Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls, and Everything in Between(14)

Gal About Town is a career girl on the go. She’s looking for love but can’t be tied down yet because she’s trying to get ahead at the office. Occasionally she’s part of a couple, but mainly she’s single and career-focused and goes out on dates that don’t go well. GAT meets friends in bars and stays out late and takes fashion risks. She wears high-heeled shoes and her winter coat is red or yellow. She has lots of girlfriends she can call when times get tough. Often one of her best friends is a guy she could never picture herself being with romantically, but eventually she’ll realize she was wrong and he was the one all along, and isn’t it ironic that he was right there in front of her the whole time? When I started out, I did a lot of guest spots and almost all of them were GATs: Seinfeld, Law & Order, and NewsRadio.



My other Gals About Town:

Liz in Good Company

Molly in Conrad Bloom

Jules in One True Thing

Sue in Bad Santa (she really got around town)

Maggie in Because I Said So

The Mom, on the other hand, wears plaid shirts and sneakers, and is usually described as “tired,” “beleaguered,” or possessing a “faded beauty.” The Mom is often harried or overworked, and we know this because, usually in her very first scene, she says frustratedly: “Guys, c’mon! We’re going to be late!” The Mom is often single, but we don’t always know exactly why, or what happened. There will be one scene where The Mom is with her kid(s) and wistfully refers to “your father,” but we aren’t sure if he’s dead or just away somewhere. Weirdly, The Mom doesn’t seem to have that many friends. At most, she has one recently divorced friend who dates younger men and smokes and tells The Mom she needs to get out more. While the GATs usually have tons of personality traits and quirks, The Moms aren’t usually as specific. Almost every Mom I’ve played has a scene where she folds laundry. The GATs never do this. They must be too busy having dates with Mr. Wrong and getting their dry cleaning delivered. Sometimes members of the crew on a Mom project won’t even use my character name but will just refer to me as “The Mom”: “Okay, now, The Mom stands over here with the laundry basket.” I don’t know why The Mom can’t be as specific and unique as the GATs. I think it’s because the GATs are most often in the center of the story and The Mom seldom is, because, paper towels.



My Moms have included:

Joan in Evan Almighty

Phyllis in Flash of Genius

Pamela in Max

Jules in Middle School

By the time I was cast as Sarah Braverman on Parenthood, playing the mom of two teenagers was age appropriate. But the first time I read Gilmore Girls, I was thirty-one years old. I had played the mother of a brand-new baby once (Denise on Townies), but even that character was considered a very young mom. For four years in Los Angeles I’d been almost exclusively in the GAT world. But that was about to change.

When I got the script for the Gilmore Girls pilot, I was in New York, staying in a friend’s studio apartment, waiting to hear if the series I’d just completed for NBC—Don Roos’s M.Y.O.B.—was going to be picked up for a second season or cancelled. Waiting to hear if your TV show is going to be picked up or not is always a stressful time. “Did you hear anything?” you ask your agent roughly twelve times a day. By call number five, your agent mysteriously begins to be “in a meeting,” “with Hugh Jackman buying pants,” or “out foraging for truffles.”



The Gilmore Girls script had actually been sent to me once before, but I hadn’t read it. I didn’t want to read something and fall in love with it only to find out I wasn’t available. But they hadn’t found anyone, and they were still interested. “They’ll take you in second position now,” my agent told me, which meant that, unlike the first time I’d been sent the script, they were willing to roll the dice. If I auditioned and they wanted me, they’d go ahead and shoot the pilot with me, hoping the other show didn’t get picked up.

And that’s what happened.

Well, what really happened was that I got the part, shot the pilot, and chewed off my fingernails for the next three months, during which time Gilmore Girls was picked up at the WB, but M.Y.O.B. wasn’t yet cancelled at NBC—there was still the possibility of a second season. Years later, one of the TV executives who’d been involved at the time told me they’d finally cleared me for Gilmore Girls because they’d “swapped me” for another actor at some other network who was also tied to two projects, confirming my suspicion that if you want to know what Hollywood is really like, just watch The Hunger Games over and over.

But after all that, the part was mine, and I was set to play Lorelai Gilmore, the thirty-two-year-old mother of a sixteen-year-old girl. When I told people the premise of Gilmore Girls, most of them, especially other actresses my age, would inevitably say, “Don’t you worry about getting typecast as The Mom? Aren’t you worried it will age you?” But honestly, I never once thought about it. To me, Lorelai was equal parts Gal About Town and The Mom, plus a magical mix of smarts and humor that made her totally unique. I read somewhere that Christopher Reeve said one of the ways he knew a part was for him was when he couldn’t stand the idea of anyone else doing it. I know that exact feeling. There’s a sort of manic recognition that happens very rarely when I read something I want so much that I go briefly but totally bonkers. That feeling is a combination of “Hello, old friend” meets EVERYONE GET OUT OF MY WAY SHE’S MINE ALL MINE.