Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between) (2016)

Spoiler alert! The below contains plot and casting mentions, and some general information you may not want to have until after you’ve seen the new episodes. If you haven’t watched Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life yet, you might want to skip this part until you have.

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Years from now, long after the Downton Abbey reboot (Matthew lives!), the Six Feet Under reboot (literally The Walking Dead!), and the reboot of the Fuller House reboot (don’t be rude. Cut. It. Out. All over again!), I’ll still be trying to explain what it was like to return to Gilmore Girls. That was the first question I got when the show was announced, and the one I’ve been asked most frequently ever since. It’s also a question I don’t feel I’ve quite answered satisfactorily. So far, I’ve just stuttered and stammered and tried to find something to compare it to.

“It’s like getting a chance to go to college all over again, but this time you know what classes to take, and you know how to really appreciate all the, uh, classes, and the people, and, uh…”

No, that’s not what it was like.

“It’s like, if you got back together with an old boyfriend, but now there were only the good parts about him, without all the stuff that bugged you, and you got to fall in love all over again, without making any of the mistakes you made when you, uh…”

No, that’s not it either.

“It’s like if you were diagnosed with a disease, but then the doctors realized they’d made a mistake and you were actually okay, so you experienced the feeling of enjoying every day that much more, because suddenly you’d been reminded how precious the days were, and you were even more thankful to have them because you’d been faced with the reality of how rare they actually are, when before you’d taken the days for granted and thought you were sick but you’re not, and…”

Uh, no.

I have an old email from Amy from December 2014, where she mentions the possibility of taking a pitch out to some streaming services. That must mean that we’d already had our lunch at the Greek restaurant in Los Angeles where she first told me some of her ideas and started sketching out the early plotlines. Inspired by the British series Sherlock, which has no yearly set number of episodes but instead does anywhere from one to four specials, she envisioned four mini-movies that would run about ninety minutes each.

At that lunch, she asked if I’d read the Marie Kondo book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Yes, I had, I replied. She also kept asking me if I’d read Wild and/or seen the movie. Yes to both, I told her, and why was she asking? We hadn’t seen each other in a while and the reality of getting back together to do the show again seemed so far away, which meant we kept getting distracted and going off on tangents and she never really answered me about either. What she was mainly there to ask me was, if it was possible to somehow put this thing together, would I be interested?

Why, yes—yes, I would be.

A few months later, in early spring of 2015, Amy and Dan felt we were inching closer to the reality of making the show at Netflix, but we were still too far away to make any formal announcement. Warner Brothers and Netflix had to agree to a deal first, and then Amy and Dan would go in and pitch the story ideas, or was it the other way around? Would it be better to pitch the ideas first, then see if everyone could make a deal? This was all new territory. The two entities would be paying for the show, and they had to make nice with each other first, and that process was complicated. The existence of streaming was new, rebooting a show on a different network was new, and turning a show that once had been an hour long minus time for commercials into uninterrupted ninety-minute movies was new. And notice that no one was even talking about the actors yet. This could all take a while. “The Green Eggs and Ham deal took eighteen months,” Amy told me. Eighteen months? Also, they’re making Green Eggs and Ham into a movie? Anyway, I knew we didn’t have that much time, in part because of the back lot.

The back lot. Oy.

You’ve heard of the town of Stars Hollow? Well, I’m here to tell you, it is real. It’s a wonderful, happy place with cheerful neighbors, ballerinas taking classes at Miss Patty’s, and a seasonal festival of some sort happening in the town square. It’s a place where the coffee flows freely, junk food has no calories, and Kirk has somehow found yet another job. There, the town meeting might be in session (although I’m usually late for it), with Taylor Doose presiding, and outside, near the gazebo, there could be a hay bale maze set up for your enjoyment. It’s a place where, on one special day every year, I smell snow. If that’s where you’d like to leave your understanding of our beloved town, please skip the next paragraph.

