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TL;DR:

  • The fast-talking style of Gilmore Girls caused the show to have long scripts.
  • Despite the scripts, Emily Gilmore actor Kelly Bishop wondered if the show was a sitcom.
  • Some Gilmore Girls cast members struggled with the rapid dialogue.
Kelly Bishop as Emily Gilmore in 'Gilmore Girls: A Year inthe Life.' She's wearing a white blouse and blazer.
Kelly Bishop as Emily Gilmore | Saeed Adyani/Netflix

Gilmore Girls is known for its witty banter, and the characters on the show speak quickly to deliver its humor. Just watch a scene of Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory (Alexis Bledel) talking and you’ll realize how swift their back-and-forth really is. But despite the fast-talking style of Gilmore Girls, Kelly Bishop once wondered if the show was a sitcom. After all, its humor makes sense for that type of television — even if its scripts would never work for shorter episodes.

All the fast-talking in ‘Gilmore Girls’ led to longer scripts

That’s right, Gilmore Girls boasted some seriously long scripts, and that can be attributed to the fast-talking style of the dialogue. According to Vox, the cast and crew regularly dealt with 80-page scripts while filming. That’s around double the length of most hour-long episodes, setting Gilmore Girls apart from similar shows.

Of course, dialogue coach George Bell was also brought in to help the cast of Gilmore Girls master their lines. As such, it’s obvious a lot of work went into capturing that component of the series.

Still, despite its long scripts and intricate dialogue, Emily Gilmore actor Kelly Bishop initially wondered if the series was a sitcom. Here’s why she questioned it.

The scripts made Kelly Bishop wonder if ‘Gilmore Girls’ was a sitcom

Although sitcoms have much shorter scripts than Gilmore Girls, Kelly Bishop originally wondered if the series fell into that genre. That’s because the humor felt fitting of a sitcom. However, she knew it couldn’t fall into the category, as 30-minute sitcom episodes wouldn’t have such lengthy dialogue.

Per The Gilmore Girls Companion, Bishop described this reaction to the scripts while recounting the audition process for Emily Gilmore.

“I kept looking at the length of the script because a sitcom script is fairly short, and an hour-long show is about twice the size,” Bishop recalled. “I kept thinking is this a sitcom? It’s so funny. No, it can’t be, just by the locations and the size of this script. This is absolutely wonderful.”

And sitcom or not, the humor won Bishop over in the end. She auditioned and went on to play Emily Gilmore for all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls and in Netflix’s reunion, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. She’s one of many actors who conveyed the show’s witty banter, though not all of them had an easy time with the fast-paced dialogue.

Some ‘Gilmore Girls’ cast members struggled with the dialogue

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That’s right, although Gilmore Girls’ comical dialogue comes off naturally in the final takes, some actors struggled with the fast-paced talking in the show. Lauren Graham and Scott Patterson even had to quit smoking to keep up. And other Gilmore Girls cast members required more attention from dialogue coach George Bell, who recalled the experience during an appearance on Patterson’s I Am All In podcast.

Bell remembered Jackson Douglas (Jackson), Liz Torres (Miss Patty), and Kathleen Wilhoite (Liz) struggling with their lines. All three needed help with certain aspects of memorization and delivery. You wouldn’t know it from watching the show now, but it makes sense when you consider how many lines they had — and how quickly they often had to repeat them!

Gilmore Girls is currently streaming on Netflix.

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