Talking as Fast as I Can

by Lauren Graham

  Recently Carrie Fisher responded to a New York Post article that quoted her mentioning the pressure she’d felt to lose weight for the most recent Star Wars film. The writer commented that if she didn’t like being judged on her looks, she should “quit acting.” He went on to say, regarding her work as a writer, “No one would know the name Carrie Fisher if it weren’t for her ability to leverage her looks.”

  Carrie Fisher is a bestselling author and screenwriter, giant movie star, and all-around attractive person. And there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of really beautiful people in New York and Los Angeles who’ve come to those places in an attempt to become actors. If getting work as an actor was simply about leveraging your looks—if that was the sole currency of success in our field—then everyone on Vanderpump Rules would be winning Oscars one day and I would be the center pullout thing in next month’s Maxim. I’m not saying either thing can’t happen, but it hasn’t yet, perhaps because there’s at least a subtle difference between acting on a reality show and modeling, on one hand, and being a talent like Carrie Fisher, on the other. “Leveraging one’s looks” is just one component. Also, I’m not even sure Maxim has a center pullout thing.

  One day I might not feel like “leveraging my looks” anymore, and I’m okay with that. I’d like to age gracefully, although I’m not yet entirely sure what that will mean. I just know there are certain things I don’t want to have to do to look younger. I don’t have problems with plastic surgery in theory. Wait—that’s not true. I do sort of have problems with it. I’m just trying to sound blasé about something that’s currently fashionable but also troubling to me. See also: high-waisted jeans.

  For starters, as a viewer, I just can’t stand it when it’s all I can see. Suddenly I go from watching a scene with two actors I like to being more focused on a conversation between Upper Lip Filler and Botox, and it’s too distracting. If I could be guaranteed that no one, including myself, would notice something I did to my face to look younger or somehow better, maybe I’d do it, but I feel like I have one of those faces that shows that sort of stuff too easily, and I don’t want to be worried that you’ll start mistaking my forehead for a skating rink.

  Also, while there’s nothing wrong with doing things to make you feel better, I just wish the choices were limited to simpler things many of us have access to, like drinking more water or jogging or finding a more flattering shade of lipstick. It’s a bummer that it’s even an option to appear more youthful by chopping off your ears and reattaching them in order to hoist up your neck flaps (this may not be the precise surgical term). It’s confusing to me that my aversion to doing that has any sort of bearing on my work as an actor. “You mean you aren’t willing to chop off and reattatch your ears in order to hoist up your neck flaps, Lauren? Don’t you care about us? Where’s your commitment to your craft?” mean people on the Internet yell. I wish this possibility simply didn’t exist, so that we all had somewhat of a fair playing field. But this is as futile a concept as my belief that everyone who’s born should automatically be allowed to live until age eighty-five. The people who treat themselves the most healthfully would get extra credit, more time to live longer; the partiers and couch potatoes would get docked points, living less long. This system is much more fair than the random “sometimes smokers live into their nineties, while marathon runners occasionally drop dead at forty-five” thing we’ve got going now. But alas.

  Another remarkable thing about Betty White is that she went from being twenty- and thirtysomething Betty to eightysomething Betty while maintaining the same wonderful quality she always had of just plain being Betty White. No matter what character she plays, Betty White is always funny, always smart, and always at least a little sexy. She didn’t set herself up early on as hot temptress Betty White, and therefore she didn’t have to desperately try to cling to her hot temptress persona, pretending with each passing year that nothing had changed. She didn’t have to face headlines like “Betty White: Hot Temptress! Back and Better than Ever!” or “Betty White: Still Hot Temptress?” or “Sad Betty White Seen Clubbing at Limelight! Desperate to Reign as Hot Temptress Once More!” Also, that Limelight (which closed in the 1990s, I think) is literally the only club name I could think of should tell you a great deal about my clubbing habits.

