‘Gilmore Girls’ Creator and Stars Discuss Final Four Words: “It Made Complete Sense”
November 25, 2016 12:01am PT by Kate Stanhope
Saeed Adyani/Netflix
“It’s an emotional moment,” Amy Sherman-Palladino tells THR about filming that final scene.
[Warning: This story contains spoilers from the fourth and final installment of Netflix’s Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, “Fall.”]
The final four words have finally been spoken.
For nearly a decade, Gilmore Girls fans have been clamoring to find out the final four words that creator Amy Sherman-Palladino wanted the series to end with. When Netflix officially greenlit the four-part revival, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, last January, it not only represented a chance for die-hard viewers to get to revisit Stars Hollow and catch up with all their favorite residents, but much more importantly, a chance to finally see just how Sherman-Palladino intended for the beloved series to wrap.
Everyone, that is, except Lauren Graham.
“I didn’t know it was a thing actually,” Graham told The Hollywood Reporter about the highly anticipated final scene. “I didn’t know until halfway through filming this that those existed and then Amy told them to me on the set. I was surprised for a minute and then it made complete sense.”
The fourth and final 90-minute chapter of the revival, titled “Fall,” ended with Lorelai (Graham) and Rory (Alexis Bledel) sitting together in the gazebo mere hours after Lorelai and Luke (Scott Patterson) finally tied the knot. Rory (finally) got dumped from her basically non-existent and very unmemorable boyfriend Paul but as Lorelai reassured her that both she and Paul would find their “someone amazing,” Rory began to look increasingly distraught. Then, Rory turned to her mother suddenly. “Mom?” she said. “Yeah,” Lorelai responded. “I’m pregnant,” Rory said. Cue a profile shot of Lorelai’s stunned face and then the screen cut to the credits, with the iconic theme song playing.
Although the final four words were never written down in the script for “Fall,” Graham said she was still reluctant to read the script for the final installment and find out just how things would wrap up.
“I had a very general sense of where Lorelai was that made complete sense to me and then, what I didn’t know exactly is how it would end,” Graham recalled. “For the longest time, I couldn’t read ‘Fall,’ which is our last episode. I was like, ‘This is psychotic, I have to read where this ends up,’ but I think I was both worried it wouldn’t be satisfying and also just kind of wanted to save it. Eventually, I read it and it was very satisfying.”
When it came time to actually film the famed final four words, Bledel said she felt “a lot of pressure to get it right, to make it awesome. More than anything, I was just trying to be really focused and really present just to make sure that whatever I did in the scene felt rooted in my experience of the character and I was communicating something that felt real to me.”
Looking back, Sherman-Palladino said it was an “interesting” experience finally seeing the words that had been living in her head come to life so many years later.
“It was emotional for like Lauren, Alexis, [executive producer] Dan [Palladino] and me, but you’re surrounded by a giant crew that only care about lunch and they want to move on and the [director of photography]’s losing the light, the [production assistants] are all talking to each other or on their headphones and we’re trying to get the extras to shut up…”
Palladino chimed in: “You’re surrounded by people that don’t give a flying f–.”
However, Sherman-Palladino said there was a silver lining to filming the highly anticipated moment under such “weird” circumstances, as she herself called it. “Otherwise it would just be a sob fest and we’d all be like lying on the ground waiting until the valium arrived.”
Despite years of build-up, Sherman-Palladino said the final scene lived up to her expectations. “It was satisfying in the context of when we put it altogether,” she said. “It’s an emotional moment.”
But will that emotional – and surprising – moment really be the end of Gilmore Girls? As Sherman-Palladino previously told THR, she’s waiting to see just how viewers embrace A Year in the Life before plotting a next move.
“We really had a very specific journey in our minds and we fulfilled the journey. So to us, this is the piece that we wanted to do. And the whole thought about, is there more, is there more, is there more – this has to go out into the universe now,” Sherman-Palladino said. “And then whatever happens, happens.”
What did you think of the final four words? Do you want to see more new episodes? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
