Talking as Fast as I Can

by Lauren Graham

  SEASON SEVEN

  Well, in many ways, this was a tough year and sort of a jumble for me, memory-wise. For example, apparently during this season Christopher and Lorelai get married in Paris. Okay. I have to admit, this seemed so odd to me back then (especially after all that time apart; I just didn’t think Lorelai would get married without Rory present), that I somehow managed to completely forget it ever happened. While we were filming the reboot, Dan Palladino had to call one of the superfan assistants in the office to have her explain the whole episode to me in detail. Even then, I wasn’t sure she was telling me the truth: “No. Really? Are you sure? No. Paris?” I kept saying to her.

  Plus, our network, the WB, merged with another network, UPN, to form a new network, the CW. Like any company, changes at the top trickle down to its employees. The good news was that we survived the merger when many other shows did not. The bad news was that Amy and Dan faced a tough renegotiation and ultimately couldn’t agree to terms. Our new show runners were talented writers who knew the show well. But just like when David Lee Roth was replaced as the lead singer of Van Halen, no matter how hard we tried singing the same songs, they just didn’t sound quite the same. (Apparently, I stopped listening to music in the 1980s.)

  Alexis and I were at the end of our contracts as well, and about halfway through this season we started renegotiating too. It was a confusing time. For starters, after almost seven straight years of extremely long hours, we were both just plain tired. Creatively, we weren’t sure where the show was heading, and we were starting to feel a bit uninspired. To both of us, Rory graduating from Yale actually seemed like a logical place to end the story. We both stood to get a raise if we stayed longer, but we loved the show far too much to keep going for that reason alone if the content wasn’t good enough. So conversations with our representatives went back and forth, and nothing had been decided by the last day of work. Our director, Lee Shallat Chemel, worried about how best to handle the episode, given that none of us knew if we were filming the last one or not. Ultimately, she decided to mimic the final crane shot from the pilot, where the camera pulls back over Lorelai and Rory talking at their table at Luke’s diner. I think she did a fantastic job this season in general, and with that episode specifically. She didn’t want to jump the gun, but she also wanted to give the fans some closure in case this was indeed farewell. That last day stretched into the night and ended up being more than twenty-one hours long. I said a bleary and brief goodbye to everyone as the sun was coming up, but it wasn’t the quality send-off any of us would have given if we’d known this was the end.

  Over the next few weeks, various scenarios were discussed: returning for a full season or possibly a shorter farewell season of just thirteen episodes, trying to entice Amy and Dan to return, or letting the show go altogether. In the midst of these discussions, I was out to dinner with a friend, and right after we ordered, the waiter came back over to our table. “Your agent’s on the phone,” he told me. He led me over to the bar and handed me the receiver.

  “The show’s over,” my agent said. And suddenly, before the appetizers had even arrived, that was that.

  Just like I’d never been on a long-running show before, I’d never been at the end of one either, and I didn’t know what the protocol was. That day, I was told that I was the first to know, and was asked to wait before reaching out to anyone. I assumed this meant everyone would be getting a call, and given the size of the cast, they needed time to do that. But I found out much later that Alexis and I were the only cast members who were officially informed, and others found out in far less conventional ways. Ed Herrmann learned the show was cancelled from the clerk at his video store in Connecticut, for example. If I had it to do over again, I’d have called everyone myself, and thrown a party too. To end so abruptly was such an odd conclusion to our epic adventure. Over the next eight years I saw members of the cast socially, but it wasn’t until the reunion at the ATX Festival in Austin in March 2015 that we’d all (well, almost all) be together again.

  In retrospect, the incomplete feeling that was so unsettling at the time the show ended turned out to be a blessing. Had the story lines been sewn up more neatly, it would have been harder to justify returning to them. Over the years, fans continued to ask about a movie, for good reason—in some ways, the characters had been left frozen in midair, with many questions unanswered. Of course, I too wished we’d had more closure on such an important chapter of my life. But I never could have imagined how incredibly satisfying it would be to come back to it all these years later. I never could have predicted the invention of streaming, the appetite for reboots, and how much your enthusiasm would contribute to bringing us back again. I’m thrilled it happened the way it did, but I never saw it coming. You might say I lacked vision, and you’d be right. Frankly, I’m still pretty excited about the whole disposable-camera thing.

