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Luke is weighing in.
Scott Patterson, who starred as Luke Danes on “Gilmore Girls,” told The Post that the role was originally supposed to be very different.
“He wasn’t supposed to be a man. He was originally written as a woman, and the network suggested that there’s maybe too many women. I mean, if you can imagine the craziness of that statement. And so, it was made into a man,” Patterson, 67, told The Post.
Patterson was reflecting on the show for its 25th anniversary, as it originally premiered in October of 2000.
The beloved family drama aired from 2000 to 2007 on The WB (which then became the CW) before it briefly returned for a 2016 Netflix revival, “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.”
“Gilmore Girls” was set in the fictional quaint town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut, and followed former teen mom Lorelai (Lauren Graham) as she raised her precocious teen daughter, Rory (Alexis Bledel).
Supporting characters included Lorelai’s difficult mother, Emily (Bishop), Luke’s nephew Jess (Milo Ventimiglia), Rory’s first boyfriend, Dean (Jared Padalecki), local town weirdo Kirk (Sean Gunn), and Lorelai’s best friend, Sookie (Melissa McCarthy).
Luke was Loreai’s grumpy, diner-owning love interest, who perpetually wore flannel and a backwards baseball hat.
After many seasons of “will they or won’t they,” Luke and Lorelai eventually ended up together.
Patterson, who also has the “Gilmore Girls” rewatch iHeartRadio podcast, “I Am All In…Again!” said, “They’re forever. I mean, they’ll never change. They’re rock solid.”
He added that Luke and Lorelai are, “two people who are wildly independent. They don’t need each other to get through life, but want to be with each other. That’s powerful. So, I think that glue stays forever.”
However, his thoughts on Rory’s love life weren’t as fond.
Rory’s main love interests were Dean, Jess, and Logan (Matt Czuchry), and the 2016 “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life” saw Rory fall pregnant, without revealing who her baby’s father was.
“I’m not interested in any of them. I think they are teenage flings and necessary teenage romances to deepen her heart. I think she needs to get her act together,” said Patterson.
He pointed out that Rory is a mother now, following the events of “A Year in the Life.”
“And if I’m doing the math correctly, she’s got a nine year old…And please forgive me. I’m not a television scriptwriter – but maybe there’s a world where there’s a new energy introduced into her life, and somebody [new] that really captures her attention.”
But regarding whether Rory should be with Jess, Dean, or Logan, he said, “I think these three guys had their shot. They blew it. All of them.”
Reflecting on his time filming the show, Patterson revealed that he played practical jokes on his cast mates.
“Juvenile stuff just to keep it light… I did it for a couple seasons. Then I stopped doing it. You know, it’s amazing that people don’t appreciate vaseline on a toilet seat as much as I thought they would,” he quipped.
Patterson added, “I once nailed somebody’s shoes to the floor of their trailer.”
When asked who he pranked, Patterson said “I’ll never tell,” but denied that it was Graham, and clarified that it was on a man. He also named Gunn as the cast member he sees and talks to the most often, today.
Patterson only started watching the show in recent years, when he started his podcast in 2021.
“I can’t stand to watch myself. I think you’ll hear that refrain from a lot of actors. And being there so much, I didn’t want to watch it after I just spent 14 hours doing it,” he explained.
But, once he started watching “Gilmore Girls,” he said “I fell in love with it.”
“There’s two decades in between me and the repulsion that I feel when I watch myself. So, I didn’t really feel it anymore. So it was a lot of surprise and delight watching the show the first time around.”
Reflecting on how “Gilmore Girls” is still popular today, he said, “Nobody could have anticipated this 25 years ago. We knew it was a unique and beautifully written show…we knew we had something special. We were all shocked to be in something of such quality.”
He said that creator Amy Sherman Palladino and her husband Dan were the reason why the show “endures.”
“We had showrunners and we had a pair of creators who protected the show and crafted what they wanted to craft. It’s just a rare thing in the business.”
Patterson added that while streaming on Netflix today, the show is “more popular than it ever was during its original run. It is a unique phenomenon in the history of television.”
He referred to the show as, “the proverbial little engine that could. Just a small show from a small network. It’s hard to get to 100 episodes….it’s an impossible business to be in. And all of us, together with these genius creators, defied the odds as a group and made something for the world that they continue to consume at a high rate.”
Patterson, who currently co-stars in the CW show “Sullivan’s Crossing,” added that, “you could even go so far as saying that [‘Gilmore Girls’] has had some kind of therapeutic effect on the population that is exposed to this, either directly or indirectly. I think the more people that gravitate toward it begin to realize there’s really nothing else that makes them feel this way, in a positive sense.”
English (US)