‘Gilmore Girls’: 1 Traumatizing Scene Caused Olivia Hack to Memorize Tana Lines to This Day
Gilmore Girls was a breeze to watch, but it was a pressure cooker for the actors. Leads like Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel had to memorize pages and pages of dialogue every week. Even guest stars had a steep learning curve. Olivia Hack said one scene was so traumatic for her, she never forgot the dialogue nearly 20 years later.
Hack was a guest on Scott Patterson’s I Am All In podcast on Oct. 12. Hack played Rory (Bledel)’s Yale roommate Tana Schrick in season 4. Here’s the scene she still has memorized to this day.
Olivia Hack’s traumatizing ‘Gilmore Girls’ scene
Joining Gilmore Girls in season 4 was already a whirlwind for Hack. Since Tana was a 15-year-old prodigy, Hack had to shoot her first scene twice, because she looked too close to her real age the first time. In this scene, the anxiety got the better of her.
“There was one scene, talk about how they would change scheduling,” Hack said on I Am All In. “I had this real big monologue which is crazy because it is the only thing to this day that I still remember word perfect. And I showed up, and I had it. I memorized it. It was medical jargon and I was ready, I was game. And then they went, ‘Oh, it’s 10 a.m., we’ve moved this to 6 p.m.’” So I sat around all day, and by the time I got around to it, it was gone. It was just gone.”
The ‘Gilmore Girls’ line that lives in Olivia Hack’s head forever
By Gilmore Girls Season 4, Hack was already a Hollywood veteran. She’d acted since she was a child, including the first two Brady Bunch Movies. So forgetting her lines wasn’t something that happened often.
“I’ve done a lot of TV, I’ve done movies, I’ve done stuff,” Hack said. “It was one of two times in my career that I ever just lost something to the point where they came up and were like, ‘Would you like cue cards?’ Which is to me an insult. Then the more you can’t get it, the more you’re out of your mind.”
Hack could still recite her Gilmore Girls line for Patterson.
“This is it,” Hack said. “‘His father was instrumental in conducting research showing that neurons in the brain fire actively during REM sleep with the exception of serotonin and norepinephrine.’ To this day, I can remember it perfectly because I was so shamed in my head by it. It was awful. To this day, but yeah. I can’t lie. Gilmore Girls was tough. They have a vision and obviously it was correct and right and that’s why the show is everlasting and all that.”
Getting every syllable right
Patterson asked Hack about vocal coach George Bell. Hack did work with him, though did not do a refresher at 5:30 because she thought she’d already memorized the lines.
“He’s like, ‘Now, see, the line is instrument and conduct. So remember that’s like music,’” Hack said. “I remember his notes he was giving me during this monologue. George Bell was the dialogue coach.”
Hack works extensively in voice acting now, which she says is a relief because she can just read her lines in the studio. Gilmore Girls was so specific, she couldn’t even add contractions.
“Gilmore Girls has that certain, it has its own patois and it’s really fast,” Hack said. “Someone said that’s editing so don’t worry so much about that, But they really wanted it word perfect. I remember doing a scene once and they came back and they were like, ‘That was all great but don’t change ‘it is’ to ‘it’s.’ Usually, they’ll give you that sort of leniency.”
