Some bittersweet news for “Grace and Frankie” fans. The platonic soulmates’ journey is coming to an end — but not before making history. Netflix has renewed the Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin comedy for a seventh and final season ahead of its Season 6 premiere. Season 7 received a 16-episode order, which means the sitcom’s total number of episodes will be 94. “Grace and Frankie” is officially the longest-running Netflix original ever. Deadline confirmed the news.
Season 6 of the 11-time Emmy-nominated series will premiere on the streamer in January 2020.
“It’s thrilling and somehow fitting, that our show about the challenges, as well as the beauty and dignity of aging, will be the oldest show on Netflix,” said co-creators and showrunners Marta Kauffman and Howard J. Morris.
Fonda and Tomlin added, “We are both delighted and heartbroken that ‘Grace and Frankie’ will be back for its seventh, though final, season. We’re so grateful that our show has been able to deal with issues that have really connected to our grand generation. And their kids, and amazingly, their kids as well. We’ll miss these two old gals, Grace and Frankie, as much as many of their fans will, but we’ll still be around. We’ve outlasted so many things — just hope we don’t outlast the planet.”
Netflix’s VP of Original Series Cindy Holland emphasized how the series has “demystified the experience of growing older and given a voice to the fastest growing segment of our population.”
“Grace and Frankie” premiered in 2015, introducing viewers to Grace (Fonda), a high-strung retired cosmetics mogul, and Frankie, a hippie art teacher. The two form an unlikely friendship after their husbands (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) drop a bombshell, announcing that they’re in love and plan to marry each other.
Season 5 concluded with Grace and Frankie making amends after getting in a fight and the former revealing that she married Nick (Peter Gallagher).
“Women appreciate the honesty of it because they never hear the truth,” Kauffman has said of the series. “No one told me when you get to a certain age, you start losing pubic hair. People need to know.” The “Friends” co-creator called “bullshit” on the myth that there’s no audience for shows about older women. “I think for too long we’ve dismissed women of a certain age,” she observed. “This was an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, we’re alive.’”
