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How Debra Messing’s contract saved the Will and Grace Finale

It was the end of a Will & Grace era … again. Thursday night saw the final finale of the hit NBC sitcom, 14 years after its original ending. The series, starring Debra Messing, Megan Mullally, Sean Hayes and Eric McCormack, ran for a total of 246 episodes However, the series almost had a VERY …

It was the end of a Will & Grace era … again.

Thursday night saw the final finale of the hit NBC sitcom, 14 years after its original ending.

The series, starring Debra Messing, Megan Mullally, Sean Hayes and Eric McCormack, ran for a total of 246 episodes

However, the series almost had a VERY different ending.

As the show had started to wrap up filming its final season, the coronavirus pandemic swept across the United States causing many productions to halt filming.

Shows that had planned to continue taping through the spring television season were forced to end on a massive cliffhanger — but not Will and Grace.

Messing, who plays interior designer Grace Adler, had specifically stated in her contract that the show must finish filming before Christmas. And so it did — almost three months before the coronavirus put much of the US on lockdown.

“It would have been the most unfinished feeling to not get to the end of this season. Thank God Debra had it in her contract that we had to be done by Christmas,” says show creator Max Mutchnick said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.

“We did run into trouble with the retrospective that’s airing right after the finale. We weren’t finished with that and that was not easy to get to the finish line with the world shut down.”

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