The secret to keeping the surprises in the revival under wraps? “Just being careful and reading the Netflix memos like, ‘We will kill you if these things get out,’” Patterson jokes.
reconciliation in the series finale. So once the revival officially got the go-ahead from Netflix, questions immediately arose about their relationship status.
“That’s a very important creative decision: Where is he now? Where are they now? Are they together? What’s going on?” Patterson says. “There’s a lot of ways you could have gone and I think they could have been equally affective, but I think they chose the right one, obviously.”
By now, most viewers know from the photos and the trailer released that Luke and Lorelai are — phew — very much together in the new installments. While Patterson may have needed a few minutes to properly get back into character, he says tapping into the Luke and Lorelai all of it was decidedly easier.
“It was like no time had gone by. We just have the greatest rapport and the greatest chemistry,” he says. “I think we’ve probably done the best work together that we’ve ever done because we were given the freedom to go there.”
However, not everyone from the original cast was able to come back. Most notably, Edward Herrmann, who played family patriarch Richard Gilmore, died in late 2014. The revival, subsequently, deals heavily with the aftermath of Richard’s death.
“The passing of Ed Herrmann really deepened everything,” Patterson says. “I think we all felt a little bit of regret that this hadn’t happened sooner. Not that it was anybody’s fault, but that it hadn’t happened sooner and then he could have been included but, you know what, he was included in a very touching moving way and in a very respectful way.”
Although some plot points — such as Richard’s death and Luke and Lorelai’s relationship status — have since become widely known, many other details regarding the new chapters have kept under tight wraps. Not only was there increased anticipation about things like Rory’s romantic future and, above all, Sherman- Palladino’s final four words for the series, but the cast and crew had to keep everything under wraps in the social media age of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram that had barely just begun when the series went off the air in 2007.
The secret to keeping the surprises under wraps? “Just being careful and reading the Netflix memos like, ‘ We will kill you if these things get out,’” Patterson jokes. “But I share their concern because it is a different world and look, they’re working very long hours and they’re working very hard to promote this and they want to do it their way and they should have the license to do it this way. They know what they’re doing.”
But once these four new chapters and those four final words come out, what will the future hold for Gilmore Girls? Patterson is optimistic.
“It’d be nice to do it every year. Maybe every two years, do a threemonth thing, do four more chapters. It was easy to do,” Patterson says. “It was really rewarding and people got a sense that, if this was going to be the last thing, that we now have some closure.”
Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life premieres Nov. 25 on Netflix. — Bloomberg