Gilmore Girls made the NYT best shows of the century, and Alexis Bledel's interview admits Rory was nearly someone else's
Twenty-six years on, the show landed on a very fancy list — and its star used the occasion to remind everyone how close the whole thing came to going sideways in the casting room.
The New York Times put Gilmore Girls on its list of the 100 Best TV Shows of the 21st Century, which is both correct and extremely funny for a show The WB aired opposite Friends. To mark it, Alexis Bledel gave the Times a rare interview, crediting the show's staying power to its screwball-speed dialogue straight out of the '30s and '40s, the teen angst, the single-mom economics, and the multi-generational sniping — the whole Stars Hollow load-bearing structure.
What the anniversary lap also dredges up is how improbable Bledel's casting was. She has told the story herself: an 18-year-old NYU student and former model with zero acting experience, dragged through roughly six callbacks while sick:
"I got a tad bit impatient. I had a little attitude."
Creator Amy Sherman-Palladino read that attitude as pure Rory. Her account of the audition, given years ago, is a masterclass in Hollywood logic:
"She hates us. We love her! Let's give it to her."
The Rory who became Paris
Here's the part that reshuffles the multiverse: another actress got deep into the running for Rory — Liza Weil, who auditioned for the lead before the pilot was even greenlit and later recalled the rejection call:
"They really liked you but it wasn't quite right."
Sherman-Palladino liked Weil so much she wrote a new character specifically for her. That character was Paris Geller. Meaning the show's most gloriously unhinged overachiever exists only because its most serene overachiever went to somebody else.
The alternate-universe call sheet
Weil wasn't the only near-miss:
- Mädchen Amick was up for Lorelai before Lauren Graham — and later joined the show anyway, as Christopher's fiancée Sherry.
- Ryan Gosling, Chris Pine, and Anna Kendrick all auditioned for supporting roles and didn't make the cut, a sentence that gets funnier every award season.
- Bledel herself dropped out of NYU when the part landed — she was 18 when she started playing Rory and, she told the Times, remains grateful the fans stuck around for all of it.
The 2016 Netflix revival ended on those famous final four words and a dangling implication of more. Nine years later, the long-rumored follow-up has still never materialized.
Previously we wrote: Melissa McCarthy says Gilmore Girls scripts ran 93 pages and she could not change a contraction
