Entertainmment news
Gilmore Girls’ Lauren Graham Reunites With Kelly Bishop—And It’s Not Even Friday Night
Where Kelly Bishop leads, Lauren Graham will follow.
Gilmore Girls fans got a real treat at Bishop’s first official event for the release of her memoir The Third Gilmore Girl on Sept. 17.
The 80-year-old, who famously played Gilmore matriarch Emily Gilmore, attended the talk at 92NY in New York City, but it was her surprise interviewer that made fans go wild. Bishop’s on-screen daughter Graham, who played the beloved Lorelai Gilmore, delighted the crowd as she took to the stage to serve as the evening’s moderator.
The pair, who appeared on all seven seasons of the hit Amy Sherman-Palladino series plus the 2016 Netflix reboot A Year in the Life, were all smiles as they took the stage together.
Looking ready for Friday Night Dinner, Bishop was clad in high-waisted black trousers and a white satin blouse, while Graham sported a sequin black skirt and black cardigan.
“She and I stay in pretty good contact with one another anyway,” Bishop previously exclusively told E! News of her relationship with Graham. “We’re really very close.”
Hatnim Lee/Getty Images
Graham, who has penned multiple memoirs in addition to one fiction book, advised Bishop on the book tour experience.
“I just did speak to her the other day about the whole process of book tours and that sort of thing,” the Dirty Dancing star shared. “She’s just so smart, and she’s really experienced at this now. So she’s very comfortable with the whole situation and I’m terribly proud of her. I think she’s a wonderful writer and so bright.”
Hatnim Lee/Getty Images
And while they don’t meet up for Friday Night Dinners or even lunch at Luke’s, Bishop shared that she and Graham, 57, occasionally meet with Sherman-Palladino for the ultimate Gilmore fan’s reunion.
Instagram/Lauren Graham
“My favorite lunch in the city—and we don’t do it nearly often enough—is Amy Sherman-Palladino and Lauren and me, the three of us,” she dished. “Just sit and have a really long lunch and just gab all over the place.”
The Third Gilmore Girl is out now everywhere books are sold.
For more secrets from the Gilmore Girls set, read on.
Warner Bros. Television/Entertainment Pictures via ZUMA Press
1. The show’s fictional Stars Hollow—which has gone on to become one of TV’s most beloved settings—was inspired by Amy Sherman-Palladino’s unexpected visit to Washington, Conn. Charmed by the people she met, traditions she witnessed and the inn she stayed at, she left the small town with the concept for the series—including some of the pilot’s dialogue.
“If I can make people feel this much of what I felt walking around this fairy town,” Sherman-Palladino told Deseret News, “I thought that would be wonderful.”
2. Alexis Bledel had only one uncredited acting role on her resume and was a student at New York University when she auditioned for Rory.
“I was very sick, I was a student at NYU, and they kept calling me back up to audition,” Bledel recalled during an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers. “I think I went, like, six times. Oddly, I wasn’t a very seasoned actor at all. I didn’t know the process. I grew a tad bit impatient. I had a little attitude and our boss really liked that a lot. She was like, ‘That’s our girl!’ I was like, ‘Are you guys going to bring me back again?’ and she was like, ‘I like that, that’s perfect.'”
Warner Bros Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock
3. Gilmore Girls without Lauren Graham as Lorelai? Unimaginable, right? But it almost happened.
“When I got the script for the Gilmore Girls pilot,” Graham wrote in her 2016 book, Talking As Fast As I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between). “I was in New York, staying in a friend’s studio apartment, waiting to hear if the series I just completed for NBC — Don Rooses’ M.Y.O.B.—was going to be picked up for a second season or canceled.”
Fortunately for us, M.Y.O.B. was not picked up, allowing Graham to play the fast-talking lead, which was also good for any other actress in consideration for the part.
“There’s a sort of manic recognition that happens very rarely when I read something that I want so much that I go briefly but totally bonkers,” she explained of her connection to the character after reading the script. “That feeling is a combination of ‘Hello, old friend,’ meets EVERYONE GET OUT OF MY WAY SHE’S ALL MINE.”
Netflix/Kobal/Shutterstock
4. Scott Paterson was the only actor to audition for Luke, winning over the casting directors immediately with his charming yet curmudgeonly take on the diner owner and Lorelai’s future husband.
“Amy said, ‘I don’t need to see anyone else,” casting director Jill Anthony told Vanity Fair. “‘He’s 100 percent it.'”
But Paterson never thought he was going to sport Luke’s signature hat and flannel shirts.
“I had three auditions that day, and this was the second one,” the actor detailed to Glamour. “I had prepared one scene, but I was supposed to have prepared two. So I went in and I did my thing. I didn’t care anymore…I knew I wasn’t going to get [Gilmore Girls]. The script was too good. The pilot script was so good; they were going to offer it to stars, so what was I wasting my time for? I’m late for this other [audition], I’ll probably get a ticket [outside], so can I get out of here, please?”