Because sometimes it’s also a place in Los Angeles on the Warner Brothers lot, where other people from other shows come to visit, and sometimes they stay for a while—occasionally for years. Shockingly, it turned out that no one had reserved that spot for us indefinitely and held it frozen in time in the event of our triumphant return. Lots of other shows needed the back lot around the same dates we needed it, so we’d been given a very narrow time frame in which to use it. Obviously, when you’re returning to Stars Hollow, you have to have an actual Stars Hollow. But the reality of the scheduling was that if we couldn’t find a way to start filming by February 2016, basically we wouldn’t be filming at all.

In March 2015, with everything still very much up in the air, we were invited to the ATX Festival in Austin, Texas, for a Gilmore Girls reunion. In my emails with Amy from that time, we discussed where to stay in Austin (the St. Cecilia), our shared eye doctor (Dr. Sacks), and theater (Hand of God—so good! And no, even back then you couldn’t get Hamilton tickets). We also discussed the many rumors that were flying around. I heard the deal was getting close. I heard the deal was falling apart. Scott Patterson went on a podcast and mentioned there were “talks,” which had basically been true since the day the show ended in 2007, but the comment caught fire and people thought he knew more than he was saying, when in fact none of us did. A few weeks after the festival I got a call from my agent saying that he’d finally heard Netflix had committed to making eight to ten episodes of our show. Great news! I emailed Amy, who said she’d heard no such thing.

In the meantime, Amy’s mysterious questions continued. She asked me if I knew fellow Barnard alum Jeanine Tesori, and I said I didn’t, but I loved her musical Fun Home with all my heart. Amy told me she was having back trouble and wondered if I’d ever had back trouble. She asked me if, on the old show, I remembered asking her to write the longest monologue that had ever been done on TV. Our scripts back then had averaged eighty-five pages when most one-hour shows are under fifty pages, but still, I wanted more!

Anyway, there were many emails going back and forth. We kept trying to meet for drinks, but plans kept moving (I forgot I had tickets to Fish in the Dark and other New York City scheduling problems), and I started getting confused as to which of her inquiries was regarding real life and which might be potential Gilmore plotlines. Does Lorelai deliver a long monologue about straining her back while listening to the works of Jeanine Tesori as she cleans out her closet wearing hiking boots? I wasn’t sure.

Then one day, out of the blue, there was a press release that said Netflix would indeed carry the new episodes—four 90-minute movies. This was exciting, but news to practically everyone. Alexis, Kelly, Scott, and I had been involved in these casual conversations for months, and I’d had all those mysterious questions from Amy, of course, but suddenly it was real. Or, more accurately, suddenly Warner Brothers and Netflix had been able to make a real deal with each other to make movies that needed to start filming in under two months, and which had no sets built and zero actors formally attached. Fun! Sean Gunn posted a picture of himself on Twitter next to the announcement on his computer. He looked completely surprised, because he was. Amy and I spoke on the phone, and I congratulated her—er, us? But weeks after you were already excited about watching it, and I was being congratulated on being in it, no one had yet called me about actually doing it. Plus I was in Atlanta by then, filming the movie Middle School, which had months left to go, and as far as I could tell, the filming schedules totally conflicted. Um, was anyone else worried about this? It seemed no one was.

Finally one day the phone rang.

Deal making in Hollywood is a fun and straightforward process where everyone puts their cards on the table and then proceeds, like proper ladies and gentlemen, to respectfully agree to terms and sums of money that are fair to both sides…is a sentence that has never before been written.

Let me attempt to explain how it really happens.

