Talking as Fast as I Can

by Lauren Graham

  I like to have a bike to ride to and from set, rather than take the van they usually provide. Sometimes those short moments in between setups are the only ones I have to myself during a long day, and I like to get even that short burst of exercise. The bicycle I’m using is brand-new—a light green bike that was the wrap gift from Parenthood. Our boss, Jason Katims, gave one to every member of the cast and crew. Nice! The bikes all came with license plates that say BRAVERMAN. I looked at the license plate on the first day and wondered if I should take it off—would I get confused and start wondering where Hank was? But I decided it was nice to bring a little Sarah along for the ride.

  I pedal to set and get touched up. Right before we start rolling, I feel an itch on the back of my neck. Maybe one of the safety pins Cesha used to pin the shirt is poking through? Cesha realizes that in my haste to get dressed I didn’t take the tags out. She snips them off, and we start the scene.

  The first day is full of happy smiling faces. One of my favorites to see back is George, our dialogue coach. After we run lines, he talks about last night’s American Idol and reminds me how we used to love dishing about it back in the day. I remember being awed by Kelly Clarkson then (whom I’ve since been lucky enough to meet). We talk about how funny and perfect it is that AI is in its final season, and now we’ll get a chance to chat about the contestants again one last time. The day goes smoothly, and it’s truly bizarre how easy it is to get back in the groove I left behind all those years ago.

  At the end of the day, Cesha knocks on my trailer door. She has a funny look on her face. “I want to show you something,” she says. “I swear I didn’t see this before.”

  She hands me a small piece of cardboard, and for a moment it doesn’t quite compute. “What is this?” I ask her.

  “It’s the tag from the shirt you wore this morning,” she says. “I cut it off earlier, but I didn’t look at it until just now.”

  I glance at the tag again, and this time I gasp. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it, and neither would you, so here it is:

  Can you believe it? Okay, the spelling of the name is one letter off. But the shirt has a name. And it’s my character’s name. And it’s not just called “The Lorelei,” which would be coincidence enough, but it’s called “The Lorelei Two”! And it’s our very first day, and it’s the second time I’m playing Lorelai! And it’s—okay, okay, you get it. Cesha and I look at each other, eyes wide. I wonder if I’ve fallen into some sort of magical fairy omen land. At the very least, I take it as an incredible sign of good things to come. I tape it up on the wall over the sink in my trailer, to remind me every day that strange and wonderful magic might be in store.

  WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10

  Yanic and I have a scene at the Dragonfly where he’s upset that all the A-list actors in town to shoot a movie are staying at a rival inn and the Dragonfly is stuck with the B-list actors. It culminates with him moaning, “We will never bag Jennifer Lawrence, and what’s the point of living if you can’t bag Jennifer Lawrence!” Yanic’s Michel has always been a terrific comedic character, but in this series he gets to really shine, and we had a wonderful time in our scenes together.

  Then Paul Anka (the person, not the dog) arrives, to be in Lorelai’s anxiety dream. He (the person, not the dog) is hilarious and professional, and he looks like a million bucks. Although we’ve worked together before, I get weirdly shy around him and out of nowhere ask him how many kids he has. Like, we weren’t talking about kids or anything related to them. He probably just said he had a great pasta at lunch, and I replied, “How many kids do you have?” What a weirdo.

  THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11

  President Obama is a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show today, and the lot is in a security tizzy. I’m called in earlier than needed “in case they jam all the cellphones.” Um, they can do that? We’re shooting the scene where Lorelai tells Luke she’s going away to “do Wild” (the book, not the movie). I say the line “I know” thirteen times, but it’s an oddly emotional scene—the beginning of a big journey for Luke and Lorelai.

  FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12

  Dax Shepard is in the hair and makeup trailer! Worlds collide. He’s getting a haircut from one of the stylists he knows who’s working with us, and drinking a green juice in preparation for starring in CHiPs, which he also wrote and directed. Not only is he obviously some sort of genius, but his already nonexistent body fat has gone down to the level of Mount Everest’s. What’s that? Mountains don’t have body fat? Neither does Dax Shepard. He gives me one of his signature full-body-contact hugs. Nice way to start the day!

  TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16

  Throughout the shoot, for general security and to prevent being seen by all of you industrious Internet cuties, our scripts and sides (the mini-scripts of the day’s work) are all watermarked with our names on them. That way, if something leaks, they know who’s to blame. The sides are numbered as well, to keep track of how many copies are circulating. I tend to lose things on set to a ridiculous degree: glasses, purses, phones. I’m always stashing things behind a cushion somewhere and then forgetting where I put them. I lose my sides ten times a day and am always borrowing someone else’s. So, as a joke, even if I’m only on my first sides of the day, they’re marked LG #4, as if I’ve already lost three before we’ve even started. Hahahahaha! I’ll get you, AD staff!

  Eddy, my agent, comes to visit. Well, let’s be honest—he came to visit his other client on the lot, World Pro Wrestling champion Ellen DeGeneres. At least that’s what she does for a living in my book! She can’t cut to commercial here! I’m drunk with power! Eddy tells me he has “medium to high expectations” regarding the outcome of the show, which, in agent-speak, means…well, I’m pretty sure he just proposed marriage.

  Sarah Ramos, who played my niece on Parenthood, also comes to visit today. I put her in the background of one of the scenes. Can you spot her?

  My regular hair magician, Anne Morgan, is out for the day, and one of my favorite hair dudes, Jonathan Hanousek, is playing sub. He always knows the latest in top-secret Hollywood secrets, and today he tells me about software being developed for a camera that detects eye and mouth movement but softens everything else on a person’s face into a pleasingly smooth facelike blob. It’s designed to help older actors look younger, I guess? Wow, weird—and where do I apply for this blob technology?

  MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22

  Sutton Foster is in town. SUTTON FOSTER IS IN TOWN. She’s just here for fittings and rehearsal, but will be back in a few weeks to shoot her scenes.

  I feel like we could play sisters in something. Do you?

  WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24

  Right around now I realize that I don’t know, and have never known, what the last four words of the show are. This may seem insane given how excited everyone apparently is to finally learn them. Even worse, I didn’t even know the last four words were a “thing.” I don’t know how it’s possible that I missed this information. Amy and I just never talked about it for some reason, and Old Lady Jackson doesn’t know her way ’round the old Tinternet too well, and somehow the whole hoopla missed me entirely, probably in no small part due to my insistence on using archaic words like “hoopla.” When I tell her this at work, Amy tilts her head and looks at me like she thinks I’m kidding. “I never told you what they were?” she says. “Wow.” She can’t believe it. “Well, would you like to know them now, or do you want to wait until the day we have to film them?”

  I have to admit, my heart starts pounding a little, and even though I didn’t know until very recently that I’ve waited more than fifteen years for this information, I’m still not sure I’m ready for it yet. “Um…I don’t know. Um, who says the four words?” I ask, stalling.

  “You both do,” she says, meaning me and Alexis. And for a moment I think I still don’t want to know yet—I want to draw it out even more. Maybe I’ll try to guess them instead? But my mind is a blank. It’s too much pressure! Fans and Mike Ausiello, how did yo
u handle the not knowing all these years?

  “Okay, go ahead,” I say. “Tell me.” I’m, like, gasping for air. It’s truly ridiculous how nervous I feel. Amy then tells me the last four words. She says them quickly. I blink back at her a few times, with no expression. Then I go suddenly calm. I realize I’m also holding my breath, like I’m getting the results of a biopsy. When I finally exhale, I think my reaction goes something like “Huh.” And after that, it goes something like “Really?”

