NBC – 2017Will & Grace makes its long-awaited return on Thursday after more than a decade, but star Eric McCormack says the series won’t be picking up where it left off.

If you recall, the Emmy-winning sitcom ended in 2006 after eight seasons with all the characters having moved on with their lives and away from each other. Well, forget all that — in the revival, nothing’s changed. How they’ll pull that off is a surprise, says McCormack, teasing, “We have a really funny way of introducing how much stayed and how much didn’t stay.”

McCormack goes on to explain that because of the way the series ended — with a flash forward showing the lives of all the characters — it seemed like there was no chance of a revival.

“I thought…it was daring to make [the ending of the show] absolute. A lot of the fans liked it, I think a lot didn’t,” he explains. “They didn’t want to see Will and Grace old, they didn’t want to see that they’d not spoken for many years. They didn’t want to see their kids grown up.”

“I loved that, and I assumed that we had absolutely closed the book, he adds. “So this feels incredibly surreal.”

Debra Messing, who plays Grace, says the first live taping of the revival was very emotional, recalling, “The first time we walked out and the audience went insane and we heard our music, and every one of us just started to cry.”

“It’s extraordinary, the good will and the love that’s coming at us from many many different places,” she continues. “And we just hope that we can make everybody laugh as hard as we did before, or more.”

Will & Grace, also starring Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally, returns Thursday night at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.

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