Netflix/Kobal/Shutterstock
5. Before Jared Padalecki could land his starring role as Rory’s first love Dean Forester, two other Canadian actors had to be fired. Why? The character had been altered to be less “alternative,” Anthony explained to Vanity Fair.
6. Ryan Gosling and Chris Pine both auditioned for the series. Gosling was brought in to read for a small part, with casting director Jami Rudofsky admitting at the 2015 ATX TV Festival that his audition fell—gasp!—flat.
Pine, meanwhile, revealed his father, actor Robert Pine, had secured him an audition (his first professional one), though he couldn’t remember for which part. As he said in a W Magazine video, “I dunno, maybe a boyfriend.”
Netflix
7. While Melissa McCarthy went on to become one of the biggest comedy stars in Hollywood, Sherman-Palladino revealed she “had to fight” to cast the actress as the lovable and kooky chef Sookie.
“They weren’t sure. It wasn’t that people didn’t like her, but she was a different energy. She was a different kind of chick,” Sherman-Palladino explained during the cast’s reunion panel at 2015 ATX TV Festival. “And the part was just written for a woman, There was no body type, there was nothing specific about it. I was like, ‘I need someone funny who could really act.'”
And while Sherman-Palladino knew from the minute McCarthy walked in the door that she was the perfect person for the role, she said, “It was a tricky sell. And it took awhile…everyone came around, but it took a few shows.”
Warner Bros. Television
8. In the pilot, Sookie was played by Alex Borstein, but she had to drop out of the role because of her obligations to MADtv. She would take on small recurring roles later in the series as a harpist and stylist. Sherman-Palladino would later cast Borstein in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the actress going on to win two Emmys for her work on the Amazon comedy.
9. Jackson Douglas, Borstein’s then-husband, however, landed a more permanent role on Gilmore Girls after Sherman-Palladino wrote the role of Sookie’s farmer love interest Jackson with him in mind. Meant to only be in a few episodes, his chemistry with McCarthy landed him a seven-season stay.
Netflix/Kobal
10. Liza Weil originally auditioned for Rory, and while producers were impressed, they knew she wasn’t the right fit.
“I got a call and they were like, ‘They really liked you but it wasn’t quite right. But if [the show is picked up] maybe they’ll find something for you to do,'” Weil recalled during the ATX Festival panel. “I thought that was probably the end of it.”
As it turns out, they didn’t just find something, they created something for Weil to do, writing the role of Paris, Rory’s foe-turned-friend, specifically for her. And while Paris went on to become a fan-favorite, Weil was initially unsure about the prickly part.
“The younger version of myself was really freaked out that that’s what they wrote,” the How to Get Away With Murder star joked. “I couldn’t fathom that they would think that they could do that! But now I think it’s really flattering and I’m really glad.”
Mitchell Haddad/CBS Photo Archive via Getty Images
11. Graham and Bledel’s chemistry? A total stroke of luck as the two stars didn’t meet until their first day on set. And Bledel was so new to acting that Graham would have to grab her onscreen daughter’s arm to make sure she hit her marks.
“People are like, ‘You have such great chemistry,'” Graham joked on Today. “And I’m like, ‘I’m mauling her. That’s why.'”
12. Unlike most other actors, Graham and Bledel really ate most of the food Lorelai and Rory consumed during the series, which, any fan knows, was a lot.
“It really bothers me when actors don’t eat the food that’s in the scene,” Bledel explained on the Today show. But after several takes and upset stomachs, Graham says they eventually relied on spit buckets to get them through it.
Netflix/Kobal/Shutterstock
13. Throughout the series’ run, Bledel dated two of her main onscreen boyfriends IRL, according to casting director Mara Casey.
“We did have a joke about casting all of Alexis’ [real-life] boyfriends,” she revealed to Life & Style in 2016. “She dated Jared and Milo [Ventimiglia]. And she also dated a young New York actor named Chris Heuisler, who played a guest role. Real sweet kid.”
14. While Sean Gunn initially was introduced as Stars Hollow’s DSL installer Mick, he would eventually become a series regular as Kirk, who would have a different odd job in every episode. So why the name change? Gunn revealed Sherman-Palladino had simply forgotten he already had a name.
Warner Bros. Television/Entertainment Pictures via ZUMA Press
15. The WB was interested in a spinoff starring Ventimiglia, with the season three episode “Here Comes the Son” serving as a backdoor pilot for the new series. Windward Circle would’ve centered on Jess’ life in Venice Beach, Calif., but the series ultimately didn’t go forward due to budget concerns.
16. As Gilmore Girls was ending its seventh season, there were talks of continuing to follow Rory in her adult life after Graham decided she was not going to return.