Negotiating in Hollywood is like dating a horrible guy whom you have to keep seeing because he is in charge of your paycheck. In order to get your money from him, you will have to put up with a lot of crap and pretend to enjoy it. Once he pays you, you can break up with him, but only until the next time you need him, at which time you’ll have to pretend to be in love with him all over again and act as if you have no memory of the past. Paycheck Boyfriend does not return your phone calls, or else calls you only at weird times when he knows you can’t talk. He compares you to other, hotter girls he’s dated and finds you lacking, dismisses your past accomplishments, and makes sure you know he has twenty-five other people he can call to go to dinner with him. You have earned this treatment by being very successful! Aren’t you lucky! The problem is that if Paycheck Boyfriend treats you better, you might want him to pay you more, and he really, really, really doesn’t want to do that. It’s not entirely Paycheck Boyfriend’s fault either, because he himself has a Corporate Paycheck Boyfriend who is treating him even worse, who cares mostly about how the stock of whatever company owns the studio is doing, and doesn’t understand why drones can’t star in TV shows instead of actors, since they are just as talented but have less body fat. “Why can’t we do a show starring the self-driving Google car?” CPB is fond of asking.

It seems insane to me now, but the truth is that up until about a week before filming started, the reality of making the show was still very much up in the air. So many pieces had to come together, so many people’s schedules had to align. Some actors weren’t approached at all until after filming had actually started, because the days and weeks leading up to that first day were so chaotic, plus we have a cast that numbers in the hundreds. Among other oddities, this meant I had almost no time to prepare or to process the fact that I was going back to the character I’d loved so much. Maybe that’s why so much of the show had such a surreal quality. But in the beginning, I was just relieved not to be negotiating anymore. To let you all know it was really happening, I tweeted this photo:

The caption read: “I can now confirm: it’s time for me, and this jacket I stole in 2007, to return to work.” By the way, stealing is wrong! (Unless it’s fun material for your book. Then it’s okay.)

You’d think that all those years of being asked about the possibility of making a movie would have prepared me for finally doing one. Or four. But we’d spent seven years without a real possibility, over a year with only a vague one, and then a flurry of a few weeks in which major decisions had to be made and suddenly everything was a go. Even though I knew it was real, in a way, I don’t know if my brain ever quite caught up to the reality of what was happening. I still sort of can’t believe it happened. It happened, right? I have honestly never had an experience like it.

For starters, I was very, very emotional the whole time. I don’t usually cry easily, but throughout the days and months of filming, I welled up a lot. I’ve told the story before about how Alexis was so green when we first started, and our walk-and-talks so lengthy and complex, that I’d sometimes put my arm through hers to help guide her to our mark. But the first day we returned to Lorelai’s house it was me who reached for her arm for support—I was so overwhelmed that I felt a little shaky.

And then there was the day I walked onto the grand Gilmore house stage for the first time. It wasn’t just emotional because it had been re-created. It was also genuinely sad because Ed Herrmann had passed away the previous winter. You know how some people have such a big presence they just fill up a room? You might enter, and before you even see them you know they’re there? That was Ed. His presence was as tall and warm as he was. So his absence had a feeling too—the room was entirely different without his booming voice and easy laugh. Kelly spoke to him that first day on set. “Ed? We know you’re here. We miss you,” she said, and everyone choked up.

Those tears made sense. But some of my other teary reactions were just bizarre. For example, when Chris Eigeman, a dear friend, came to do his cameo, we sat down for a casual rehearsal, and as we started to read through our scene, I could not manage to get through my first line: “Why, Jason Stiles, as I live and breathe.” Normally, saying hello to someone in the beginning of a scene is not the emotional high point for the character or the actor. I was just so happy to see him again. My normal state of happy-to-see-someone does not usually involve tears, but on this show tissues were being handed to me a lot.

In another scene, I had trouble getting through the simple sentence “My name is Lorelai Gilmore, and I’m from a little town in Connecticut.” All I’m doing in that scene is giving some strangers basic information. Still, for some reason, tears. I guess I was overwhelmingly happy to get to say her name again.

For the reboot, all the sets had to be reconstructed, which also contributed to the surreal quality. No one had saved any set pieces from the old show, because why would they have? Netflix didn’t exist when the show ended, and no one had had any concrete reason to believe we’d be back in the Gilmore house or Luke’s diner or Stars Hollow ever again. There was no gazebo on the back lot anymore—they had to build one. There were no precise measurements of the rooms either, so while sets were reconstructed as closely as possible, in most cases the measurements were slightly off. This added to the eerie quality of being back: in the Gilmore house, for example, the foyer was completely familiar, yet just a little bit larger than it was in the original. Everything was the same yet brand-new. I noticed the slight changes because I knew these spaces as intimately as if it were a real house I’d actually lived in for years.

