Secrets

It’s October, which means only one thing: Gilmore Girls season. But this fall season also brings with it the 25th anniversary of the beloved dramedy.

Not every show stands the test of time, and even fewer can say they’ve become synonymous with an entire season like Gilmore Girls. The series that centers on the strong and unique bond between mother and daughter Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, played by Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel, in the charmingly eccentric small fictional town of Stars Hollow successfully blends a nostalgic and comforting feeling with witty and rapid-fire dialogue.

For many, it goes beyond being only a TV show. “The medicinal and therapeutic effects this show has on people are extraordinary and it’s deep. I don’t know if Amy [Sherman-Palladino, creator] wants to hear it, but this show saves people, and it saves them on a daily basis,” Scott Patterson, who starred as diner owner Luke, who had a soft heart underneath his gruff exterior, for the show’s entire run, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It soothes, heals and gives people hope there are better times ahead, that there were better times in the past and that we can have a better time in the present.”

The series premiered on The WB on Oct. 5, 2000, and ran for seven seasons (the last one on The CW after The WB and UPN merged). But it wasn’t until 2014 that Gilmore Girls found a second life thanks to Netflix acquiring the streaming rights. The series not only skyrocketed in popularity at the time, especially during the fall, but led to the 2016 miniseries Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, which reunited most of the cast.

While the dramedy proved to be a success over time, Sherman-Palladino also remembers having to fight for the show early on, as they had fewer resources compared to their competition like top shows Friends, Survivor, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and American Idol. She even recalls one of the biggest fights she had with Warner Bros. during season one — over an Oscar Levant reference in the script.

“They were desperate for me to take it out and I said, ‘Why?’ They’re like, ‘Nobody knows who Oscar Levant is.’ I thought, there’s four gay kids in Iowa right now who know who Oscar Levant is (laughs), and it’s for those four kids,” Sherman-Palladino tells THR. “And in the next page, there’s a Justin Timberlake thing for everyone who doesn’t know who Oscar Levant is.”

Overall, she attributes the show’s triumph to “alchemy, alchemy, alchemy, because we were really left alone to build our worlds and our characters. [Warner Bros.] gave up on even trying to give us notes on the scripts. They didn’t understand the scripts. It wasn’t soapy enough for them. There were too many pop culture references they didn’t understand. At every turn, we were not necessarily what they wanted or what they thought they needed, but it was a different time. Today, a Gilmore Girls would not get on the air. No way, no how.”

But thankfully, Gilmore Girls released at just the right time. And now, to mark the show’s 25th anniversary, the cast and creator reflect on the beloved series for The Hollywood Reporter, below.

“I Wrote a Script That Was Unusual for [Warner Bros.]”

Creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and stars Lauren Graham, Kelly Bishop and Scott Patterson look back at how the show and quirky fictional town of Stars Hollow first came to be, as well as their initial thoughts when they read the first scripts.

AMY SHERMAN-PALLADINO (CREATOR) The show was a random pitch. I was pitching to The WB, and I was pitching a bunch of other stories, and they were bored out of their minds and didn’t seem to care about anything I was saying. As a last-ditch thing, I said, “I’ve got this sort of thing that’s like a mother and daughter, and they’re more like friends than mother-daughter,” and they’re like, “Oh, we’ll buy that one.” 

Right after I sold it, my husband [Dan Sherman-Palladino, executive producer/writer/director] and I went on a trip to Hartford, Connecticut, because we were going to go to Mark Twain’s house to get some ideas. We went through Washington Depot, Connecticut, and stayed at an inn called the Mayflower Inn. It was leafing season; it was bucolic and beautiful in October, the leaves were changing and there were signs up for pumpkin patches and hay rides. And it was like, what the fuck? I come from California. There’s no pumpkin patches and hay rides here. It felt like the whole thing was straight out of central casting. 

I wrote a script that was unusual for [Warner Bros.]. It was very long because I knew the pace was going to be very fast. When a page is a minute a page, by the time Gilmore Girls really got up to speed and in its true form, we were less than 30 seconds a page. We needed twice as many pages to get the same amount of product — but at the time that I did the pilot, nobody believed me. 

