Dean Forester (Jared Padalecki)

Dean Forester (Jared Padalecki) appears in the first episode of Gilmore Girls, and is immediately set up to be Rory’s boyfriend with a meet cute that involves books and a movie reference. Dean was written to be the perfect first boyfriend for a teenage girl, which seems to mean he has almost no life or personality apart from being in love with Rory, and an obsessive jealous streak. I guess those are things that inexperienced teenage girls might find endearing. However, it didn’t take long for cracks to begin showing in the perfect Dean facade, so perhaps even the writers got bored with this conceit.

Jared Padalecki was not the first choice to play Dean: in the original Pilot episode, he was played by Nathan Wetherington, who gave him a slightly more bashful, skater-boy feel. Interestingly, in a later episode Lorelai says that Dean reminds her of Christopher, Rory’s father, and while Padalecki doesn’t really resemble David Sutcliffe, Wetherington looks much more like him.

Nathan Wetherington was considered for the role of Anakin Skywalker in the Stars Wars prequels, but took himself out of the running when he learned he had the role of Dean on Gilmore Girls, and also missed out on playing Seth on teen drama series The OC, so he’s had some unlucky breaks.

Mrs. Kim (Emily Kuroda)

MRS. KIM: So, how was school? None of the girls get pregnant, drop out?

A none-too-subtle dig at Rory, whose own mother did exactly that. It’s clear that Mrs. Kim is uncomfortable and a bit nervous about Lane being best friends with Rory, the daughter of a young single mother. The fact that she allows Lane to maintain the friendship anyway speaks volumes about how much she loves Lane, and doesn’t want her to be friendless and alone. It’s our first clue that she’s not as strict as she might appear at first.

Although Lane Kim is based on the Palladinos’ friend Helen Pai, and her childhood experiences of growing up in a Seventh Day Adventist Korean-American family, Helen’s mother is described as a mild, sweet lady. Mrs Kim isn’t based on her – she’s an entirely fictional character.

Mr. Kim

RORY: When are you going to let your parents know that you listen to the evil rock music? You’re an American teenager, for God’s sake.

Lane has two parents, but her father is never seen during the course of the original show, even at major family events. It is never explained where he is, and Keiko Agena, who played Lane, never asked Amy Sherman-Palladino where Mr. Kim was. Keiko herself felt that he had to travel a lot, and that it might have something to do his religion, such as missionary work of some kind. Perhaps he was always out buying new stock for the antique store. A Year in the Life provides a brief glimpse of Mr. Kim, confirming once and for all that he does exist.

Lane Kim (Keiko Agena)

Rory’s best friend is loosely based on writer, director and producer Helen Pai, a friend since childhood of Amy Sherman-Palladino and a co-producer of Gilmore Girls. Like Lane, Helen is a Korean-American who was raised in a Seventh Day Adventist family.

Lane Kim’s eclectic collecting and obsessive knowledge of popular music seems to be inspired by Daniel Palladino, who has been collecting rock and pop since early childhood, and now has a music collection numbering in the thousands.

Michel Gerard (Yanic Truesdale)

RORY: Come on, Michel. I’ll tell all the ladies what a stud you are.
MICHEL: Hm. I believe that memo has already been sent.

Throughout the original series of the show, viewers speculated on the sexuality of the ever-snarky Michel Gerard, the concierge at the Independence Inn. From Michel’s own vague statements, he could either be interpreted as a camp heterosexual man, or a closeted homosexual man (or one who just didn’t want to discuss his private life – Michel did come across as someone who valued his privacy).

Amy Sherman-Palladino originally intended Michel to be heterosexual, as this comment from him showed. He was meant to be an example of a heterosexual man who has camp mannerisms and stereotypically “gay” interests. At some point she changed her mind, and in the Netflix revival, Michel is confirmed as not only gay, but married to a man.

In fact it was Sookie (Melissa McCarthy) who Amy had planned to be a gay character, but the television executives would not countenance the idea.

In real life, when Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino stayed at the Mayflower, the inspiration for the Independence Inn, the concierge was a French woman.

Lorelai and Rory Gilmore (Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel)

Author avatars for showrunners Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, with their own relationship mimicking the high-energy Lorelai (Amy) and the quieter Rory (Daniel). The rapid-fire pop culture laden dialogue between Lorelai and Rory was partly inspired by Amy and Daniel’s own conversations.

In German popular culture the Lorelei is a water spirit which lures men to their doom, inspired by a dangerous rock in the Rhine River (the name literally means “murmuring rock”). It was Heinrich Heine’s 1824 poem Die Lorelei which personified the Lorelei as a beautiful siren, unwittingly distracting sailors so that they came to grief on the rock. The two Lorelais in Gilmore Girls are also alluring but somewhat dangerous. We cannot help but feel Joey makes a lucky escape in the first episode, being thoroughly out of his depth.

Luke Danes (Scott Patterson)

The owner of the town’s diner was originally meant to be a woman named Daisy, but the network thought the show needed another male character; there was supposedly a direct gender swap with the same dialogue being used.

In the original pilot, the male owner of the diner was named Duke – as a replacement for Daisy, you can see a Dukes of Hazzard reference. Luke was only meant to be a minor character, but after seeing his chemistry with Lorelai he was promoted to main character.

Luke always wears a baseball cap as reference to Scott Patterson’s former career in baseball. Before he was an actor, Patterson was a professional pitcher in the minor leagues from 1980-86.

Luke’s Diner

A friendly, relaxed diner in Washington Depot where people helped themselves to food and drink behind the counter was supposedly the inspiration for Luke’s Diner, and gave Amy Sherman-Palladino the idea for a show set in a charming, quirky small town. (This diner is no longer in existence, and I cannot identify it). Oddly enough, in the show Luke is not friendly or laid-back, and greatly dislikes people helping themselves to food behind the counter.

For the filming of the pilot in Unionville, Luke’s Diner was temporarily built inside a hardware store. This explains the backstory whereby Luke opened his diner in his dad’s old hardware store, William’s Hardware – William Danes being Luke’s deceased father.

Stars Hollow

In the first shot of the pilot, we see a sign with STARS HOLLOW FOUNDED 1779 on it. Stars Hollow is loosely based on the small town of Washington Depot in Connecticut, which incorporated in 1779. In the 19^th century its industrial section was known as Factory Hollow.

However, Rory says that Stars Hollow is 30 minutes drive from Hartford, while Washington Depot is about an hour away from there, so it can’t have the same location. That distance might put it somewhere around the vicinity of the town of Wallingford or the city of Meriden.

The pilot of Gilmore Girls was filmed in Unionville, Ontario, and from then on at Warner Brothers in Burbank, California.

Gilmore Girls

Gilmore is a Scottish and Irish surname which means “servant of the Virgin Mary”. A very apt name for a show which revolves around motherhood, and maternal relationships.

Alternative titles for the show were The Gilmore Girls, and The Gilmore Way, which Lauren Graham thought sounded like a method of natural birth. Eventually Gilmore Girls was decided on. The font for the title card is Solid Antique Roman.

Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino chose the name Gilmore after their bank, the Gilmore Bank in Los Angeles. It’s a family-owned community bank operating since 1955, and proud of their friendly customer service where everyone knows your name. That kind of cosy hometown environment must have seemed perfect for a show all about family and community.

There’s an odd sort of logic too, that the money they made from Gilmore Girls went straight back to Gilmore Bank!