We were back on the Warner Brothers lot, as we had been the first time around, but all the stages that housed our sets were in different places. It was a constant surprise to walk out of Lorelai’s house and run into friends who work on the Ellen show, because previously we hadn’t been anywhere near Ellen. But on the other hand, because certain sets were so familiar, I’d sometimes lose track of where I was in time—for several fleeting moments every day, I’d think I was still doing the old show, until something from the present would remind me that time had passed.

Then there was El Niño. Given how tight our time was on the back lot, we couldn’t afford to lose any days there. But huge storms were predicted. And lots of rain. There aren’t many cloudy days in a town like Stars Hollow, so we worried. And we waited. But not only did it not storm, the weather played its part during the seasonal episodes as though it too had been cast in the show. When we were filming “Summer” it was balmy, “Fall” had a bit of crisp in the air, in “Spring” breezes lifted us up, and during “Winter” we had an unseasonable chill. For usually predictable Southern California, this was nothing short of magical. And the predicted El Niño storms? They didn’t happen.

Through it all, the emotion I felt most was gratitude. I treasured every experience and savored every scene in a way that was different from when I did the original show. Partially this had to do with being in a different place personally and professionally. I wasn’t new to the business anymore, and I had a much more acute sense of how lucky I was to be part of this cast and crew. I treasured the chance to speak words written by the Palladinos once more. And I now understood in greater depth how rare it was to have had the opportunity to be part of something this special in the first place. In the flurry of the first incarnation it was hard to have much perspective. This time I was thankful for every single day.

We were also buoyed by the enthusiasm we felt from all of you. Normally, when actors start a new show, we have no idea if what we’re doing will work, or if people will like it. To know we were making something that at least some people were already very excited about seeing was a thrilling novelty, and your support was a big part of what made every day feel special. Thank you so much for that. After all those years of having no answer when asked by you (and Mike Ausiello!) about the possibility of a Gilmore Girls movie, finally I had something to say. And that we’d landed at Netflix was an honor too. Executives usually walk around looking jumpy, but these Netflix and Warner Brothers execs were happy and smiling throughout it all. “We knew it was big, but we had no idea it was this big,” they said. Everyone was excited and proud.

So, what was it like? The truth is, it was so many things at once that there is no short way to describe it, no sound bite that does it justice. But I did keep a diary of sorts (which I wish I’d done the first time around), to try to cut through how overwhelming much of it was and to have a record I could look back on when it was done, to see if that could help me process the whole experience.

Here are just a few of the most memorable days of filming Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2016

It’s the first day of filming. As I said, we had very little time between “Are we doing this?” and “Wow, we’re doing this!” Plus I was on location in Atlanta until less than a week before Gilmore Girls filming was supposed to start. So while normally I’d have had a bunch of fittings with Brenda, the costume designer, and we’d have planned at least the early round of outfits, in this case we had time for just one fitting and had chosen only a handful of looks.

The morning is a bit of a scramble, as they usually are. The first scene we’re filming is not the first scene you see, but it is a piece of the opening sequence, so basically I’m choosing the outfit for the first time you see Lorelai, and I keep fussing over what it should be. Whatever we chose already just doesn’t seem right to me today for some reason, so I ask for more choices. “Just bring a bunch of tops and let me mess around a little,” I say to Cesha, my on-set dresser. Cesha and I worked together for all seven years on the first show, so she knows what that means. She loads up a rolling rack with a ton of stuff. I keep trying things on and taking them off—nothing feels right. A knock on my door tells me the cameras are ready, so I pull a blue blouse off its hanger—when in doubt, blue! It’s a little big, so Cesha pins it in the back for me. Then I jump on my bicycle and speed to set.