LAUREN GRAHAM (“LORELAI GILMORE”) At the time, my taste of what I liked and what I felt a connection to was in between [comedy and drama]. So the first thing I responded to when I read this was the language. It was so funny and different and warm and unique. I felt a real connection to the character [Lorelai]. I remember at the time, the first thing people would say to me is, “But she’s a mom and you’re still playing the girlfriend or whatever,” and I just didn’t think of that as any kind of barrier. I just thought it’s such a great character. 

KELLY BISHOP (“EMILY GILMORE”) When I read that first [script], it’s the first line out of my character Emily’s mouth when she opens the door and her daughter’s standing there and she said, “Is it Christmas already?” I went, “There it is.” That just explained the whole relationship right there, how often they saw each other, and then of course, [Edward Herrmann], my husband [Richard], comes in and when he sees her, he says, “Is it Easter already?” It was just so funny and smart, really a very intelligent show.

SCOTT PATTERSON (“LUKE DANES”) Reading the pilot, you see all of these very light, airy, ethereal characters who are extremely funny and there are tons of jokes in there, but it needed a counterweight. Emily’s character provided that, then Richard to a certain extent and Luke. So it was an opportunity to really be an anchor character, where everybody bounced off of him. There is a lot of humor that can be gleaned, and that’s where I live on the comedy side. So it was almost as if it was written for me. 

“I Don’t Want to Meet Somebody That I Can’t Have”

When it came to casting the show, Sherman-Palladino recalls it being challenging because she knew there was only one specific person meant for each role, and she was willing to wait as long as she needed to find them.

SHERMAN-PALLADINO When we were reading for Emily’s [role], I kept saying, “No.” They’re like, “Well she could come back,” and I just kept saying, “No.” I was driving everybody crazy. I said, “Look, I’ll know her when she walks in,” and when Kelly Bishop walked in, I’m like, “OK, that’s Emily.”

Alexis [Bledel, “Rory Gilmore”] was the wild card because she had never done anything before. She was sick as a dog when she came in to audition. She didn’t want to be there, but she just had a quality about her. The WB at that time had a lot of fucking going on [in shows] — there was a lot of young girls who were into boys, and I wanted the girl who wasn’t into boys. I needed the quality of somebody who was into books and had her friends and liked her life and was happy with her life, and didn’t necessarily want to be a popular girl. She felt like she was cool with everything and that’s a hard quality to find in Hollywood. 

So I had Kelly and Alexis, and I couldn’t find her mother. Lauren [Graham] was initially on vacation and the casting director was talking about her, but she was on another show. I kept saying, “I don’t want to meet somebody I can’t have because if I fall in love with her and then I can’t have her, I will kill myself and you will all have committed murder.” So I fought it and fought it, and then we couldn’t find Lorelai, so finally I was like, “All right, fine. You win.” She came back from vacation, walked in the door; she read three words, and I’m like, “Well, that’s it, we’re done.”

We were unimportant at the time [compared to other WB shows], so we had a lot of leeway. We’d put these little parts on and if the character scored, we’d bring them back. Sean Gunn [who played Kirk] came in the first time and he was funny. We were like, “Let’s bring him back for every time we had another part for him,” and then finally we just went to them and said, “We need Sean Gunn to be a regular because he’s so funny. We can’t lose him to another show.” They let us do that for Liza [Weil, who played Paris], for Milo [Ventimiglia, who played Jess]. I hadn’t even had a part written for Milo. We did the same thing with Matt Czuchry [who played Logan], because I knew I wanted [Rory] to have a real college boyfriend and I wanted there to be similarities to her dad and from that world. 

“We Were All in a Panic Constantly, So There Was No Cozy Vibe at All”

Though Gilmore Girls was known for its comforting vibe onscreen, it was quite the opposite on set, as the cast and crew had so little time to shoot entire seasons. But despite how fast-paced the show moved, they all remember plenty of special moments and memories made throughout filming.