  In The First Wives Club, Goldie Hawn’s actress character says there are only three ages for women in Hollywood: “babe, district attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy.” This suggests that acting careers follow a three-act structure, which makes sense. For the people who are willing to do the ear-staple-neck-flap surgery, perhaps the second act lasts longer. I haven’t gotten to my last act yet (Ole Granny Sack Pants? Cranky Irish Potato Maven?), but so far for me career-wise, I’d call my first two acts Gal About Town and The Mom.

  Gal About Town is a career girl on the go. She’s looking for love but can’t be tied down yet because she’s trying to get ahead at the office. Occasionally she’s part of a couple, but mainly she’s single and career-focused and goes out on dates that don’t go well. GAT meets friends in bars and stays out late and takes fashion risks. She wears high-heeled shoes and her winter coat is red or yellow. She has lots of girlfriends she can call when times get tough. Often one of her best friends is a guy she could never picture herself being with romantically, but eventually she’ll realize she was wrong and he was the one all along, and isn’t it ironic that he was right there in front of her the whole time? When I started out, I did a lot of guest spots and almost all of them were GATs: Seinfeld, Law & Order, and NewsRadio.

  My other Gals About Town:

  Liz in Good Company

  Molly in Conrad Bloom

  Jules in One True Thing

  Sue in Bad Santa (she really got around town)

  Maggie in Because I Said So

  The Mom, on the other hand, wears plaid shirts and sneakers, and is usually described as “tired,” “beleaguered,” or possessing a “faded beauty.” The Mom is often harried or overworked, and we know this because, usually in her very first scene, she says frustratedly: “Guys, c’mon! We’re going to be late!” The Mom is often single, but we don’t always know exactly why, or what happened. There will be one scene where The Mom is with her kid(s) and wistfully refers to “your father,” but we aren’t sure if he’s dead or just away somewhere. Weirdly, The Mom doesn’t seem to have that many friends. At most, she has one recently divorced friend who dates younger men and smokes and tells The Mom she needs to get out more. While the GATs usually have tons of personality traits and quirks, The Moms aren’t usually as specific. Almost every Mom I’ve played has a scene where she folds laundry. The GATs never do this. They must be too busy having dates with Mr. Wrong and getting their dry cleaning delivered. Sometimes members of the crew on a Mom project won’t even use my character name but will just refer to me as “The Mom”: “Okay, now, The Mom stands over here with the laundry basket.” I don’t know why The Mom can’t be as specific and unique as the GATs. I think it’s because the GATs are most often in the center of the story and The Mom seldom is, because, paper towels.

  My Moms have included:

  Joan in Evan Almighty

  Phyllis in Flash of Genius

  Pamela in Max

  Jules in Middle School

  By the time I was cast as Sarah Braverman on Parenthood, playing the mom of two teenagers was age appropriate. But the first time I read Gilmore Girls, I was thirty-one years old. I had played the mother of a brand-new baby once (Denise on Townies), but even that character was considered a very young mom. For four years in Los Angeles I’d been almost exclusively in the GAT world. But that was about to change.

  When I got the script for the Gilmore Girls pilot, I was in New York, staying in a friend’s studio apartment, waiting to hear if the series I’d just completed for NBC—Don Roos’s M.Y.O.B.—was going to be picked up for a second season or cancelled. Waiting to hear if your TV show is going to be picked up or not is always a stressful time. “Did you hear anyth
ing?” you ask your agent roughly twelve times a day. By call number five, your agent mysteriously begins to be “in a meeting,” “with Hugh Jackman buying pants,” or “out foraging for truffles.”

  The Gilmore Girls script had actually been sent to me once before, but I hadn’t read it. I didn’t want to read something and fall in love with it only to find out I wasn’t available. But they hadn’t found anyone, and they were still interested. “They’ll take you in second position now,” my agent told me, which meant that, unlike the first time I’d been sent the script, they were willing to roll the dice. If I auditioned and they wanted me, they’d go ahead and shoot the pilot with me, hoping the other show didn’t get picked up.

  And that’s what happened.

