‘Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life’ — How Netflix Improved Luke’s Diner on the WB Lot
The Gilmore Girls gang reunited in 2016 for the Netflix series Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. The cast and crew returned to the Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank to recreate Stars Hollow. Some of the sets were new and improved, including Luke’s Diner.
Scott Patterson described the new and improved Luke’s Diner on the Sept. 14 episode of his I Am All In Podcast. He was live in front of fans with Sean Gunn at Comic-Con and one asked about the Netflix revival. Here’s how they fixed Luke’s Diner.
Luke’s Diner benefited from ‘Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life’
A Year in the Life was four feature-length films, each set in a different season. Luke still had Luke’s Diner, but when they rebuilt the set, Netflix made improvements.
“I thought it was great,” Patterson said on I Am All In. “The diner, Luke’s Diner specifically, was really, it was like a 2.0 version of it. It was brighter, it was better.”
Netflix made technical improvements to Luke’s Diner
Luke’s Diner was the setting of many Gilmore Girls scenes. Patterson just took it for granted that they had to work around the set they had. When Netflix rebuilt it, Patterson said they listened to the sound department about where improvements were needed.
“The floor was spongey because the sound department said, ‘Make a spongy floor. We’re tired of the squeaks and the cracking and the stuff wrecking the takes,’” Patterson said. “It was all just better.”
When you watch Gilmore Girls on TV, all the sound has been cleaned up. That often means the actors dubbing their lines again in the studio, because their shoes were making too much noise on the hard floor .
“One of the good things about Netflix, and it wasn’t all good, but it was a lot of good,” Patterson said. “One of the good things about Netflix coming is they spent a lot of money on the production. And the technology had changed over the years since we last were there filming. In 9 years or whatever it was, the camera equipment, all aspects of how you make a film were vastly superior. So it was really exciting to come back.”
Scott Patterson and Sean Gunn slipped right back into ‘Gilmore Girls’ characters
Aside from the physical improvements, both Patterson and Gunn said it was easy to play Luke and Kirk, respectively, again.
“Yes, at least I fell back into the flow of the acting with those actors pretty easily,” Patterson said. “It was wonderful.”
Gunn added, “I felt the same way. It was nice to have a little more space to do what we wanted to do. We had a little more time which was really cool. I was definitely, from a personal standpoint, I was nervous going back into it. I was like I’m not sure where this lives in my brain. It was really like the second take of the first time that I was like oh, there’s Kirk. He’s right there. It was not difficult at all. It was like putting on a pair of slippers that you’ve owned forever.”