SHERMAN-PALLADINO We were all in a panic constantly, so there was no cozy vibe at all. It was very frantic. We were shooting 80 pages in eight days, so 10 pages a day with no hiatuses and no breaks, and we were doing 22 episodes. I don’t know how we did it. We had so little time and so little money that by Christmas, when I think we would get a week off, Lauren and Alexis’ eyes were so huge for lack of sleep and from the constant workload that I kind of thought they were going to kill me. We were doing a different kind of show with a massive amount of dialogue, with a massive amount of walk and talks without coverage, and it was just hard. 

We were not a show that could go back and reshoot anything. If we didn’t get it, we didn’t get it. There was no fixing it later. If the sun was going down on one location day and we didn’t have work in the camera, we weren’t getting the work in the camera. It was just the kind of show it was, very high stress all the time. 

GRAHAM The writing on this show is like music to me. You wouldn’t sing a ballad super speedy and you wouldn’t sing a pop song super slowly. I was a kid who recited, for whatever reason, I’m sure to the horror of my father’s dinner parties, but I memorized “Casey at the Bat” and “Jabberwocky”; that was just fun for me. I did a fair amount of theater and the language [of Gilmore Girls] has a theatrical quality; you can feel it, you can hear it when you miss a word or when something’s out of step, because, even though it’s this bubbly stream of consciousness, it’s written with an incredible amount of precision. I think it just spoke to what I gravitated towards already. 

BISHOP The one [episode] that was so out of character for Emily was the one I call “the Tennessee Williams episode” for my character, when she finds out that her husband’s mother has died and, going through her things, she comes across a letter that her mother-in-law had written to her husband the night before the wedding, begging him not to marry me. That just set me off in some other place where suddenly I’m wearing caftans and drinking in the day, and that’s why I called it that, because it was so out of character for Emily. She completely lost it and I enjoyed that one so much because it was so bizarre. 

GRAHAM I have a lot of memories being up late with Kelly Bishop in a scene in their house, and Kelly coming from the theater and sharing stories of how they started out. Alexis and I, when we would get kind of loopy, would sing and sometimes we would sing the Minnie Riperton song, “Lovin’ You.” I don’t know why; we would just sort of break into song to keep ourselves awake. We would get really punchy and silly. It was always great to be on that backlot. That was when there weren’t tours yet, so I’d ride my bike back and forth between sets and my trailer, and we had those late nights like West Wing had — it was a really fun time in television. 

PATTERSON There was a scene outside Luke’s Diner at night. I’m wearing a black leather jacket. I don’t have the hat on, we’d gone on a date and Lorelai breaks down. It’s a very brief scene where I have to comfort her. I remember after we shot it, especially the close-up because it requires Lauren to emote on a very deep level, and it’s very difficult and specific and scary. It doesn’t matter how talented you are or how easily you wear your heart on your sleeve, you’re doing this in front of 30 people and it’s midnight and cold and everybody’s tired. I just remember after we finished, I held her head and wrapped her in my arms a little bit — none of that was scripted. Of course, you’re going to do that as a supportive potential boyfriend or somebody who really cares about somebody — and she whispered in my ear, “Thank you so much for being such a great scene partner.” It was a very sweet moment that I’ll always treasure because that’s the soul of acting; it’s really just supporting each other. 

“It Was Always Going to Be Complicated, and That Is the Best Kind of Relationship”

In a small town like Stars Hollow, the relationships and dynamics between characters, including romantic and platonic ones, are really highlighted. And that’s why the cast and creator were very specific about how they all played out throughout the seasons.

SHERMAN-PALLADINO When I pitch a show, I pitch it with five seasons in mind. I always knew where I wanted the show to end in terms of where the girls were to each other and where they were in their lives. With Lorelai’s relationship, I always knew Christopher [David Sutcliffe] was going to be in and out and a person she couldn’t rely on. I did not put Luke in to be her love interest. I just put him in because I liked the character and they worked well together. It was fun to see her with a guy not as a romance, and we were actually really nervous about the romance because that can fuck everything up, but we waited long enough and there was enough history there. The great thing about that romance was they were both such stubborn people and so stuck in their own way of living, because they had crafted their lives without an extra person there; their relationship was never going to be easy, and that is the best kind of relationship. You want to see people working through their shit with other people. 