  Well, what really happened was that I got the part, shot the pilot, and chewed off my fingernails for the next three months, during which time Gilmore Girls was picked up at the WB, but M.Y.O.B. wasn’t yet cancelled at NBC—there was still the possibility of a second season. Years later, one of the TV executives who’d been involved at the time told me they’d finally cleared me for Gilmore Girls because they’d “swapped me” for another actor at some other network who was also tied to two projects, confirming my suspicion that if you want to know what Hollywood is really like, just watch The Hunger Games over and over.

  But after all that, the part was mine, and I was set to play Lorelai Gilmore, the thirty-two-year-old mother of a sixteen-year-old girl. When I told people the premise of Gilmore Girls, most of them, especially other actresses my age, would inevitably say, “Don’t you worry about getting typecast as The Mom? Aren’t you worried it will age you?” But honestly, I never once thought about it. To me, Lorelai was equal parts Gal About Town and The Mom, plus a magical mix of smarts and humor that made her totally unique. I read somewhere that Christopher Reeve said one of the ways he knew a part was for him was when he couldn’t stand the idea of anyone else doing it. I know that exact feeling. There’s a sort of manic recognition that happens very rarely when I read something I want so much that I go briefly but totally bonkers. That feeling is a combination of “Hello, old friend” meets EVERYONE GET OUT OF MY WAY SHE’S MINE ALL MINE.

  At the time, I’d been in a string of shows that hadn’t lasted very long. I worked enough, and fairly steadily, but nothing had come close to sticking. Yet when I told my mom about Gilmore Girls, I remember her saying, “I have a feeling about this one.”

  And she was right.

  I know how lucky I am to have had such wonderful first and second acts in my career. I’m still not sure what my third act will turn out to be (Sexy Baking Competition Hostess? Flamboyant Peruvian Bingo Caller?), but if you happen to run into Betty White, tell her thank you.

  I’d like to be like her one day.

  Do you ever find yourself walking down the street thinking “I feel like Lauren likes me, but does she love me?”

  The answer is yes. Yes, I do. And I’m going to prove it to you by doing something I haven’t done in approximately fifteen years—not even for friends or relatives or employers.

  I’m going to watch myself on television.

  I’m not sure when I stopped watching things I was in—it’s probably more like I never really started. I learned fairly early on that I was not one of those actors who was helped by seeing myself onscreen. It took at least three viewings of something I was in to even begin to be objective, and on Gilmore Girls, we did twenty-two episodes each season. If I stayed inside watching myself for all those hours, I’d never make it out to the grocery store, not to mention I’d become unbearable as a human. Making so many episodes for seven years straight did something funny to my memory too, and so today it’s hard to recall exactly what was going on back then, or distinguish season from season. But I want to tell you what it was like for me to play Lorelai all of those years. So I’m going to at least scroll through all the episodes to see what I can come up with, to give you a sense of it as best I can. The Internet has already done its job in terms of ranking episodes and naming its favorites. My goal here is just to give you my take on what was going on personally.

  Just so you have a visual: I’m in my apartment in Manhattan, and it’s the summertime. It’s a million degrees outside, and my sister and most of my friends who live here are out of town at a beach somewhere. There’s almost no one in my apartment building. Which means not only am I going to spend the next three days watching myself, I am also going to be my only company. So if, during this time, TMZ reports that I’ve gone crazy and trapped the Chinese-food delivery man inside my apartment because I “just needed someone to talk to,” you’ll understand why.

  MAKING THE PILOT

  Alexis Bledel and I met for the very first time in the lobby of a hotel in Toronto. Can you believe that? We’d both been cast in the show without ever having met. I was cast very late in the process, partially because of the M.Y.O.B. thing. 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 a show. There’d been no time for anyone to even see us standing side by side, just to make sure we looked related. We met in that lobby and went straight to dinner with our new employers, series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, executive producer Dan Palladino, and producer Gavin Polone. I was overwhelmed, but I could tell I liked her right away. She was only eighteen years old, but kind and curious, and beautiful of course. I had a good feeling about us from the start. We clicked as friends right away too. But it was all a stroke of luck!

