Ali Goldstein / Netflix The Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin-led show will return to Netflix for Season 6.
Grace and Frankie‘s new season hasn’t even premiered yet, but the show has already been renewed for Season 6 due out in 2020. The news came just days ahead of the its Season 5 premiere which hits Netflix tomorrow.
Series creator Marta Kauffman said she was hopeful the comedy would continue given that “we certainly feel the love” from streaming service Netflix. The preemptive decision announced this week “is greatly appreciated,” she said. “I don’t take it for granted.”
In Grace and Frankie, “Jane Fonda (Grace) and Lily Tomlin (Frankie) star as two women whose lives are suddenly turned upside down when their husbands reveal they are gay and leave them for each other. Both sparring partners and partners-in-crime, they form an unlikely bond to face an uncertain future together and discover a new definition of family, with laughter, tears and plenty of mood enhancers along the way.”
When we last left the duo, Grace and Frankie were fleeing a retirement community in a golf cart to head back to their oceanfront home only to find a “Sold!” sign in front of it. What’s in store for the forthcoming Season 5?
Never too old to not give a f*ck. Grace and Frankie returns January 18
“Everybody said, ‘Oh, that was a real cliffhanger when you lost the house last season,’” Tomlin told the Associated Press. “Well, wait until you see this season.”
Kauffman also weighed in on the series’ upcoming 13 episodes, saying “Without spoilers, they’re going to spend a great deal of time trying to figure out how to get their house back,” she said. “But honestly, what they get to very quickly about life at that age is the idea you can finally just say (expletive) it.”
The ensemble cast includes Sam Waterston (Law & Order) and Martin Sheen (The West Wing) as the ladies’ former husbands. June Diane Raphael, Baron Vaughn, Brooklyn Decker and Ethan Embry also co-star as the two couples’ adult children.
Frankie and Grace will also be getting a new rival in Season 5 when RuPaul sashays his way into the ladies’ lives. All we know is that Mama Ru will play an “adversarial character” named Benjamin Le Day.
With the show adding more episodes every year, one thing viewers don’t have to worry about is the death of any of its main four characters: Grace, Frankie, Sol (Waterston), and Robert (Sheen).
“We gave Robert a heart attack already — health issues are definitely real issues. But, no, it would be so mean to kill one of them off just for the sake of killing one of them off,” Kauffman said. “When you love characters as we love characters…how would I pick who’d I’d give some horrible death to? I can’t even imagine.”
With more Grace and Frankie already in pre-production, Kauffman is keen on continuing the series for as long as its stars want to. “Every season, it becomes more and more special, because you know you have fewer and fewer left,” she said to IndieWire at SCAD aTV festival last year. With no end in sight—yet—Kauffman said that if given the choice by Netflix, “I’d probably tell them, ‘Let’s do it as long as it’s still comfortable for Jane and Lily.’”
Fonda and Tomlin are 80 and 78, respectively, but “they’re doing well,” Kauffman said. “It could be years and years. Who knows?”
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‘Grace and Frankie’ Renewed for Sixth Season Ahead of Season 5 Premiere