PATTERSON Story-wise, not up to me [on whether Lorelai and Luke are endgame], but ultimately, maybe I did have something to do with it because I really did feel a certain way and I acted upon those feelings. If there’s a chemistry between two people, the more you try to mask it, the more powerful it becomes, the more you express it, the more the fans are disappointed because it’s too much too soon. The brilliance of it was dragging it out for four seasons because it was apparent right away, and I felt it the very first time we rehearsed that very first scene in the diner in the pilot. I liked her as a person and then as an actor, [and] you can only hope you get somebody who’s going to hit the ball over the net with as much velocity as you want them to, and there she was. 

GRAHAM We were truly under the radar then. Those teams [Luke vs. Christopher] evolved later in the rewatching and in the reruns. We’re that rare show who’s gained more people, [and] I don’t know that I felt like it was up to me to say anything [back then]. I figured [Luke and Lorelai] would ultimately get together, but it became more of a team sport later on (laughs). 

BISHOP There seems to have been a little competition ongoing about your favorite person to be with Rory. I didn’t realize it was a little battle with the fans, but I’d always said Logan. I thought they were all really good, but the Logan character, and Matt Czuchry too, I just enjoyed his work so much, that it seems like the obvious thing. Then later, I said to someone I hadn’t really put it together, but that of course that’s who Emily would have wanted. He came from a very good family, so that would have been a logical thing. But there was something about the way [Matt] delivered his lines when he was with Rory that was just very appealing to me. 

GRAHAM Lorelai-Emily is almost like the Lorelai-Luke [dynamic], but even more contentious. They really don’t speak the same language, but there’s a lot of love in there and a lot of each one trying to be seen by the other. Except for that one season where we were in a fight, the Lorelai-Rory [dynamic] is just pure fun. It’s joyous, like all the inside jokes you share with your best friend. It was a relationship that had very little tension. And it’s a nod to the writing that it was fun enough that you really didn’t need them to be having an issue. You wanted them to be in on things together. I think everybody relates to going to their childhood home and feeling like a kid once they walk in the door no matter how old you are. You go back to whatever the dynamic was that you had when you were living there. 

PATTERSON I do particularly like that one scene when it was [Rory’s] birthday and [Luke] made her a cake and had balloons and [said], “Go sit over there,” kind of gruffly. But you have to walk a fine line; you can never pop at Rory or get angry at her unless it’s an extreme situation. But it was an opportunity to bounce off these characters in different ways. The Kirk dynamic is different than the Rory dynamic, which is different than the Lane [Keiko Agena] dynamic and much different than the Paris dynamic. It’s the beauty yet again of a creator drawing up distinctive voices. 

“We Had a Sense That We Were Doing Something Special” 

The show actually wasn’t an instant cult classic, but rather slowly grew in popularity and expanded its fanbase. Then Gilmore Girls took on a life of its own once Netflix acquired the streaming rights in 2014, becoming a fall staple as it typically sees a streaming boost during that time of year.

SHERMAN-PALLADINO We had a sense we were doing something special even if only we knew it, so then you have to keep that bar high. My actors were so good. Lauren is so good that my fears of sending a script that wasn’t as good enough was very deep. Lauren would come in to block a scene at 7 in the morning, go to the makeup trailer, and she didn’t know her dialogue for the day; and she would learn 10 pages of dialogue in the time she had hair done. I don’t know how she did it. I don’t think she’s human because that’s impossible, but she did it. Then she came and performed and acted, and she elevated everything to a crazy level.

GRAHAM There is probably some connection to it being the start of the school year and whether you were a teen watching or if you are now. There’s something fun and nostalgic about the back-to-school feeling. I remember when we did early press upfronts, someone saying the town is a character and the seasons are characters. I didn’t really understand what they meant, but I think part of what people fall in love with is this idyllic small town and the way they celebrate the seasons with the Heydale Maize or with various festivals. There’s such a craving for those kind of celebrations and community, and just enjoying simple sort of elements of being part of a small town. 

