Hayes and his producing partner Todd Milliner sit down for a riotous talk about their CNN docuseries, ‘The History of Comedy,’ and how to do a ‘Will & Grace’ for a 2017 audience.
by Kevin Fallon, TheDailyBeast.com
“I’m going to be asked this question for the next seven months, aren’t I?” Sean Hayes only slightly groans when I bring up Will & Grace.
He does laugh, too, suggesting he’s not entirely put off by my question about how the recently announced revival of the groundbreaking NBC sitcom might be forced to calibrate its humor for changing times in which the discourse surrounding gay culture, gay people, and gay humor might make the original’s jokes seem dated.
Hayes and his producing partner Todd Milliner are barely keeping warm, tucked in an unusually frantic corner of a Park City lounge at the Sundance Film Festival, where the duo premiered their latest producing effort, CNN’s eight-part docuseries The History of Comedy. (“Not ambitious at all, right?” Milliner jokes.)
The pair is close. They were college pals before launching the Hazy Mills production company, responsible for hits like Hollywood Game Night, Grimm, and Hot in Cleveland, plus the ambitious non-hit, Sean Saves the World. Over the course of our conversation, their couple-y bantering and ribbing develops into its own—fittingly—comedic act, a repartee honed by decades of friendship.
It’s so much so that you can practically feel a gust of wind from Milliner’s rolling eyes as Hayes begins to talk about how the new Will & Grace might update its humor: “I was an actor on the show and I’m still an actor on the show. I don’t write it and I never came at it with an angle. My job was to play my character in the best way that I could and hopefully people will enjoy that.”
by Kevin Fallon, TheDailyBeast.com
He does laugh, too, suggesting he’s not entirely put off by my question about how the recently announced revival of the groundbreaking NBC sitcom might be forced to calibrate its humor for changing times in which the discourse surrounding gay culture, gay people, and gay humor might make the original’s jokes seem dated.
Hayes and his producing partner Todd Milliner are barely keeping warm, tucked in an unusually frantic corner of a Park City lounge at the Sundance Film Festival, where the duo premiered their latest producing effort, CNN’s eight-part docuseries The History of Comedy. (“Not ambitious at all, right?” Milliner jokes.)
The pair is close. They were college pals before launching the Hazy Mills production company, responsible for hits like Hollywood Game Night, Grimm, and Hot in Cleveland, plus the ambitious non-hit, Sean Saves the World. Over the course of our conversation, their couple-y bantering and ribbing develops into its own—fittingly—comedic act, a repartee honed by decades of friendship.
It’s so much so that you can practically feel a gust of wind from Milliner’s rolling eyes as Hayes begins to talk about how the new Will & Grace might update its humor: “I was an actor on the show and I’m still an actor on the show. I don’t write it and I never came at it with an angle. My job was to play my character in the best way that I could and hopefully people will enjoy that.”
--more at TheDailyBeast.com
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