LAUREN GRAHAM GOES BACK TO CLASS
‘Gilmore Girls’ star returns to mom mode on the big screen
Like many people, Lauren Graham hated middle school.
The Gilmore Girls star remembers one time in eighth-grade band putting on a concert. “All the girls had to wear dresses, but I didn’t own a dress or have girl shoes. I was a real tomboy, so I just felt awkward,” says Graham, 48, who co-stars in next year’s Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life.
“They were literally the worst years of my life, so I was in from the title.”
In junior high, “everything is the worst and the best,” says Worst author James Patterson, best known for his Alex Cross thrillers. “It’s memorable because everything is sort of operatic. It’s larger than life.”
Based on the first book in Patterson’s best-selling Middle School series, the movie follows Rafe Khatchadorian (Griffin Gluck) as he starts junior high with one mission: to break every rule in the school’s stringent Code of Conduct. The film hits theaters in October.
Rafe is “a really bright kid,” says Patterson, 68. “He’s a great artist, illustrator and animator, but there’s so little or no art in a lot of schools these days, so he doesn’t have a way to express himself and he’s bored by the other subjects. Because this is a school with hundreds of rules and the principal (Andy Daly) is totally over the top (in enforcing them), Rafe decides that the only way he can keep his sanity is by breaking all the rules.”
Patterson describes the family comedy as Home Alone meets Ferris Bueller’s Day Off meets Pixar, with about 20 to 30 minutes of animation interspersed. “It’s all relevant to the story line because it’s coming out of Rafe’s head and in the style that he draws.”
Gluck, 15, was chosen by director Steve Carr and Patterson. Although he has appeared in the short-lived TV shows About a Boy and Red Band Society, “this is going to be one of those movies where you say, ‘Oh, that’s the first time I saw Griffin. Remember he was in that Middle School movie?’ ” Patterson says. “This will be the start for him, or a bigger start than he’s had so far.”
Graham’s Jules is a single working mom with a brutish boyfriend (Rob Riggle). “She’s enjoying having some attention and feels relieved to have someone help her” with Rafe and his little sister, Georgia (Alexa Nisenson), Graham says. “She’s going through a tough time and maybe choosing not to see all the signs that are there because it’s fun to have a date.”
Asked to rank Jules against her beloved TV moms Sarah Braverman of NBC’s Parenthood and Lorelai Gilmore of The WB’s Gilmore Girls (which may be revived on Netflix, she teases without confirming), she considers her answer carefully.
“If I ever say anything besides Lorelai, there’s a contract out on my life,” Graham laughs. “I’m at this point as an actor where there’s a mold of what people think of me for, so there’s kind of a sisterhood of all these moms who are struggling to do a good job and try to have a sense of humor along the way. Jules is doing a very good job.”