Much to the delight of Gilmore Girls fans everywhere, the series is officially returning next week, on November 25, to Netflix. The highly anticipated revival, titled Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, will consist of four 90-minute episodes that pick up in real time nearly a decade since we last saw Lorelai and Rory sipping coffee at Luke’s Diner in sleepy Stars Hollow. It’s a welcome return for many. “We created an alternate universe that we loved living in, loved having viewers get immersed in,” show creator Amy Sherman-Palladino told an interviewer in 2006, when she left the show. “And look, fucked-up family drama: that’s a goldmine; problems never get resolved. There’s a richness to conflict and love and stress that makes for great experiences.” As we eagerly await the next chapter (and binge-watch our favorite episodes from previous seasons), here are five things you may not have known about Gilmore Girls.
1. Stars Hollow is a real place! Sort of.
The name stems from Frog Hollow, Mia Farrow’s home in rural Connecticut. Sherman-Palladino and her husband, producer and writer Dan Palladino, once visited the actress and were so spellbound by the nearby inn where they later stayed that they wrote a version of it into the series. Moreover, the town itself, Washington Depot, Connecticut, served as a major framework; when the couple subsequently returned for a long weekend, Sherman-Palladino took notes, and by the next morning, had mapped out much of the show, including written dialogue for the pilot. “If I can make people feel this much of what I felt walking around this fairy town, I thought that would be wonderful,” Sherman-Palladino said. “It was beautiful, it was magical, and it was a feeling of warmth and small-town camaraderie. . . . There was a longing for that in my own life.”
2. Luke’s character was originally written to be played by a woman in a minor role named Daisy.
The direction shifted once producers decided “there wasn’t enough testosterone,” and cast Scott Patterson. Patterson wasn’t set to appear beyond the pilot but became a series regular, thanks to his chemistry with Lauren Graham. For an added will-they-or-won’t-they twist, Sherman-Palladino reportedly wrote Jess into the show to prevent Lorelai and Luke from dating. “We’re dealing with two people who, if they just opened their eyes and stared across the table at each other, would go, ‘Oh shit, it’s you,’ ” she said. “So when you’re playing that game, you have to find obstacles that are real to put in their way.”
3. Alexis Bledel was an NYU student with no professional acting experience when, on a whim, she auditioned for the part of Rory.
(At the time, Bledel was also applying for waitress and census-taker jobs to earn tuition money.) As a result, Graham helped Bledel with some technical aspects of filming the show. “We have a lot of scenes in those early episodes where I’m literally gluing her to my side,” Graham has said of the early days of shooting. “I don’t know if she noticed or cared, it kind of worked and it served to help make us look like this connected duo because I literally wouldn’t let go of her.”
4. Bledel isn’t team Dean, Jess, or Logan.
During a 2015 cast reunion on the Today show, Bledel was asked who Rory would have wound up with, and she replied, “none of the above.” Bledel added: “I think she’d be seeing someone new, or she’d be single and focused on her career. I don’t think she’d be married.” Graham agreed, exclaiming, “That’s the best answer ever!” While Rory’s love life remains a heated debate among fans, Gilmore Girls’s Matt Czuchry insists there are no hard feelings on his part. “I actually liked how Rory refused Logan’s proposal,” Czuchry has said. “I feel that the show is about two strong, independent women, and that refusal captures the heart of the show.”
5. Long before the show’s finale in 2007, Sherman-Palladino admitted she knew exactly how she wanted the series to end, right down to the final four words.
Because Sherman-Palladino parted ways with the network prior to the last season, viewers never found out how the creator intended to wrap things up, including the said illusory exchange. “I feel like now I’ll let people down because it’s been so built up,” Sherman-Palladino once joked. “ ‘Really? That’s what we waited all these 12 years for? Well, thanks so much.’ ” Though both Sherman-Palladino and Graham have confirmed fans will be getting a much-needed sense of closure with the reboot, they’ve kept a tight lid on the details. That hasn’t stopped legions of fans from taking to Twitter to cast their best predictions in the interim.
