or too  (fill in the blank) but I'm sure for many people, warts and all, Will & Grace was a liferaft.

Now with Brothers and Sisters we have much more complicated gay characters whose romantic lives are detailed with the same seriousness as the straight ones. More important the straight characters on the show don't see the gays as alien or "other" in any way. Needless to say Brothers and Sisters is a "realistic" show and Will & Grace was a cartoon. But in the land of cartoon we now have Ugly Betty whose gay characters are not only flamboyant but surprisingly three-dimensional. Marc and Cliff are an amazing couple and I greatly look forward to see what the writers have in store for them.

Like Jeremy, the fact that Will and Grace was on the air was a huge relief to me. I mean, I was still pretty screwed up in the head with self-loathing, but the fact that a show like W&G was popular, and something everyone in my family watched and enjoyed made me breathe a little easier. That it didn't show more of what it was like to be a gay man, that there wasn't more to empathize with like, say, Luke's coming out storyline on ATWT, or Marco on Degrassi, or hell, even Kenny on War at Home, was a drag, and could have helped more, potentially, the simple fact that it existed warmed a portion of my heart with a feeling of "it's okay to be gay." And with every step forward we take in media I feel a bit warmer knowing that future boys who like boys (and girls who like girls, and boys who want to be girls or girls who want, well you get the idea) have this much greater popular media to connect with because of all the efforts that have gone before.

The show was absolutely perfect because it bridged a gap between straight and gay, young and old, everything and everyone in between.  Rosie, Ellen and Elton and a few more entertainers would lite the torch but W&G took it and ran with it.  You never thought that a little half-hour comedy sitcom would be so powerful but it truly was.  Laughter is the one thing that we have so little of on this planet and it seems at that W&G was nothing more than a free-fall of laughter with a twist.  There were some storylines that most including gay people just couldn't relate too but it seems that you honestly started to not only laugh with and at the characters of W&G but you actually started to really care about them.  You might have had more empathy, compassion and sympathy for the characters on the show, then your own family and friends.  There aren't too many shows on TV, that you honestly are rooting for the characters when the series ended.  Jack, Will, Karen and Grace aren't just tv characters but they are treasured memembers of my family and yours too.  I have overheard some gay people put up a big stink about the show even when it was in it's heydays and especially Jack's character.  You want to know why they were so mad because of all the flamboyance of the show and especially Jack.  For a big sissy like myself, the show and especially "Just Jack" was exactly what the doctor ordered.  All gay people aren't the same but that goes the same for straight people, it seems our differences shouldn't separate us but sometimes they just do no matter what we do.  However it shouldn't make us mortal enemies and sometimes it just does.  However knowing that there are people like Jack and myself on the planet, you should feel a little bit at ease to know that everyone doesn't take themselves too serious.  It's nice to laugh but it's never nice to be the joke.  You can laugh along aside of me but never at me because life is way too serious and for real.