  I’m actually still so paranoid given all the fuss over them that I’m not even going to say them here—maybe you know them by now, anyway? The words are wonderful, of course, and have a simple symmetry, which makes perfect sense within the origin of the story of Gilmore Girls. They are not, however, what I was expecting, because they are not what I would call the exact definition of a conclusion. As in they do not end the story we are telling as much as they introduce something that was not previously known. Which, to me, is not precisely an ending. To me, they are really more of a…

  “Isn’t that more of a cliffhanger?” I ask Amy.

  But Amy doesn’t answer me.

  She just smiles.

  Hmmmm.

  FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26

  Unbelievably, the first “block” of the schedule is over. This means we’re finished with one-third of our work. Gulp. It’s flying by. Today we begin several days of scenes at Miss Patty’s—a series of town hall meetings. One of my best friends, Sam Pancake (yes, that’s his real name), is here, playing a new character named Donald. I’d always wanted him to come on the show before, but there was never anything he was exactly right for. Still, I’d asked Amy and Dan about him so many times over the years that when everything was finally happening for sure, I couldn’t help trying again. I started to tell Amy that, as lucky as I already felt to be back, I was hoping for just one more thing.

  “I know, I know,” Amy said before I could finish. “We’ll find a part for Sam.”

  Ha! You’d think that finally having that dream fulfilled would be enough. But I continued to try to jam friends and family in anywhere I could. My friend Clare Platt walks through town in “Fall,” my godson Clyde passes me near the gazebo in “Winter,” Mae and other surprise friends play key (or sometimes not so key) roles. If you were a loved one who came to visit, I wanted it on film.

  MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29

  All the table reads have been fantastic, but today is the first half of our last episode, and there’s a special electricity in the room. Because we’re in the middle of filming, the “Fall” table read is being broken into two. We’ll read the first part today and the rest tomorrow. In the previous table reads Kelly has been reading her part over the phone from her home in New Jersey, but she’s finally here in person. Seeing her is wonderful, but it makes me realize again how much I’m missing Ed. He would have loved this whole experience so much.

  A word about “Fall”: I couldn’t read it for the longest time. It just so happened that we weren’t filming any scenes from it in the first few weeks, so I could get away with it for a while. Amy kept asking if I’d read it yet, and I’d just giggle nervously. I’m not sure what was stopping me—maybe fear of it all being over, or fear that I’d be disappointed in how the show ended after all this time. But the day I finally sat down in my kitchen to read it is one I’ll never forget. I cried from start to finish.

  TUESDAY, MARCH 1

  The second half of the table read for “Fall.” David Sutcliffe is there even though he’s shot his scene with Alexis already. It’s so good to see him. We always had a special affection for each other, and I’m sad we didn’t have any scenes together in the reboot. I ask him if he notices that this ending is not necessarily an ending—it’s almost a cliffhanger. Right? I mean I’m right, right? I mention it again to Amy and Dan too, but they don’t say anything. They just nod and smile.

  I don’t know if it’s the longest monologue in the history of television, like Amy and I discussed back in the day, but the speech I have about Richard near the end of the episode is certainly the longest I’ve ever had as an actor. I also think it’s a beautiful tribute by Amy both to Richard and to Ed. The whole episode is very emotional, and by the end of the table read everyone is a total wreck.

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2

  Our Netflix execs, Matt Thunell and Brian Wright, stop by and tell us the first seven seasons of the show will start streaming internationally in July. I wonder if Alexis and I will get to travel to faraway lands….

  Yanic has to talk about The Sound of Music in a scene at the Dragonfly today, and he asks me to describe it to him, since he’s never seen it. He also wants me to pronounce auf Wiedersehen for him. It turns out German words in a French accent are adorable. Gary, who was my assistant for ten years, all through the entirety of the old show, visits. Gary had a cameo one of those years, but I’d love for him to have something more substantial this time. Another loved one to add to the list!

  THURSDAY, MARCH 3

  Scott and I have a big scene. During a break, I ask him if he’s noticed that the ending is really more of a cliffhanger. He sort of shrugs. No one seems as bothered by this as I do.

