TV Guide (June 20-28, 2001)

BIG TALKERS
Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel prove themselves banter-weight champs.
Even a Gilmore girl needs a boost now and then. As Lauren Graham sits at and elegantly set table with costars Alexis Bledel, Kelly Bishop and Edward Herrmann, preparing to shoot one of the testy family dinners that figures in nearly every Gilmore Girls episode, Graham ducks beneath the tablecloth just as the cameras roll. She is hiding a Starbucks to-go cup. Between takes, she identifies the beverage: “Nonfat mocha, easy the chocolate, with an extra shot.”
Spoken like her alter ego, Lorelai Gilmore, the quickest tongue in Stars Hollow, where the speed limit is 180 words per minute. “No on in the world talks faster than Lauren Graham,” says Amy Serman-Palladino, the show’s creator and executive producer. “And you can actually understand everything she says, which is a great talent.” Lorelai’s java-sipping sidekick, best friend and verbal pin-pong partner is daughter Rory, played by Bledel. “This is a buddy comedy,” Serman-Plladino (Roseanne) says. “It just happens to be a mother-daughter.” Three years ago, was at WB pitching ideas for show when she threw out a half “baked concept about a mother and daughter who get along like friends. “I sold it on a sentence,” she says.
From the start, Gilmore Girls has been peppered with cultural references both high (pet, Anne Sexton) and low (Anna Nicole Smith), while music, from XTC to Blink-182, has been as much a part of Stars Hollow as coffee. But do the teen girls who make up much of the show’s devoted audience really get all the references? Even Bledel, a 20-year-old Houston native admits she is often baffled. “I always have to ask,” she says. “But I’ve learned a lot. It’s turned me on to so many bands.” Graham’s turn-on is seeing Gilmore Girls succeed after years spent trying to inject life into shows like Caroline in the City and Conrad Bloom. While fans are caught up in Lorelai’s love life, Graham, 35- who grew up in Arlington, Virginia, with a single dad, Lawrence, president of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association- refuses to talk about hers. (She has been previously been linked to Matthew Perry.) She will say that while work doesn’t leave time to carouse; She’s a devoted follower of blind date. “Lorelai would bean excellent candidate for Blind Date,” she says, “She’s fun, she knows what she’s looking for and she drives an SUV.”