  —

  Well, I made it through all seven seasons. I did almost take the polite FreshDirect man hostage, but he made it out alive. It was actually nice to revisit the show after all this time. As for the reboot? Well, by my calculations I should be able to watch it sometime in the year 2032. It was so big and wonderful and important to me. The pressure is just too much!

  I mean, like I said, I really love you. But for me to watch myself in even more episodes? Perhaps, as Richard and Emily did, we’ll just have to renew our vows.

  Some Thoughts on Being Single

  In 2002, I was paired up with Peter Krause to present at the SAG Awards. We’d met before in the late nineties, on an episode of Caroline and the City where we were both guest stars, but back then there was never a hint of anything romantic. I’d followed his career on television as a fan of the too short-lived Aaron Sorkin series Sports Night, and been wowed by his work on the incredible HBO show Six Feet Under. Our paths crossed occasionally at an event or party, but I avoided handsome actor-types as a rule. Over the years I’d learn that my concerns were unfounded and there was nothing to fear: attractive, straight, successful actors actually don’t get as much attention as you might think, because women find them so intimidating that they—AHAHAHAHA, I can’t even finish that sentence with a straight face. Those dudes get all the attention you think they do, and then some. So I was generally wary of what I deemed his “type.” But we were always friendly. Backstage that night, we made small talk, and just as our names were being announced he turned to me and said calmly: “Want to hold hands?”

  It was such an odd, old-fashioned, unexpected question. Did he mean anything by it? If we did walk out holding hands, would people think we were together? Would holding hands make it easier to walk in my very high heels? I hadn’t held hands with anyone in what felt like a million years, so I decided it didn’t matter. “Yes,” I said, and we did, and then we presented the award, and I went back into the audience to sit back down next to my date for the evening, a gainfully employed lawyer who was also my dad. I didn’t see Peter again for years.

  After I first moved to L.A., I was in a long relationship with a wonderful guy, but I wasn’t yet ready to settle down. After that ended, I contracted a case of man-repellent-itis so severe that it is still being studied by the Mayo Clinic. Or at least that’s how it felt.

  For a very long time I worked and worked and worked, and then I looked up one day and all my friends were married with children. These married-with-children people were still my friends, but they’d become part of a community I wasn’t in, a club I didn’t belong to. Socially, their lives had completely changed, and they were busy. Their attention had turned to carpools and birthday parties and school tuition, and I was playing catch-up: “Wait, so we don’t have game night anymore? You guys, who’s free for dinner Saturday? Oh, absolutely no one?”

  I looked at these friends and realized: Well, duh, work is gratifying, but it isn’t everything, and it’s no fun to sleep with at night. It just took me longer to see that, and I didn’t have the same urgency they had to get to it, but then one day, ju
st like that, I thought, I get it now. I’d be interested in this other stuff. But I’d missed the time when most people around my age had paired off. It was as if I’d misread the schedule at Penn Station and the trains to Happy Couplehood had all left already, and there I was with nothing to do but sit with the drunk businessmen at the bar and nurse a warm beer and wait for the trains to start up again. I waited and waited and waited for those trains.

  I attended weddings by myself, went to parties I didn’t feel like going to, “just in case,” and was escorted to events by my dad, my cousin Tim, and my dear friend Sam. “Who’s with you tonight? Aww, your dad again?” journalists would say, with a sympathetic frowny face. The only bright spot, dude-wise, was at an event where I met Matthew Perry. He became my longtime Friend Who I Almost But Never Exactly Dated, or FWIABNED. We probably all have at least one FWIABNED in our lives. My FWIABNED is very special to me.

