Tana & Janet Were Supposed to Return to ‘Gilmore Girls’ Before the End: Olivia Hack Reveals What Happened
Over seven seasons, Gilmore Girls introduced a lot of memorable characters outside the core Stars Hollow cast. Season 4 involved Rory (Alexis Bledel)’s time at Yale, where she met even more new characters. Rory and Paris Gellar (Liza Weil) roomed with two other girls: Janet Billings (Katie Walder), Tana Schrick (Olivia Hack). Hack said she and Walder shot a scene in season 7 but it got deleted, and it may have been her fault.
Hack was a guest on Scott Patterson’s I Am All In podcast on Oct. 12. She also shared how she had to reshoot her very first scene twice, because she looked too old to play a 15-year-old prodigy the first time. Here is the story of the deleted scene from the final season of Gilmore Girls.
Tana and Janet were supposed to return to ‘Gilmore Girls’ before the end
The second to last episode of Gilmore Girls was Rory’s graduation party. So it would make sense for Rory’s former roommates to attend. By 2007, Hack was in her mid-20s. If she looked too old to be 15 in season 4, she was unrecognizable by season 7.
“For the finale, I think it was the second to last episode of the series, they brought me and Katie Walder who played Janet, they brought us both back,” Hack said on I Am All In. “Nobody asked my agent, it had been a few years, like if I looked different. At the time I had cut off all my hair. I had this pixie cut, it was bleached blond.”
Olivia Hack could tell ‘Gilmore Girls’ was disappointed in her
Hack and Walder showed up to film the Tana and Janet scene. It exists somewhere. But, Hack could tell by the looks on the cast and crew’s faces that they weren’t expecting the new Hack.
“And I showed up on set and the collective face drop where they were just like oh no,” Hack said. “So they cut it all out. They cut out all of our stuff and Katie was like, ‘This is your fault. This is on you.’ We shot it but it just never made it in. I think it’s because I just looked completely different.”
Olivia Hack didn’t expect to last so long in season 4 either
The role of Tana wasn’t necessarily supposed to last throughout season 4 either. Hack recalls being cast just to fill the role, and then continuing to find out that Tana was in subsequent episodes. Peter Klausner wasn’t so lucky. The show did not continue the Laundry Room Guy subplot.
“I think it was just kind of a ‘you’re Rory’s roommate at Yale’ thing,” Hack said. “So they just kept doing episodes.”