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 you 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 asks. 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…”

I’m gone. Destroyed. A sniffling mess.

Later, as everyone is filing out, Amy and Dan find me and tell me that what’s funny is that Carole doesn’t even know the episodes are named after her song, or that they’re in that very order because of it. They haven’t even asked her yet if they can use that song somewhere in the show, although they want to. It’s just the song she chose to play. Another incredible coincidence.

I nod and blink back more tears. At this point, I’m not even that surprised. I’ve come to accept this unique, magical time. Charmed days, and another funny miracle.

FRIDAY, MARCH 18

It’s the night we’re filming the last scene of the show, the final four words. Anyone who comes to set has to sign a confidentiality agreement. Alexis and I shoot the ending, and that’s followed by these incredible sequences with dancers flitting by in gauzy skirts. Scott pushes me on a sort of rolling cart through a tunnel of greenery, and I feel like I’m flying, like I’m Alice in Wonderland.

Scott and I have one very brief dance move. It lasts a few seconds at most. But Marguerite, the choreographer, says she can tell I have some natural ability. I’m sure she just said it to be nice. But I still haven’t stopped bragging about it around the house ever since.

MONDAY, MARCH 21

I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about coffee. Is Lorelai drinking enough coffee? Personally, I’m practically made of the stuff at this point, but I make a mental note to ensure she is too.

Mae comes to do her cameo, but she’s very, very, ill. She has a terrible stomach flu. So if our brief scene seems a bit off to you, it’s because our main intention was to get through it before she needed the vomit bucket again. Hollywood! It’s all glitz and glamour!

Michael Ausiello also has his cameo today. He sends me a nice note about it afterward, telling me how emotional it was to be there. I feel you, bro.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23

Today we’re filming the opening shot of “Winter,” and of the whole series. Even though we’ve been shooting for a while now, I’m so nervous I hardly slept. Overnight, the town has miraculously been decorated and covered in snow. I’m not sure what they make it out of, but I’m pretty sure I still have some on my Ugg boots from the first time we made the show. Alexis and I walk arm in arm through the town, as we’ve done so many times before. I’m all right in the morning, but a bit later I can barely get through the line “I smell snow.” We’ve been at this for a while now, but I still can’t seem to get a grip.

TUESDAY, APRIL 5

“Hey, is that the same bike as last time?” a random crew guy from another show calls out as I go whizzing by.

“New bike, same character!” I say. I’m having déjà vu, and so, apparently, are other people.

My editor, Jen Smith, visits, and is worried about the book deadline. She spends the day on set and sees how many hours I’m working, how short the writing time between setups is. “Do you think you’re going to make it?” she asks. She looks very nervous. I feel bad. I wonder if we’ll ever work together on a project where I’m not actively raising her blood pressure for months at a time. Let’s be honest—probably not!

Melissa does Ellen and announces she’ll be a part of Gilmore Girls, then comes to visit the set afterward. I haven’t seen her in ages, but it’s like no time has passed. She’s wearing a gorgeous floral dress that she designed. Melissa has always been an incredible decorator with great taste, and we had fun comparing notes when furnishing our first houses, which were right down the street from each other. We all stand around chatting—Melissa and her husband, Ben, me and Yanic and Amy and Dan—until work finally calls us back. Just like old times.

Today’s scenes are with Kelly, where Emily Gilmore has read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and has decided to get rid of almost everything in the house. There are Gilmore antiques strewn about on every surface. It’s a funny scene on one level, but it’s also about how Emily is struggling to move on, and Kelly is characteristically fantastic in it.

The Entertainment Weekly cover about the show isn’t supposed to be out for another week, but we learn it’s been leaked online. The publishers are shocked—the only other time they had a breach like this was when someone got hold of their Star Wars cover before publication. Nice company! Thanks, Internet hackers!

SATURDAY, APRIL 9

Mae surprises me by booking massages for us at our favorite place. Usually we have to book weeks in advance, and I ask her how she got us in with such short notice. She admits that she pretended to be my assistant. Apparently my assistant’s name is Mindy, and she’s “cordial but firm.”

