Just Now Updates: Gilmore Girls Creator Amy Sherman-Palladino Spills on the Future of the Show and More Scoop

Gilmore Girls Creator Amy Sherman-Palladino Spills on the Future of the Show and More Scoop

If you've ever said, "Oy, with the poodles already!" then you have Amy Sherman-Palladino to thank for your favorite Gilmore-isms. The Gilmore Girls^[1] creator made some of our favorite TV characters of all time and gave us six wonderful years with Lorelai and Rory. Amy and her husband, Daniel Palladino, had to exit before the seventh and final season of Gilmore Girls, leaving fans feeling a little robbed by the ending. Thankfully, we caught up with the television genius at ATX Television Festival in Austin ^[2], where she dished about a future for GG (and whether it's on TV or as a movie), Rory's boyfriends, and the Jess spin-off that never happened.

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Glamour: Since you weren't involved in the final season, if you could stop time and make season six the last, would you be happy with how you ended it there?
Amy Sherman-Palladino: No, I would have done it differently—I would have done it my way! But you know, the last year, that was my staff. It wasn't like we left and then they brought in the staff from What About Brian. These people had been living with Lorelai and Rory and Stars Hollow for a year or two, so it was fine. I'm always going to want my own thing, but that's life.

Glamour: But you're not going to tell anyone your ending quite yet, just in case there's a movie, right?
Amy: No, not yet. If there's ever a chance that we get to do it our way—and I don't know if there ever will be—maybe there will be one of those rosebud moments where I'm lying there and I'm like, [gasps for breath] "These are the last four words!" But at the moment, I still want to hang onto it because I always hold out hope that we'll have the right organic time.

Glamour: Scott Patterson alluded to "things in the works" for a Gilmore Girls movie. If you were to hypothetically put the gang back together, would you prefer to do a movie or another season on streaming like Arrested Development?
Amy: I don't know. It's so tricky because you don't own your shows and you don't have the control to go set it up the way you would want to. There have been talks over the years, but it's never been the right time for one reason or another. I don't really know—I talked about a movie for a while, and then I couldn't get anyone else to talk to me about it, so I was like, "I'll just sit in my own room and talk about it!" [Laughs] I feel very strongly that if anything ever does happen, it will reveal itself organically. I don't know that it would be a big-screen movie.

Glamour: Something like Veronica Mars?
Amy: I don't believe in crowd funders. I don't believe the fans should be paying for their own things. I don't begrudge anyone else for anything, but to me, I think the fans deserve to have a studio put money behind their product because when the fans put money into a project and it makes any sort of money, it goes back to the studio. I think that's a little shady.

Glamour: How involved were you in getting the gang back together for this reunion at ATX?
Amy: It was all those two crazy chicks [ATX co-creators Emily Gipson and Caitlin McFarland]. It was weird because I think they contacted me last year or the year before. I said, "Look, when you get Lauren and Alexis there, I'll be there. But I don't want to go and just talk about me. God, I do enough of that all day long." I'm still in touch with a great deal of the cast. We see Milo all the time and Matt lives in New York and we live in New York now. A lot of them are friends. It was just weird that they're all showing up!

Glamour: Having all three of the boyfriends here is pretty incredible. Will you take a team on this one?
Amy: Isn't that amazing? I believe that you have a boyfriend for certain times of your life, and I think the boyfriend who is your most beautiful first boyfriend is not the boyfriend that you're with in college, and your college boyfriend is not your first boyfriend! I think Rory had the right relationships for the right moments of her life.

Glamour: Did you ever imagine a fourth boyfriend for Rory, or did you imagine her being single?
Amy: I don't know that I imagine a fourth boyfriend for her. With that unbelievable gorgeous face of hers, I'm sure there would have been plenty, but I don't think I had anyone specific in my head.

Glamour: Do you still think about the Gilmores and what they'd be up to?
Amy: We think about them all the time! We travel, and we're like, "Oh, f—k, that would be the best Gilmore Girls story!" We see things and read dumb things in the paper or we walk past Brooklyn meetings and arguments about stupid things and we're like, "Really?! Oh, that would have been the best town meeting." It never leaves my mind totally, it's just at some point, you can't be that person who's like [puts on old man voice], "Years ago, I had a show called Gilmore Girls and sit down, sonny, let me tell you about it." I'm terrified that's going to be me, just a weird Gilmore Girls babbling person in a coffee shop somewhere.

Glamour: Are there any characters you have in your mind of where they'd be now? Like where Rory would be after the Barack Obama trail.
Amy: I would like to think that Rory is very good friends with [The New York Times'] Gail Collins. That is very important to me. I just think there's a sensory relationship between Rory and Gail Collins. I would like her to sit in Gail's office.

Glamour: Do you think Paris would have ended up like Liza Weil's character, Bonnie, on How to Get Away With Murder?
Amy: I think Paris would have been a lawyer and a doctor and a DA and a private investigator. I think she would have been 50 different things, and she would have been the most terrifying person in America, possibly.

Glamour: Do you think Lorelai and Luke would be married with kids?
Amy: I don't know—I actually haven't thought about that. I just assumed that they got them together, so they're together. I think they'd be together. I don't know past that.

Glamour: The Jess spin-off didn't get picked up, but did you have a dream for his future?
Amy: I always thought that Milo deserved his own show. I thought Jess' journey of trying to find his family because he was a guy who was so hard to let people in—it could have been a really great journey. Whatever flaws the spin-off pilot had, the idea of him as a real East coast-entrenched guy with issues coming to f—ing sunny California and trying to make a go at it there would have been kind of funny.

Glamour: Edward Herrmann's passing was so tragic. Do you have any memories of him on the set that you thought back about fondly?
Amy: Ed was a martini-drinking, bon vivant, smartest guy in the room, lovely, protective of Alexis to a point that I think it really got her through those first couple of years. He was such a delicious man, and I only wanted him for the part. I thought I'd never get him, but they said, "He'll come meet with you, but he won't read anything." He walks in the room, he sits down, we talk for a few minutes, and he says, "Oh, so you want me to read?" And I [makes fumbling, nervous noises]. He was just a pro, he was a real actor, and the actual craft of acting was important and sacred to him. Boy, I was very lucky. I was very, very lucky. I miss him. He deserves to be talked about.

For more Gilmore Girls nostalgia, find out where the cast thinks their characters would be now ^[3].