It was a dream come true for fans when NBC announced back in January that the hit 90s sitcom with gay lead characters “Will & Grace” would be returning for a ninth season. Old viewers who were turned off by the “distant epilogue” segment of the 2005 eighth season finale were also happy to know that the return engagement will be starting off as if that didn’t count.

But quite some time has passed since the last news regarding the show’s return that, despite the season 9 premiere being set by NBC for the fall, some eager fans are growing concerned.

They can wonder no more, as NBC has seen fit to grace followers with a new promo on the Fourth of July itself.

Again, they’re back

The new promotional teaser, running less than a minute, was posted on the official “Will & Grace” Twitter page right on July 4 by NBC. Entitled “Let’s Get This Party Started!” it features the four main stars of the sitcom – Eric “Will” McCormack, Debra “Grace” Messing, Sea “Jack” Fields and Megan “Karen” Mullally – generally just frolicking and goofing off in a stylized photo-shoot. For about forty seconds they dance about, pose on chairs superimposed with CGI of their names in the show’s stylized titles font, and even staging mock slap-fests.

Even the accompanying tweet caption has a couple of shots at the generally zany mood of the stars in the promo and the extremely long time this new season took to get “Will & Grace” back in the air. It loudly announced: “11 years and a few [martini emojis] later, they’re back!” And the lead stars are just as hyped about the whole thing as they were in the new teaser, with Sean Hayes and Eric McCormack re-tweeting it on their own Twitter accounts.

Gradual hype

NBC have been masters of hype in the way they have built up interest and anticipation for “Will & Grace” from the very start of 2017. It certainly helped that the network got all of the four lead stars to reprise their roles, though it didn’t seem that much effort was needed to have them come back.

The first major teaser released in May was themed as a touching musical number that hit all the right nostalgia buttons for fans of the show, which is considered to be a landmark in the portrayal of gay characters for mainstream television programs.

Created by Matt Mutchnick, “Will & Grace” is slated to return for a 12-episode season 9 on Thursday, September 28, 9 PM ET on NBC. Mutchnick has even teased a scene from one of the episodes between Will (Eric McCormack) and Jack (Sean Hayes).
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