  At one point during this time my father was on a plane and noticed a woman reading a magazine I was in. “That’s my daughter,” he said proudly. The woman turned to him with a look of pity. “Please tell her I didn’t meet my husband until late in life—there’s still time,” she said. Strangers were worried about me; that’s how long I was single!

  There’s nothing wrong with being single, unless, it seems, you’re an actor getting interviewed a lot. Gilmore Girls was at its peak then, and I was getting interviewed a lot. During these years, when the press asked me if I was seeing someone, I’d just say, “I’m dating.” Sometimes that was true and sometimes not. Either way, I wasn’t in anything secure enough to talk about or expose publicly. But over time, I felt increasingly vulnerable when I had to face these questions. Magazines don’t like it when you say too little about your personal life—it makes the pages very hard to fill. If they had their way, every article would be full of sex and gossip, and I couldn’t contribute stories about either. Interviewers seemed increasingly frustrated, and interviews became less about what project I was doing and more a thinly veiled reiteration of “Join us today as we try once again to figure out what is wrong with this poor girl who just can’t seem to get a date!”

  I knew I didn’t want to stand on a red carpet and reveal too much, but I was at a loss as to what or how much to say. You may think there’s a sort of School of Fame where actors learn how to handle tricky situations, but there isn’t. (Someone call Shark Tank!) Not for the first time, I wished there was someone to ask, or a Peanuts-style Lucy booth with a sign that said THE DOCTOR IS IN. I wasn’t looking for a three-month seminar, just a place I could stop into when I needed a quick answer on how to handle problems I hadn’t even known existed back when all I dreamed of doing as an actor was performing in the chorus of a regional theater production of Oklahoma. How to walk in heels! Don’t Google yourself, and other helpful tips! How to talk to Us Weekly about your new or nonexistent relationships! Take a pamphlet! Five cents only!

  I learned a few things fairly easily. If you plan to be an actor who is regularly interviewed, you need to start thinking now about your favorite drugstore cheap-and-cheerful beauty products (Chapstick, Neutrogena sunblock, any brand of coconut oil), your go-to workout routine (spinning, yoga, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge), your favorite leave-in conditioner (Davines, Oribe, coconut oil), your latest girl crush (I never have an answer for this—let’s just say coconut oil), and, if you’re presenting at an awards show, which other presenter you’re most excited to meet. Be sure to think of someone beforehand, otherwise, even though you’re surrounded by dozens of your idols, you will draw a complete blank: “I’m excited to meet, uh, that guy, from that movie, with the people in it…”

  At a minimum, you’ll be asked each of these questions approximately ten thousand times in every interview for the rest of your life. In addition to being asked to reveal intimate details about your love life, you’ll also constantly be encouraged to dish about your co-stars, to which there’s only one acceptable answer: that you’re obviously one big happy family (which you, savvy reader, already knew). Then, after you successfully dodge this question, they’ll ask you who’s the best kisser you’ve ever worked with. DON’T ANSWER THIS. It will result in an article stating you’ve “broken your silence” about how awful it was to kiss everyone else. Finally, you’ll be asked about all the pranks everyone supposedly pulls on each other on set all the time. Most films and television shows have very long hours, and no one I know pulls pranks on set, except maybe George Clooney, though I’m pretty sure I read that in a magazine, so who can say for sure? Incidentally, when I was first doing Gilmore Girls, I’d run into George on the lot sometimes, and he was always very nice to me and acted like he knew who I was and treated me like I was behaving normally, which was very kind in the face of my babbling and drooling.

