Just like I’d never been on a long-running show before, I’d never been at the end of one either, and I didn’t know what the protocol was. That day, I was told that I was the first to know, and was asked to wait before reaching out to anyone. I assumed this meant everyone would be getting a call, and given the size of the cast, they needed time to do that. But I found out much later that Alexis and I were the only cast members who were officially informed, and others found out in far less conventional ways. Ed Herrmann learned the show was cancelled from the clerk at his video store in Connecticut, for example. If I had it to do over again, I’d have called everyone myself, and thrown a party too. To end so abruptly was such an odd conclusion to our epic adventure. Over the next eight years I saw members of the cast socially, but it wasn’t until the reunion at the ATX Festival in Austin in March 2015 that we’d all (well, almost all) be together again.
In retrospect, the incomplete feeling that was so unsettling at the time the show ended turned out to be a blessing. Had the story lines been sewn up more neatly, it would have been harder to justify returning to them. Over the years, fans continued to ask about a movie, for good reason—in some ways, the characters had been left frozen in midair, with many questions unanswered. Of course, I too wished we’d had more closure on such an important chapter of my life. But I never could have imagined how incredibly satisfying it would be to come back to it all these years later. I never could have predicted the invention of streaming, the appetite for reboots, and how much your enthusiasm would contribute to bringing us back again. I’m thrilled it happened the way it did, but I never saw it coming. You might say I lacked vision, and you’d be right. Frankly, I’m still pretty excited about the whole disposable-camera thing.
—
Well, I made it through all seven seasons. I did almost take the polite FreshDirect man hostage, but he made it out alive. It was actually nice to revisit the show after all this time. As for the reboot? Well, by my calculations I should be able to watch it sometime in the year 2032. It was so big and wonderful and important to me. The pressure is just too much!
I mean, like I said, I really love you. But for me to watch myself in even more episodes? Perhaps, as Richard and Emily did, we’ll just have to renew our vows.
Some Thoughts on Being Single
In 2002, I was paired up with Peter Krause to present at the SAG Awards. We’d met before in the late nineties, on an episode of Caroline and the City where we were both guest stars, but back then there was never a hint of anything romantic. I’d followed his career on television as a fan of the too short-lived Aaron Sorkin series Sports Night, and been wowed by his work on the incredible HBO show Six Feet Under. Our paths crossed occasionally at an event or party, but I avoided handsome actor-types as a rule. Over the years I’d learn that my concerns were unfounded and there was nothing to fear: attractive, straight, successful actors actually don’t get as much attention as you might think, because women find them so intimidating that they—AHAHAHAHA, I can’t even finish that sentence with a straight face. Those dudes get all the attention you think they do, and then some. So I was generally wary of what I deemed his “type.” But we were always friendly. Backstage that night, we made small talk, and just as our names were being announced he turned to me and said calmly: “Want to hold hands?”
It was such an odd, old-fashioned, unexpected question. Did he mean anything by it? If we did walk out holding hands, would people think we were together? Would holding hands make it easier to walk in my very high heels? I hadn’t held hands with anyone in what felt like a million years, so I decided it didn’t matter. “Yes,” I said, and we did, and then we presented the award, and I went back into the audience to sit back down next to my date for the evening, a gainfully employed lawyer who was also my dad. I didn’t see Peter again for years.
After I first moved to L.A., I was in a long relationship with a wonderful guy, but I wasn’t yet ready to settle down. After that ended, I contracted a case of man-repellent-itis so severe that it is still being studied by the Mayo Clinic. Or at least that’s how it felt.
For a very long time I worked and worked and worked, and then I looked up one day and all my friends were married with children. These married-with-children people were still my friends, but they’d become part of a community I wasn’t in, a club I didn’t belong to. Socially, their lives had completely changed, and they were busy. Their attention had turned to carpools and birthday parties and school tuition, and I was playing catch-up: “Wait, so we don’t have game night anymore? You guys, who’s free for dinner Saturday? Oh, absolutely no one?”
I looked at these friends and realized: Well, duh, work is gratifying, but it isn’t everything, and it’s no fun to sleep with at night. It just took me longer to see that, and I didn’t have the same urgency they had to get to it, but then one day, just like that, I thought, I get it now. I’d be interested in this other stuff. But I’d missed the time when most people around my age had paired off. It was as if I’d misread the schedule at Penn Station and the trains to Happy Couplehood had all left already, and there I was with nothing to do but sit with the drunk businessmen at the bar and nurse a warm beer and wait for the trains to start up again. I waited and waited and waited for those trains.
I attended weddings by myself, went to parties I didn’t feel like going to, “just in case,” and was escorted to events by my dad, my cousin Tim, and my dear friend Sam. “Who’s with you tonight? Aww, your dad again?” journalists would say, with a sympathetic frowny face. The only bright spot, dude-wise, was at an event where I met Matthew Perry. He became my longtime Friend Who I Almost But Never Exactly Dated, or FWIABNED. We probably all have at least one FWIABNED in our lives. My FWIABNED is very special to me.
At one point during this time my father was on a plane and noticed a woman reading a magazine I was in. “That’s my daughter,” he said proudly. The woman turned to him with a look of pity. “Please tell her I didn’t meet my husband until late in life—there’s still time,” she said. Strangers were worried about me; that’s how long I was single!
There’s nothing wrong with being single, unless, it seems, you’re an actor getting interviewed a lot. Gilmore Girls was at its peak then, and I was getting interviewed a lot. During these years, when the press asked me if I was seeing someone, I’d just say, “I’m dating.” Sometimes that was true and sometimes not. Either way, I wasn’t in anything secure enough to talk about or expose publicly. But over time, I felt increasingly vulnerable when I had to face these questions. Magazines don’t like it when you say too little about your personal life—it makes the pages very hard to fill. If they had their way, every article would be full of sex and gossip, and I couldn’t contribute stories about either. Interviewers seemed increasingly frustrated, and interviews became less about what project I was doing and more a thinly veiled reiteration of “Join us today as we try once again to figure out what is wrong with this poor girl who just can’t seem to get a date!”