MONDAY, APRIL 11

Rachael Ray is here! She’s a total doll and does a fantastic job in her scene.

TUESDAY, APRIL 19

Roy Choi is here! He’s extremely nice, but I forgot to ask for a photo. He’s an intense and smart guy and comes extremely well prepared for his scene. In between takes, he discusses the similarities between being a chef and acting, noting that both professions require individual precision while maintaining an awareness of the whole. Whoa.

During the scene about whether or not we should fire Roy, Yanic keeps saying “baloney” instead of “abalone,” which cracks everyone up. Apparently he’s never eaten either.

Gary. I still need to find a part for Gary.

The props man, Mike, has asked me every day this week what I would like to eat in the upcoming camping scene instead of the dehydrated meatballs that are scripted. He needs to make them ahead of time and make sure he has plenty on hand in case we do a lot of takes. Chocolate meringue balls? Coconut macaroon balls? Veggie burger balls? For some reason, I can’t decide. “Can I tell you later?” I ask.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20

Mae and Alexis are cast in a reading together! Really, worlds, could you collide any more? I wish I could’ve been there to see the magic of my two most special ladies on a stage together!

FRIDAY, APRIL 22

We just heard that Prince died yesterday. Amy was a giant fan and saw him in concert many times, and everyone is generally depressed about the loss.

My high school yearbook from my senior year appears in the mail. The wife of a friend from high school found it in storage. I gave it to her now-husband to sign on the last day of school, and he forgot to return it to me. So that’s how I can finally reveal to you my other longtime passion, one I’ve never before discussed: the time I spent dedicating my young life to Interbuilding Communications.

Um, huh? That’s my high school boyfriend, Charlie, over my left shoulder, which may have had something to do with my involvement in this club, but I have zero memory of it otherwise. I guess if you ever find yourself in northern Virginia and you’re wondering whom to thank for how well all the buildings there seem to be getting along, well, that would be me and my bangin’ sweater vest.

The props guy is back. He really needs to know what I would like to eat in the dehydrated meatball scene. Granola cluster balls? Turkey meatball bites? Actual dehydrated meatballs? I still can’t decide! I ask if I can let him know later. He sighs.

SATURDAY, APRIL 23

From the first time I read the script for “Fall,” where Lorelai goes off on a wilderness adventure, I knew that Peter had to play the role of Park Ranger. In some ways in real life, Peter is a park ranger, and doing something outdoorsy and nature-related for a living is definitely another way his life could have gone. Plus, the character appears late in the show and I thought it would be a fun surprise for you to see him. His ABC show, The Catch, very kindly cleared him to do it. But now it’s two days before he’s due to work with us and something has come up—they’ve lost a location for an important scene and have to do some switching around. Which means now they can’t spare Peter for the whole day. Park Ranger is in two lengthy scenes, both in Malibu, which is easily an hour from anywhere else in Los Angeles. So we have to think fast! Maybe we can split the two scenes into two different roles? But who else can we call at this late date? How can we pull this off?

MONDAY, APRIL 25

We pulled it off! Thanks, Jason Ritter!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27

Someone casually mentions that today is our last day on the set of Lorelai’s house. Wait, what? For the first time I realize we are really and truly near the end. Ten days left of filming. How did that happen? It occurs to me that I should take something from the set as a memento. For years journalists have asked whether I took anything from the set of the old show, which I didn’t, since we had no idea at the time that our last day was our last day. My blue coat was something I went home in one day and sort of forgot about until it was time to come back. Besides, they always seem more interested in intentional hardcore theft anyway. I’m not sure at what point taking things from sets became a time-honored thespian tradition—I can’t picture Ingrid Bergman stealing from the set of Casablanca. But I know I’ll be asked, so I start looking for something. I text Alexis to see if she wants anything. She hasn’t left for the day yet, and says she’ll come down to the set and look too.