  However, it wasn’t enough to make George say “Amal, schlamal!” or anything like that, and the weird dating years—and my difficulty explaining them—continued. I was once set up with an actor by my assistant, who was friends with the other actor’s assistant. The actor wanted to meet me because he saw my (sort-of real) face on a giant billboard on Sunset Boulevard. You know, the way everybody gets asked out! While on location, I had a fun relationship with someone who revealed at the end of the movie that he had a girlfriend back home. Just like how your grandparents met! I shook hands with a cute guy for the first time while presenting him with an award. Backstage, we had charming banter. He asked for my phone number, and then didn’t call me for three months. THREE MONTHS. Of course, when he finally called, I told him politely that he’d waited too long and I didn’t appreciate being disrespected like that. AHAHAHAHAHA. NOPE, I went out with him anyway! I wanted to hold out for men with good behavior, but ultimately I gave in to less-good behavior because I was working all the time and wasn’t sure when the next chance to meet someone would be. One thing I learned: starting off with very low standards is a surefire way to ensure they’ll be met.

  Not surprisingly, none of the relationships that started during Billboard Face Awards Show Presenter Time stuck. After all, how many successful, lasting unions do you know that began with the words “And the winner is…”? Plus, if you’re meeting someone for the first time after three hours of hair, makeup, and styling, you’ve already set the bar too high. There is no way they won’t be disappointed when you reveal your true self. “Hey, where were those boobs I was promised when I saw you up on the podium?” “They’re, um—hey, look over there! Isn’t that Ryan Seacrest?” Also, if you think actors are already self-obsessed, imagine actors who are at a show that exists solely to affirm they are indeed as great as they might think they are. Lots of attention and praise and hot girls everywhere bring out the humble side in everyone!

  It wasn’t just the guys I met who were the problem. In more ways than just being covered in eighty layers of self-tanner, the person they were meeting wasn’t really me either. You know how before a party you clean up your house so that everyone thinks you live that way all the time? That’s meeting someone at an awards show. It’s a way more exaggerated version of meeting anyone you hope to impress for the first time. You present the fresh-flowers-on-the-table, bed-always-made side of yourself first. But ultimately you’re going to slip and show your house the way it is on a morning when you’re running late for work, or can’t find an outfit, and that’s a relationship. Ultimately, everyone who gets close to you is going to see inside your closet on its worst day, and their reaction to that is what will tell you if you’re going to make it or not. You can’t live an entire life secured in by Spanx.

  When I started working with Peter on Parenthood, he made a lot of references to the fact that we were playing brother and sister. While true that our characters were siblings, I wasn’t sure why it kept coming up. He’d hand me a prop or a cup of coffee and then sort of narrate: “I’m handing my sister a cup of coffee. That’s my sister drinking the coffee over there.” By week two of work, I wanted to say, “I get it, I get it—you’re not interested in me that way.
Well, I don’t trust handsome actors, either, so we’re good!” In fact, I think he was actually trying to talk himself out of starting anything. At our age, we’d probably both been through “showmances” that went south and made work an uncomfortable place to be. But ultimately, our mutual wariness gave way without much discussion or effort—it just sort of happened. That’s one thing I’ve learned when it comes to relationships. There’s so much to negotiate once you really get to know someone—the beginning should feel easy and inevitable.

  By the time Peter and I actually started dating seriously, I finally knew exactly how to handle myself and all my public-vs.-private issues instantly melted away. Wrong! Instead of making the public part of life easier, it was even more difficult. Now I actually had someone I cared about, which made me care even more about protecting that person and our privacy and our brand-new status. So I stuck to my old reliable “I’m dating,” without naming any names, until journalists started rolling their eyes to my face. This standoff lasted for a while, but eventually more people found out, and I kept getting asked to talk about it. I continued to say no, until I was told an outlet was going to “run with it anyway.” What to do? I was going on the Today show around then (hi, Savannah!) and was asked if I wanted to “announce” us as a couple. Did I? All I knew for sure was that I felt strange. I went on Ellen, where she showed a picture of Peter and me, and I admitted that yes, I was seeing someone, but in a panic I referred to him as “Fred.” She had just shown a picture of me and Peter, which I had okayed, but somehow in the moment it felt too personal to also say his actual name. Ellen looked at me like I was insane, which thankfully I was used to, since that’s pretty much our regular relationship. I was confused. She was confused. Lucy, I need more pamphlets!