It’s hard to imagine anyone else but Lauren Graham playing the beloved Lorelai Gilmore on Gilmore Girls, but that’s almost exactly what happened.
Graham was filming another project—NBC’s M.Y.O.B.—at the time the script for Gilmore Girls came across her desk.
“Lauren [Graham] was initially on vacation and the casting director was talking about her, but she was on another show. I kept saying, ‘I don’t want to meet somebody I can’t have because if I fall in love with her and then I can’t have her, I will kill myself and you will all have committed murder,’” Gilmore Girls co-creator Amy Sherman-Palladino told The Hollywood Reporter.
Eventually, however, she agreed to a meeting with Graham after struggling to find the perfect fit for Lorelai.
“So I fought it and fought it, and then we couldn’t find Lorelai, so finally I was like, ‘All right, fine. You win.’ She came back from vacation, walked in the door; she read three words, and I’m like, ‘Well, that’s it, we’re done,’” said Sherman-Palladino.
Lauren Graham Was Excited to Get the Part of Lorelai, to Say the Least
Meanwhile, Lauren Graham discusses the casting in her 2016 book, Talking As Fast As I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between). She recalls waiting to hear whether M.Y.O.B. was canceled or not. “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.”
“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 unique connection to Lorelai after reading the script. “That feeling is a combination of ‘Hello, old friend,’ meets, ‘EVERYONE GET OUT OF MY WAY SHE’S ALL MINE.’”
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