There is no stranger feeling than the two of us wandering around our house trying to find what we want to take. “Was this here before?” we keep asking each other. So much has been reconstructed, plus Lorelai’s kitchen has been updated, so everything is sort of familiar, yet also new. Alexis takes a Yale banner down from the wall of Rory’s room. I take a pink flamingo made of tin that hung on the wall in the kitchen. I had no particular connection to this flamingo, but I do now, because it will always be the story I’ll tell about the thing I took. I also take a few framed photos and an apple-shaped magnet with Rory’s face on it that says YOU’RE THE APPLE OF MY EYE. Alexis cracks open a split of champagne she’s been saving, and Alexis, Amy, and I share a brief toast before going back to work. So long, Lorelai’s house! It’s sad to say goodbye, but at least this time I know it’s our last day together. Although…does anyone else notice that the ending is really more of a cliffhanger?

THURSDAY, APRIL 28

The producers of The Royal We, which I’m supposed to be adapting right now, call to ask how the script is coming. I take a deep breath, put my most professional writer hat on, and call them back and say something like “La la la la la la, I can’t hear you.” Luckily, they’re nice about it.

We find a part for Gary! He can play the docent in the whaling museum scene with Kelly. But the part shoots Monday and Gary is in New York. Can Gary get to L.A. by Monday? Gary is going to look into it.

MONDAY, MAY 2

Three delayed airplanes and one harried overnight journey later, Gary makes it from New York! After his scenes, we sit in my trailer, catch up, and talk about all the long days and late nights we shared for seven years. For some reason, reminiscing with him makes me realize, really for the first time, that we’re almost done.

TUESDAY, MAY 10

It’s the second-to-last day of work. Getting Melissa back was the final, and in some ways to me most important, piece of this puzzle. I can’t tell you what a joy it was to be back in the kitchen as Lorelai with my best friend, Sookie. I’d missed Melissa terribly in real life too.

After work, Melissa and Yanic and I go out for a drink. We talk for hours, and I could have stayed for hours more, but I have to try to get some sleep. Tomorrow is our last day, and it’s going to be a long one.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 11

The day we’ve all been waiting for is finally here! I’m not just talking about our final day of work—it’s also the day I must answer the deep philosophical question this book’s been asking, which is what will I eat instead of dehydrated meatballs? I think you’ll be relieved to know I went with coconut chocolate balls. Finally, with this global political issue settled, you can return to your lives!

Alexis and I spend most of the day shooting a scene that takes place in a New York City hotel room. Rory comes back after having a fling and worries it was a mistake. Lorelai tries to counsel her. Alexis plays the scene with a perfect blend of panic and humor. The rest of our sets have been taken down already—this is the only one left—and as we finish up the scene, I’m already feeling sad. I’m going to miss Alexis so much, as well as the special connection we share.

The last shot of the night, and of the show, is a re-creation of a sort-of tunnel that Lorelai, Luke, and Rory go through, a short pickup of a shot that we started outside at night but didn’t have time to finish on the back lot many weeks ago. It will make sense when you see the show, but it’s part of a sequence that’s sort of magical; it’s set to the Sam Phillips song “Reflecting Light,” and has no dialogue. I can count on one hand the number of scenes I had over the years on Gilmore Girls that didn’t have dialogue, which adds to the strangeness of it all. Some people have started to assemble near the monitor: members of our production staff, our ADs and their assistants, some folks from the office. There’s nothing to see exactly, but I know they’re gathering around us to say goodbye, to be there for the end, and there’s an electricity in the air. We three pass silently together through this passageway five or six times.

And then, finally, that’s a wrap.

I’ve shed so many tears over these weeks and months that while I’m very emotional, I’m also nearly dry-eyed—almost like I’m in shock. Amy and I hug. Scott and I hug. Dan and I hug. Alexis and I hug. We all stand around, a bit awkward, not exactly sure what to do next. We take some pictures, trying to capture a moment that’s impossible to capture. In them, I look completely dazed.

