I’m going to watch myself on television.
I’m not sure when I stopped watching things I was in—it’s probably more like I never really started. I learned fairly early on that I was not one of those actors who was helped by seeing myself onscreen. It took at least three viewings of something I was in to even begin to be objective, and on Gilmore Girls, we did twenty-two episodes each season. If I stayed inside watching myself for all those hours, I’d never make it out to the grocery store, not to mention I’d become unbearable as a human. Making so many episodes for seven years straight did something funny to my memory too, and so today it’s hard to recall exactly what was going on back then, or distinguish season from season. But I want to tell you what it was like for me to play Lorelai all of those years. So I’m going to at least scroll through all the episodes to see what I can come up with, to give you a sense of it as best I can. The Internet has already done its job in terms of ranking episodes and naming its favorites. My goal here is just to give you my take on what was going on personally.
Just so you have a visual: I’m in my apartment in Manhattan, and it’s the summertime. It’s a million degrees outside, and my sister and most of my friends who live here are out of town at a beach somewhere. There’s almost no one in my apartment building. Which means not only am I going to spend the next three days watching myself, I am also going to be my only company. So if, during this time, TMZ reports that I’ve gone crazy and trapped the Chinese-food delivery man inside my apartment because I “just needed someone to talk to,” you’ll understand why.
MAKING THE PILOT
Alexis Bledel and I met for the very first time in the lobby of a hotel in Toronto. Can you believe that? We’d both been cast in the show without ever having met. I was cast very late in the process, partially because of the M.Y.O.B. thing. So there was no time for a chemistry read—usually a minimum requirement when casting two actors whose relationship is vital to the success of a show. There’d been no time for anyone to even see us standing side by side, just to make sure we looked related. We met in that lobby and went straight to dinner with our new employers, series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, executive producer Dan Palladino, and producer Gavin Polone. I was overwhelmed, but I could tell I liked her right away. She was only eighteen years old, but kind and curious, and beautiful of course. I had a good feeling about us from the start. We clicked as friends right away too. But it was all a stroke of luck!
A few months later, the show was picked up, which was exciting but also worrisome, because, as mentioned, I wasn’t actually available to do it. If NBC decided they wanted to keep going with M.Y.O.B., I’d have to be replaced on Gilmore Girls. So, in a strange sort of limbo, I traveled to New York in May 2000 for the upfronts—the annual event where networks present their new season to advertisers—to promote Gilmore Girls. In the greenroom, where the actors and executives mingled before going onstage, there was a giant screen where a clip reel of all the new shows being launched was playing on a loop. Some WB executives came over to introduce themselves.
“The show looks great,” one of them said, just as my face came on the screen behind him.
“Tough time slot,” said another.
“Why, what’s the time slot?” I asked.
Today, if a new show of mine was picked up, that’s one of the first things I’d want to know. Back then, it somehow hadn’t occurred to me to find out.
“Thursdays at eight,” he told me.
Even the less savvy me of the time knew what that meant. My stomach dropped. “Oh, so we’re already cancelled,” I joked. He didn’t say anything, but smiled sympathetically and sort of shrugged in a way that said he didn’t disagree.
Thursday night on NBC was, in the year 2000, the biggest ratings night on all of television. We’d be up against Friends, the number one show at the time. The WB itself was still very new, and the ratings, even of their most successful shows, already tended to be much lower than those of the big four networks. So on Thursday nights against America’s favorite sitcom, we had almost zero chance of finding an audience.
Oh, well, I thought, I probably can’t do this show anyway. And even if I was let out of my M.Y.O.B. contract, I faced a Thursday time slot that basically spelled doom. Here we go again, I thought. I’d worked fairly steadily since moving to Los Angeles from New York, but every single show I’d done up until then had been cancelled in its first season. Why should Gilmore Girls be any different? I’d fallen in love with the script right away, but I loved M.Y.O.B. too, and the ratings were only so-so. My show business heart had been broken before, and I was starting to get used to it.
I turned back to the clip reel just as Gilmore Girls came on again. Goodbye, new show! I said to myself.
In front of me, two women who looked to be pretty close in age were watching the screen. As our scenes played, they gasped and grabbed onto each other, their faces lighting up. “Mom, that’s us!” the daughter said, beaming at her young-looking mother. They seemed shocked and pleased to see themselves reflected in the characters. Something had clearly struck a chord with them in a big way.
Hmmmm.
SEASON ONE
The first scene we filmed is the first scene you see in the pilot: a guy in Luke’s hits on Rory, and then Lorelai, and we reveal they aren’t girlfriends, as he assumed, but in fact mother and daughter. Watch it back and you won’t believe you’re watching a young actress (Alexis) in her first on-camera scene. Also, what’s so funny about this pilot by today’s standards is that while the dialogue is delightful from the start, nothing really happens for the first fifteen or twenty minutes, until Rory gets into Chilton and Lorelai has to ask her parents for money. Today, if a mother and daughter speaking clever dialogue didn’t also reveal themselves to be surgeons, werewolves, or undercover detectives by the end of the teaser, we’d never be picked up. Also, we all look twelve years old.
Frankly, what I remember most when I watch this season is the degree to which I was on an adrenaline-fueled dialogue high the whole year, if that makes any sense. I hadn’t had material this dense since back in acting school. I found the pace and sheer volume of it exhilarating. Rather than being tired out by the long hours, I had extra energy as a result. I slept about four hours a night and still felt great. I ran every day at lunch in the WB gym. Ah, youth!
Watching Scott Patterson this season reminds me—you know, that part wasn’t necessarily the inevitable love interest for Lorelai that it became. He was simply Cute Grouchy Diner Owner in the beginning, and it could have gone in any number of directions, but Luke took on a more important role because of Scott’s special sexiness, which was mixed with a gruffness that was the perfect contrast to Lorelai’s chirpy cheerfulness. Watch and learn, young actors—if you’re interesting, the camera finds you.
Kelly Bishop and Ed Herrmann were perfectly cast as Emily and Richard. They both exude aristocratic elegance that tells you right away the kind of household Lorelai grew up in, and why she might have found it a bit stuffy at times. As actors, they both have emotional depth and impeccable comic timing. Plus, as people, they’re pure joy to be around.