 “The Cliffhanger Was Intentional”

Nearly a decade after the original show wrapped in 2017, the majority of the cast reunited for the 2016 four-part miniseries, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. Sherman-Palladino recalls how they made it happen with everyone’s busy schedules and why she ended it on a cliffhanger, while the cast reveals if they’re open to returning to Stars Hollow again in the future.

SHERMAN-PALLADINO We all had a tiny sliver where we were all available. We were just in the right place at the right time, and as far as what I wanted to accomplish, I was not there for season seven and I’ve never watched season seven. I only know what happened because when we were writing the movies, I said to my assistant, “Just tell me, did this happen in season seven because I won’t put it in if it already happened.” But the lucky thing was the major plot points of where I wanted the two girls to land for the series, they hadn’t touched. I was like, “Great, I can now go in and end the show the way I want.”

The cliffhanger was intentional because the story was about history repeating itself and about mothers and daughters. It really to me was much less about who the boy was, but more about what the circumstance was. My thing was: Always focus on what the girls are doing, and what’s the story between the mother and the daughter because that’s what the show is. We have wonderful boys and all the romances were wonderful. I know people are very invested in them, and all the boys are extremely handsome and delightful to stare at, but honestly, the show is about the girls. If neither one of them had a boyfriend in six years, it still would have been fine. In my mind, I know who the father was and I know what the baby was, but that stays in my mind. 

BISHOP [Years before the minseries], I would have said that Emily and Richard would be pretty much exactly in the same place, but I said he’s not here now [as Herrmann died in 2014], so Emily is a widow. That’s a completely different life. Then when we ended up doing [the miniseries], it was incredible to be able to revisit that. We all miss [Herrmann] so much. He was so good to work with, and he and I became friends. I remember going on the set in the Gilmore living room and looking at that big picture over the fireplace. We were all there and I said, “Ed, I hope you’re with us. I hope you’re watching us and hanging around here. Maybe you can let us know?” All the lights went out and then they all come back on. I said, “OK, you’re here! Great!” In a way, sad as it is, it gave my character a lot of information and actually a very good storyline, where many of the other people were pretty much close to the same. 

PATTERSON We just drank it up [getting to reunite for the minseries] because when [the original show] ended in 2007, we were all scattered to the four corners of the earth. I was on a movie set in Toronto when I got a call from my manager saying it was all over, and other people found out in similar ways. And nobody got closure. We didn’t get to say goodbye. So there was no real ending and this was a way to do it right, if in fact it was going to be the last one, which I don’t think it will be. 

GRAHAM I’m always open to [returning and reprising Lorelai]. There’s no reason why I wouldn’t be. Of course, you always want to give people what they want and also make sure you’re honoring the legacy and not doing anything to mess it up. I’ve always said a Christmas movie seems like a way to revisit the characters. That wouldn’t have to be a full series and I think would make sense for dressing up the town and having a holiday-themed gathering. So that’s what I’ve been saying, but I’m not in charge. 

BISHOP I would be open to it, but it would require the main players there again: Lauren, Alexis and certainly Amy. I’m also wondering if it would be better as a movie, rather than trying to do four more episodes or something like that. 

PATTERSON It’s the great role of my life. It doesn’t matter what I do the rest of my career, nothing’s gonna match that. I know it, fans know it, I embrace it, and it’s a miracle that lightning ever struck once, right? And when it does, man, grab it, cause it ain’t gonna happen again. I’m just very grateful. 

[Myself and WB] formed some kind of loose partnership where on the holidays they were going to rebuild Stars Hollow and call it “Holidays Made Here,” and bring in snow and giant Christmas tree and do lightings and set up Doose’s sweet shop and Doose’s market, Luke’s Diner and Kim’s Antiques and the Dragonfly and Lorelai’s house and Sookie’s house and all. And so they start doing that [and] it’s just turned into this massive annual event in a very short period of time [at the Warner Bros. lot]. And I will tell you that this year, it’s going to be even bigger and better than it’s ever been, if you can imagine.