Kelly Bishop shades ‘Gilmore Girls’ for ‘sleepy’ Season 7, ‘rarely hung out’ with Alexis Bledel
Where you lead, she will follow.
Kelly Bishop, 80, who starred in “Gilmore Girls” as frosty matriarch Emily Gilmore, revealed her true thoughts about the show in a tell-all book.
In her memoir, “The Third Gilmore Girl,” Bishop wrote, “Alexis and I rarely hung out during our off-hours, but I thought the world of her; and Lauren and I hung out a lot and had even started referring to each other as ‘TVM’ (TV Mom) and ‘TVD’ (TV Daughter).”
“Gilmore Girls” ran for seven seasons from 2000 to 2007, on the WB (and later the CW). It also returned for a 2016 Netflix revival.
Created by Amy Sherman-Palladino and set in the quaint town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut, the hit show followed fast talking young mom, Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham), and her daughter, Rory (Alexis Bledel), through their romances, Lorelai’s issues at her job running an inn, Rory’s high school and college years (and her dubious adulthood, in the revival).
Bishop co-starred as Lorelai’s wealthy and often disapproving mother – and Rory’s grandmother – Emily.
For Season 7, Sherman-Palladino and husband Dan Palladino didn’t return after negotiations with the network fell apart.
Recalling that time, Bishop wrote, “A new writing team was brought in for the seventh season, and I know they tried their best, but there’s no such thing as trying to be Amy Sherman-Palladino. We actors were contractually obligated for that seventh season, and we did the best we could.”
Bishop admitted that without the original creators, “It just seemed to get kind of sleepy and tired from one week to the next, as if the air was being slowly let out of a big, sparkly balloon, and we could sense that the party might be ending, even though no one wanted to say it out loud.”
However, Bishop, who is also known for “Dirty Dancing,” had plenty of praise for the show, writing, “The humor was a delight, and utterly unique. Maybe most of all, the more I studied it, the more amazed I was at how closely I identified with the relationship dynamics of the Gilmore girls themselves.”
She shared that in her childhood, she had a strained relationship with her mother, who disapproved of her choice to live with a boyfriend outside of marriage – similar to Emily and Lorelai’s dynamic.
“I was always convinced, though, and I’m sure Amy was, that Emily loved Lorelai as much as she loved Rory, she just didn’t have a clue how to connect with her, and her frustration over that only added to her icy disapproval,” Bishop said.
Many viewers were frustrated with the 2016 Netflix reboot, which ended with Rory revealing that she was pregnant – but declining to reveal the father.
But, Bishop said she didn’t mind that ending.
“I prefer to think that those ‘loose ends’ were simply left to the fans’ ‘imagination’ to tie up,” she wrote, adding that the final four words “struck me as more interesting than infuriating, since it opened debates among viewers to decide who Rory was pregnant by, and what the repercussions would be.”
For her part, Bishop confessed that for Rory, among her love interests of Dean (Jared Padalecki), Jess (Milo Ventimiglia) and Logan (Matt Czuchry), Bishop was rooting for Logan.
For Lorelai’s love interests of Luke (Scott Patterson) or Christopher (David Sutcliffe), she was team Luke.
Bishop also reminisced about her late co-star Edward Herrmann, who played her onscreen husband, Richard. Herrmann died of cancer in 2014 at 71.
“You know those rare people you’re introduced to for the first time and instead of saying, ‘Nice to meet you,’ you’re tempted to say, ‘Oh, there you are!’? It’s as if you’re not new to each other, you’re actually old friends who’ve just been waiting for a chance to reconnect,” Bishop wrote.
She added that she felt that way about both Graham and Hermann.
Reflecting on Herrmann, she said, “He was smart and funny and a real professional, and we quickly discovered that we had a lot in common. We were both happily married, with homes on the East Coast,” she said, referring to how she was married to talk show host Lee Leonard from 1981 until his 2018 death.
Bishop, who also appeared in “The Good Wife,” shared that the two actors were “mutually addicted to the New York Times crossword puzzles, which we did together every day we worked.”
Surprisingly, they were also both “delighted” by Emily and Richard’s separation in Season 5.
“It opened up a front-burner storyline for us, with new levels for us to play, and Amy built to it slowly and beautifully,” she explained.
Bishop learned of Herrmann’s cancer from a Page Six story mere weeks before his December 2014 death. After learning the sad news, she called Graham and Sherman-Palladino, who were also stunned.
When Herrmann was on life support in a coma at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, his wife, Star, invited Bishop to say goodbye to him.
“Whether he’d actually be able to hear me or not, of course I wanted to talk to him. In the end, I kept it short and sweet, which I’ll bet surprised him,” she recalled.
Bishop shared her final words to her dear friend.
“I walked over to stand beside his bed, took his surprisingly hot hand, and told him that Lauren, Amy and Alexis sent their love. Then Star said, ‘You can kiss him goodbye.’ So I simply kissed him on the forehead, left a lip print, and whispered, ‘Tell them that’s from me.’ ”