Later, still dressed in the pajama bottoms I wore in the scene (and a top too, don’t worry), I meet some cast and crew at the Smokehouse, our neighborhood haunt, and we talk for a bit and say thank you and look at each other, still a little dumbfounded. We did it! Right? I mean, we did it, didn’t we? No one knew if it would ever happen, and we still almost can’t believe it really did.

After a drink or two, I head back to my trailer to pack up a few more things before it gets too late, and I realize I can’t find my blue coat. Did I leave it on set, like I always do? A call down to the stage tells us it’s not there. The ADs get on the walkies. They’ve all seen this coat around me, or on me, or near me almost every day, so everyone knows exactly what they’re looking for. Plus it’s long and puffy and blue—it can’t have gone far. But no one has seen it. When was the last time I had it? Today? I don’t think so. It was boiling hot all day, just like it was yesterday…yesterday! I remember now. It was cool in the morning, but by lunch it had heated up. I walked my bike over with Yanic and Melissa to the stage where they were serving our farewell lunch, then left the bike outside the stage, with both the green leather jacket I’d been wearing in the scene and my blue puffy coat draped over the handlebars. I wore the green leather jacket in a scene again today, so wardrobe must have picked up the blue coat too. Phew. They’re still here packing up—Brittany probably sent it to the cleaners for me. But, in the wardrobe trailer, she tells me that when she grabbed the green wardrobe jacket from my bike yesterday, the blue coat wasn’t there.

In all the years I worked there, I thought of the back lot as a sort of extension of my house. Since I often spent more time there than at my actual house, it made sense. But it’s different on the lot now. Warner Brothers gives tours there now, which means it’s much more crowded than it used to be, and there are a lot more people passing through. But still, throughout this whole shoot, I’ve left things all over the place and they’ve always come back to me. So I don’t want to think the worst, but maybe tweeting that picture when the show was announced made it a desirable or fun collector’s item for someone who was passing by? (By the way, if that someone is you, no hard feelings, but can you mail it back to my manager in Los Angeles, John Carrabino, no questions asked?) And for you at Scotland Yard, here’s the last documented sighting of my blue coat:

It’s just a coat, I know, but I held on to it for so long. I never wore it once after work ended on the original series, because how obnoxious would it be if you saw me wearing it in the grocery store, like, oh, oh, look at me! I wear a big puffy blue coat that says Gilmore Girls! I’m not even sure why I kept it. When I put it back on for the first time, there was a dried-out sugar packet in the pocket from 2008—I hadn’t touched it since then. We once had a terrible winter of moths eating all our sweaters, but somehow they spared this coat—even they must have known I was going to need it again. For Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, it was with me every day. It kept me warm and dry, and billowed out behind me as I rode my bike across the lot in the wee hours of night. So I can’t help feeling a little sad it’s gone.

But it’s our last day, and the coat has served its purpose. Our work is over, and it’s May in Los Angeles. The sun is blazing, and I don’t need it to keep me warm anymore. Of course, for sentimental reasons I’d prefer to have it. But I think of the seventy incredible days of this shoot, all the people I’m so thankful for, all the love that went into making this show. I think of Emily in her Marie Kondo scenes, giving things away because she’s learning a new way of being thankful for the past, realizing it’s just as important to welcome and embrace the future. And while her scene is about choosing to give things away, rather than losing them or having them taken, in the spirit of what the book suggests I decide that, rather than mourn the loss of my jacket, I will be thankful for the time we had together. I thank it for hiding itself in the back of my closet with only a dried-up sugar packet to keep it company all those years. I thank it for standing by, for somehow letting me know I was going to need it again. I thank it for getting me through all seventy days of “Winter,” “Spring,” “Summer,” and “Fall.”

I thank it for all it did for me, and then I let it go.

After all, we waited a long time to get the chance to finish this show, and now, finally, Gilmore Girls is really and truly over.

I mean, it is over, right?

Yes. It is. It’s over.

But seriously, didn’t you sort of think that ending was really more of a cliffhanger?

Hmmmm…

for my mom and dad