Yanic and I have a scene at the Dragonfly where he’s upset that all the A-list actors in town to shoot a movie are staying at a rival inn and the Dragonfly is stuck with the B-list actors. It culminates with him moaning, “We will never bag Jennifer Lawrence, and what’s the point of living if you can’t bag Jennifer Lawrence!” Yanic’s Michel has always been a terrific comedic character, but in this series he gets to really shine, and we had a wonderful time in our scenes together.
Then Paul Anka (the person, not the dog) arrives, to be in Lorelai’s anxiety dream. He (the person, not the dog) is hilarious and professional, and he looks like a million bucks. Although we’ve worked together before, I get weirdly shy around him and out of nowhere ask him how many kids he has. Like, we weren’t talking about kids or anything related to them. He probably just said he had a great pasta at lunch, and I replied, “How many kids do you have?” What a weirdo.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11
President Obama is a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show today, and the lot is in a security tizzy. I’m called in earlier than needed “in case they jam all the cellphones.” Um, they can do that? We’re shooting the scene where Lorelai tells Luke she’s going away to “do Wild” (the book, not the movie). I say the line “I know” thirteen times, but it’s an oddly emotional scene—the beginning of a big journey for Luke and Lorelai.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12
Dax Shepard is in the hair and makeup trailer! Worlds collide. He’s getting a haircut from one of the stylists he knows who’s working with us, and drinking a green juice in preparation for starring in CHiPs, which he also wrote and directed. Not only is he obviously some sort of genius, but his already nonexistent body fat has gone down to the level of Mount Everest’s. What’s that? Mountains don’t have body fat? Neither does Dax Shepard. He gives me one of his signature full-body-contact hugs. Nice way to start the day!
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16
Throughout the shoot, for general security and to prevent being seen by all of you industrious Internet cuties, our scripts and sides (the mini-scripts of the day’s work) are all watermarked with our names on them. That way, if something leaks, they know who’s to blame. The sides are numbered as well, to keep track of how many copies are circulating. I tend to lose things on set to a ridiculous degree: glasses, purses, phones. I’m always stashing things behind a cushion somewhere and then forgetting where I put them. I lose my sides ten times a day and am always borrowing someone else’s. So, as a joke, even if I’m only on my first sides of the day, they’re marked LG #4, as if I’ve already lost three before we’ve even started. Hahahahaha! I’ll get you, AD staff!
Eddy, my agent, comes to visit. Well, let’s be honest—he came to visit his other client on the lot, World Pro Wrestling champion Ellen DeGeneres. At least that’s what she does for a living in my book! She can’t cut to commercial here! I’m drunk with power! Eddy tells me he has “medium to high expectations” regarding the outcome of the show, which, in agent-speak, means…well, I’m pretty sure he just proposed marriage.
Sarah Ramos, who played my niece on Parenthood, also comes to visit today. I put her in the background of one of the scenes. Can you spot her?
My regular hair magician, Anne Morgan, is out for the day, and one of my favorite hair dudes, Jonathan Hanousek, is playing sub. He always knows the latest in top-secret Hollywood secrets, and today he tells me about software being developed for a camera that detects eye and mouth movement but softens everything else on a person’s face into a pleasingly smooth facelike blob. It’s designed to help older actors look younger, I guess? Wow, weird—and where do I apply for this blob technology?
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22
Sutton Foster is in town. SUTTON FOSTER IS IN TOWN. She’s just here for fittings and rehearsal, but will be back in a few weeks to shoot her scenes.
I feel like we could play sisters in something. Do you?
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24
Right around now I realize that I don’t know, and have never known, what the last four words of the show are. This may seem insane given how excited everyone apparently is to finally learn them. Even worse, I didn’t even know the last four words were a “thing.” I don’t know how it’s possible that I missed this information. Amy and I just never talked about it for some reason, and Old Lady Jackson doesn’t know her way ’round the old Tinternet too well, and somehow the whole hoopla missed me entirely, probably in no small part due to my insistence on using archaic words like “hoopla.” When I tell her this at work, Amy tilts her head and looks at me like she thinks I’m kidding. “I never told you what they were?” she says. “Wow.” She can’t believe it. “Well, would you like to know them now, or do you want to wait until the day we have to film them?”
I have to admit, my heart starts pounding a little, and even though I didn’t know until very recently that I’ve waited more than fifteen years for this information, I’m still not sure I’m ready for it yet. “Um…I don’t know. Um, who says the four words?” I ask, stalling.
“You both do,” she says, meaning me and Alexis. And for a moment I think I still don’t want to know yet—I want to draw it out even more. Maybe I’ll try to guess them instead? But my mind is a blank. It’s too much pressure! Fans and Mike Ausiello, how did you handle the not knowing all these years?
“Okay, go ahead,” I say. “Tell me.” I’m, like, gasping for air. It’s truly ridiculous how nervous I feel. Amy then tells me the last four words. She says them quickly. I blink back at her a few times, with no expression. Then I go suddenly calm. I realize I’m also holding my breath, like I’m getting the results of a biopsy. When I finally exhale, I think my reaction goes something like “Huh.” And after that, it goes something like “Really?”
I’m actually still so paranoid given all the fuss over them that I’m not even going to say them here—maybe you know them by now, anyway? The words are wonderful, of course, and have a simple symmetry, which makes perfect sense within the origin of the story of Gilmore Girls. They are not, however, what I was expecting, because they are not what I would call the exact definition of a conclusion. As in they do not end the story we are telling as much as they introduce something that was not previously known. Which, to me, is not precisely an ending. To me, they are really more of a…
“Isn’t that more of a cliffhanger?” I ask Amy.
But Amy doesn’t answer me.
She just smiles.
Hmmmm.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26
Unbelievably, the first “block” of the schedule is over. This means we’re finished with one-third of our work. Gulp. It’s flying by. Today we begin several days of scenes at Miss Patty’s—a series of town hall meetings. One of my best friends, Sam Pancake (yes, that’s his real name), is here, playing a new character named Donald. I’d always wanted him to come on the show before, but there was never anything he was exactly right for. Still, I’d asked Amy and Dan about him so many times over the years that when everything was finally happening for sure, I couldn’t help trying again. I started to tell Amy that, as lucky as I already felt to be back, I was hoping for just one more thing.
“I know, I know,” Amy said before I could finish. “We’ll find a part for Sam.”
Ha! You’d think that finally having that dream fulfilled would be enough. But I continued to try to jam friends and family in anywhere I could. My friend Clare Platt walks through town in “Fall,” my godson Clyde passes me near the gazebo in “Winter,” Mae and other surprise friends play key (or sometimes not so key) roles. If you were a loved one who came to visit, I wanted it on film.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29
All the table reads have been fantastic, but today is the first half of our last episode, and there’s a special electricity in the room. Because we’re in the middle of filming, the “Fall” table read is being broken into two. We’ll read the first part today and the rest tomorrow. In the previous table reads Kelly has been reading her part over the phone from her home in New Jersey, but she’s finally here in person. Seeing her is wonderful, but it makes me realize again how much I’m missing Ed. He would have loved this whole experience so much.