It's definitely hard to think of a TV show that could ever compare to Gilmore Girls, the drama that aired for seven seasons before Netflix brought it back for a revival. The mother/daughter show premiered 20 years ago and brings comfort to so many fans thanks to the scenes of quaint Stars Hollow and Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory (Alexis Bledel) enjoying junk food and movie nights.
It's always fun hearing how cast members felt about the series, and Alexis Bledel has shared an interesting story about how she won the part of Rory. Let's take a look at what her audition process was like.
Six Auditions
Alexis Bledel is definitely one of the celebs who likes to keep things fairly private, but fans know that Bledel and Milo Ventimiglia dated for three years.
Bledel might not talk a lot about her life, but she has talked about auditioning for Rory Gilmore. Bledel said she auditioned six times. It's amazing to learn this because fans know that Bledel is so perfect as Rory. She has an innocent vibe and really brings this character to life. It's so tough to think about anyone else playing this Stars Hollow resident and, later, Yale student.
According to Teen Vogue, the actress went on Late Night with Seth Meyers and opened up. She said, "I was a student at NYU, and they kept calling me back up to audition." Fans might have heard that this was Bledel's first acting role, and she explained that by saying that she wasn't familiar with what it would take to audition for a TV show. She said, "Oddly, I wasn’t a very seasoned actor at all. I didn’t know the process."
The actress explained that she was annoyed that she had to keep auditioning and instead of pushing that aside, she was honest about it. She said, "I had a little attitude, and our boss really liked that a lot. She was like, 'That’s our girl!' I was like, 'Are you guys going to bring me back again...?' and she was like, 'I like that, that’s perfect.'"
There's another fascinating tidbit about Bledel's audition: she was also sick during the audition, according to Instyle.com.
Playing Rory
In an interview with Glamour.com, Bledel and Graham talked about how they first met in Canada during dinner with Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, the creators and showrunners.
Bledel looked back on how she was only 18 years old and she really looked up to Graham. She said she was "dazzled" by her. She explained, "I just remember Lauren was a real professional actress, and this was my first job. [Laughs] She had all the poise and confidence and energy of a performer! That was a new thing for me."
Graham said that the young actress was "perfect" and that she was so glad that she was cast. It definitely worked out as fans can't picture anyone else in those roles.
The Revival
Ever since GG aired its series finale in 2007, fans could only re-watch episodes, and while they never get old and tired, it's definitely true that everyone cheered when Netflix announced it would produce a revival.
Bledel told Glamour.com that she was thrilled to be able to bring Rory Gilmore back to life. She said, "I'm definitely more grateful. It’s like a chance to have a do-over. You never really get that in life. To get to reimagine the same character eight years later, it’s kind of great, creatively, to get to do that. You get to take all the things that you find interesting about the character and then hopefully inject that with whatever you picked up along the way personally."
In an interview with Collider.com, Bledel talked about how Rory is a grown-up in the revival so that changed things between her and her mom, and they have a new relationship now.
In the four revival episodes, fans saw Rory jetting off to London to see Logan (while he was engaged to someone else) and struggling to make it as a journalist. It seemed strange that she was having so much trouble in her professional and personal lives as she had always been so cool, calm, and collected. As it turns out, the actress herself wasn't thrilled with Rory's story. According to Elle.com, she said, "I had told [creator] Amy [Sherman-Palladino] that I hoped Rory would end on a high note after all of her hard work. I wanted to see her succeed and be thriving. So it was a hard thing for me to digest."
Fans will always hope for another season of A Year In The Life. But whether or not that happens, it's still fun to learn about Alexis Bledel's audition process and how she feels about playing this iconic character.