  A few months later, the show was picked up, which was exciting but also worrisome, because, as mentioned, I wasn’t actually available to do it. If NBC decided they wanted to keep going with M.Y.O.B., I’d have to be replaced on Gilmore Girls. So, in a strange sort of limbo, I traveled to New York in May 2000 for the upfronts—the annual event where networks present their new season to advertisers—to promote Gilmore Girls. In the greenroom, where the actors and executives mingled before going onstage, there was a giant screen where a clip reel of all the new shows being launched was playing on a loop. Some WB executives came over to introduce themselves.

  “The show looks great,” one of them said, just as my face came on the screen behind him.

  “Tough time slot,” said another.

  “Why, what’s the time slot?” I asked.

  Today, if a new show of mine was picked up, that’s one of the first things I’d want to know. Back then, it somehow hadn’t occurred to me to find out.

  “Thursdays at eight,” he told me.

  Even the less savvy me of the time knew what that meant. My stomach dropped. “Oh, so we’re already cancelled,” I joked. He didn’t say anything, but smiled sympathetically and sort of shrugged in a way that said he didn’t disagree.

  Thursday night on NBC was, in the year 2000, the biggest ratings night on all of television. We’d be up against Friends, the number one show at the time. The WB itself was still very new, and the ratings, even of their most successful shows, already tended to be much lower than those of the big four networks. So on Thursday nights against America’s favorite sitcom, we had almost zero chance of finding an audience.

  Oh, well, I thought, I probably can’t do this show anyway. And even if I was let out of my M.Y.O.B. contract, I faced a Thursday time slot that basically spelled doom. Here we go again, I thought. I’d worked fairly steadily since moving to Los Angeles from New York, but every single show I’d done up until then had been cancelled in its first season. Why should Gilmore Girls be any different? I’d fallen in love with the script right away, but I loved M.Y.O.B. too, and the ratings were only so-so. My show business heart had been broken before, and I was starting to get used to it.

  I turned back to the clip reel just as Gilmore Girls came on again. Goodbye, new show! I said to myself.

  In front of me, two women who looked to be pretty close in age were watching the screen. As our scenes played, they gasped and grabbed onto each other, their faces lighting up. “Mo
m, that’s us!” the daughter said, beaming at her young-looking mother. They seemed shocked and pleased to see themselves reflected in the characters. Something had clearly struck a chord with them in a big way.

  Hmmmm.

  SEASON ONE

  The first scene we filmed is the first scene you see in the pilot: a guy in Luke’s hits on Rory, and then Lorelai, and we reveal they aren’t girlfriends, as he assumed, but in fact mother and daughter. Watch it back and you won’t believe you’re watching a young actress (Alexis) in her first on-camera scene. Also, what’s so funny about this pilot by today’s standards is that while the dialogue is delightful from the start, nothing really happens for the first fifteen or twenty minutes, until Rory gets into Chilton and Lorelai has to ask her parents for money. Today, if a mother and daughter speaking clever dialogue didn’t also reveal themselves to be surgeons, werewolves, or undercover detectives by the end of the teaser, we’d never be picked up. Also, we all look twelve years old.

  Frankly, what I remember most when I watch this season is the degree to which I was on an adrenaline-fueled dialogue high the whole year, if that makes any sense. I hadn’t had material this dense since back in acting school. I found the pace and sheer volume of it exhilarating. Rather than being tired out by the long hours, I had extra energy as a result. I slept about four hours a night and still felt great. I ran every day at lunch in the WB gym. Ah, youth!

  Watching Scott Patterson this season reminds me—you know, that part wasn’t necessarily the inevitable love interest for Lorelai that it became. He was simply Cute Grouchy Diner Owner in the beginning, and it could have gone in any number of directions, but Luke took on a more important role because of Scott’s special sexiness, which was mixed with a gruffness that was the perfect contrast to Lorelai’s chirpy cheerfulness. Watch and learn, young actors—if you’re interesting, the camera finds you.