  Kelly Wolf, the real-life mom of Max from Parenthood, plays a real estate agent in a few scenes with Scott and Kelly today. Worlds collide again!

  Amy and I discuss wanting to go to the Smokehouse to have a martini and cheesy bread. Alexis and I talk about planning a dinner. None of us know it yet, but we won’t have time for any of it until the entire shoot is over.

  FRIDAY, MARCH 4

  It’s my first scene with Kelly, and our first day on the Gilmore house set together. In the show, Emily has commissioned a portrait of Richard, and as we enter the living room there’s his face, ten feet tall. For a moment no one can speak. Then Kelly asks Ed to somehow make his presence known today by doing something big and loud. Later, during the scene, a key light goes out for no reason.

  “Thanks, Ed,” she says.

  Tears.

  THURSDAY, MARCH 10

  When I first read the Stars Hollow, the Musical scenes in Dan Palladino’s “Summer” episode, I thought, oh, those could be sort of fun. But when I tell you I could have watched Sutton Foster and Christian Borle perform them all day, I am not exaggerating. Dan and Amy wrote the lyrics, and the music is by Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home, Shrek). The songs are amazing and hilarious. I could hardly keep a straight face. I predict this mini-musical will go viral and be performed on college campuses everywhere.

  Later in the day, Sutton’s character sings a more serious song to me, a turning point when Lorelai realizes she needs to go on a journey. You’ll be shocked and surprised to learn I cried through every single take. It was a privilege to get to be in scenes with these two.

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16

  It’s my birthday, and my dad, stepmother Karen, sister Maggie, and brother-in-law Rick have come to town to visit set and celebrate. Morgan and Tania McComas, my makeup artist, decorate the hair and makeup trailer and shower me with treats, and everyone in the trailer shares some of the giant banana pudding from Magnolia Bakery. These ladies have taken extra-special care of me during our run, and I’m grateful to them.

  My father, who recently retired, thinks it’s a funny idea to take a picture in front of the Stars Hollow Pretty Pastures retirement home to try to trick his friends into thinking he’s moving there. Ha!

  THURSDAY, MARCH 17

  It’s our last day of filming Stars Hollow, the Musical at Miss Patty’s, and the last day of work for Carole King, who’s been on set for the last few days reprising her role as Sophie. It’s also the last day for my dear Sam. After a long day of filming, it’s a wrap, and everyone starts to disperse. Carole is petite and quiet, a sensitive observer. But today she stands up and walks with purpose through the crowd and over to the piano. Her hands hover over the keys, and she calls out in her distinctively raspy voice: “Anyone want to hear a song?” Everyone freezes. A few phones go up. “Can we film it?” someone a
sks. Carole smiles and thinks for a moment, then cheerfully says, “Nope!” The phones go down. Word goes out over the walkies. Crew members squeeze into the already crowded room, a hush descends, and Carole starts to play.

  It is simply incredible.

  Because no one is worrying about recording it, we all get to truly experience this intimate mini-concert. (Old Lady Jackson would be proud.) I look around the room and see the faces of so many people I love. They’re all lit up. Carole sings “I Feel the Earth Move” and encourages us to join in, which we do, singing softly, swaying to the beat. At the end, applause fills the room. It goes on and on. She brings the house down. Then people start chattering, excited about what they’ve just seen. We think it’s over. But: “One more!” Carole says. And then she starts to play “You’ve Got a Friend.” The faces, all the faces: Sally, Biff, Rose, my dear, dear Sam. My AD Eric, who came over from Parenthood. Dan, Amy. Old friends and new. You’ve never seen such happy faces. When I catch Amy’s eye, I can guess what my own face might look like: red and puffy with tears streaming down. We smile at each other, shake our heads as if to say: I still can’t believe it. Can you believe it? We made it! We’re here! These strange and wonderful days are actually happening!

  And just then Carole gets to the part of the song I sort of forgot was coming, even though I’ve heard it a million times: “Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you’ve got to do is call…”