How smart was it of Lauren Graham to release her new book Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girl to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between), at around the same time as the highly anticipated revival Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life? Even though the Netflix follow-up has had a lot of controversy surrounding it, it was still a fun watch! So imagine how much fun it’ll be to read what Lorelai…err I mean Lauren Graham has to say in her latest book?
Here are the top 5 things I learned after checking it out:
#1. Graham and co-star Alexis Bledel never met each other before the series started shooting in 2000. She said, “I was cast very late in the process…So there was no time for a chemistry read, usually a minimum requirement when casting two actors whose relationship is vital to the success of the show. I could tell I liked her right away.”
#2. The character of Sookie ended up becoming a major part of the show thanks to her chemistry with the lead character Lorelai. The actress who played the role was a little known comedian at the time named Melissa McCarthy. Today, she’s gone on to lead films including Spy, Identity Theft, and a little film called, Ghostbuster!
Graham elaborates, “A few months into filming…I remember Alexis and I went to see Melissa McCarthy perform in the Groundlings for the first time, and we were completely blown away by her. I wondered then if anyone would ever figure out a way to expose how uniquely talented she was.”
#3. Fans weren’t the only one who found season 7 totally off. Lauren (vaguely) remembers how weird it was for Lorelai to marry Rory’s (Bledel) dad Christopher (David Sutcliffe) during that trip to Paris. She hadn’t been broken up from her true love Luke (Scott Patterson) all that long before deciding to marry without their daughter present.
She said, “This seemed so odd to me back then. While we were filming the reboot, [director] Dan Palladino had to call one of the superfan assistants in the office to have her explain the whole episode to me in detail. Even though, I wasn’t sure she was telling me the truth.”
#4. The death of Ed Herrmann affected Lauren during filming. Herrmann, who played her father Richard, died on December 31, 2014 at the age of 71. In the book she says, “His absence had a feeling too — the room was entirely different without his booming voice and easy laugh.”
#5. Remember that time in season 6 when Rory and Lorelai are super distant from each other? Ok…remember how much you hated it? So did Lauren! She wrote, “I missed my favorite scene partner. I’d never played a character for this long, and while it’s a bad actor cliché to say ‘my character would never do that,’ the line between personal and professional starts to get blurry, and after a while you start to feel like what’s happening to your character is sort of also happening to you.”
Lauren’s book is available in stores now.
