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Stars Hollow came to New York Comic Con this year, as Gilmore Girls mainstay Scott Patterson, who played Luke Danes, attended NYCC on Thursday and Friday. Besides taking photos with and talking to fans in the autographing area, Scott was the focus of a panel on Friday afternoon called Coffee With Luke: A Conversation With Scott Patterson.
Scott was originally signed on for only the pilot of Gilmore Girls. The producers of the show liked him so much that they called his agent, wanting to sign him for two more episodes. But she told them, “Give him a six-year contract.” They came back with a four episode offer, which Scott wanted to accept, but his agent shot back to the producers, “Go to Warner Brothers and get the money.” He was worried that they made the wrong choice, but shortly after that, he was getting lunch with his agent, who handed him an envelope. “In it was a six-year contract with Warner Brothers. It was a good lunch. It’s important to have good people behind you who believe in you. She believed in me.” It’s hard to picture Gilmore Girls without Luke, but it almost happened!
When asked about auditioning, Scott was his most serious, and responded “You’re there to get a job, you’re not there to make friends. Don’t do that.” He said when you’re auditioning, you’re not there to effuse praise onto the director or producer about previous projects, warning the audience that it makes you look unprofessional. He apologized to the audience member who asked the question for how serious he got with his answer, but the fan who asked responded, “No, that was the best f***ing answer to that question!”
Before getting cast on Gilmore Girls, Scott said that he had been getting very good at auditioning. “I had done a Seinfeld episode, so casting people knew who I was.” He talked about his various recurring roles he had on series, but could never nail down a regular role until it clicked with Gilmore Girls.
He had plenty of funny anecdotes, including one of him blowing a take when he saw Adam West walk by. West was filming something on the same lot as Gilmore Girls. After the scene ended, he chased after West, finding a trailer marked AW. He knocked on the door, which was quickly answered by West, who thought Scott was a PA there to take him to hair and makeup. Scott went into a fast-paced mouthful of an introduction, telling West what a fan he was of the Batman TV series as a kid. After which West quickly closed the door on him. But it was just a joke. He opened the door again, chatted with Scott and gave him an autograph.
When asked about his current Gilmore Girls podcast, Scott explained that he never watches his own work, so he’s seeing the finished product for the first time. “My move at a premiere is go in, say hello to people and just as it starts, leave. I go to the bar next door, get a cocktail and come back in time for it ending.” He’s enjoying making the podcast and revealed that Isaac Mizrahi is a superfan of Gilmore Girls, and was a guest on his podcast.
When asked about his reaction to Lorelai’s other love interests on the show, he said, “I’ll go to my grave saying this. I think it’s completely inappropriate. You don’t date the teacher where your kid goes to school! There’s a great guy over there serving coffee.”
If he could have played any other character on the show, he responded, “Believe it or not, there’s a lot of Kirk inside me.” He said he’d have challenges with the physical comedy part of it, but if he could have played another character on the show, that would have been the one he wanted. Out of Rory’s boyfriends, he related the most to Jess, saying he was like Jess when he was younger, “soulfull, reading a lot of books.” The moderator asked if he was Team Jess? “Of course! Gotta go with family.” As for her other boyfriends, there is one he really doesn’t like. “I gotta say, I can’t stand Logan. He then imitated Logan saying. “Hey Ace.” in a very sing-songy voice.
Patterson had nothing but praise for Milo Ventimiglia. Despite the 17 year age gap, the two became fast friends. “He’s such a nice kid.” He was equally praiseful about working with Milo, saying, “This kid is smarter than all of us put together.”
The moderator asked him if he had any inkling that Gilmore Girls would come back after its cancelation. He said he didn’t, and that as the show was winding down, the writing was on the wall. “Certain cast members were a little bit bankrupt and needed to move on.” Who did he mean there? He didn’t say.
He gave a shout out to his appearance on the Gilmore Guys podcast, saying he said on the podcast at the time that “there might be talks” of a Gilmore Girls follow-up, which went viral. Though Amy Sherman-Palladino was quick to shut that down on stage at SXSW 2018. But there were talks! They were just in secret at the time. Scott praised Netflix, from everything involved on the show including how well Netflix remade all the original Gilmore Girls sets.
Though like many who watched Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, Scott had some issues with it. “I don’t understand what happened with Rory. Paris was the one set up to have the meltdown. I would have made [Rory] someone whose dreams came true, and then the chits were coming in,” and not have her flounder post-college the way the miniseries portrayed her. “As much as you think it’s Lorelai’s show, it’s Rory’s show. I find Rory to be extraordinarily strong, in some ways stronger than her mother.”
During the Q&A, he spoke about pranks he played on a cast member, saying that he nailed one cast member’s shoes to the floor, and coated another cast member’s toilet with Vaseline, which led to that cast member being stuck to his toilet. “No was allowed to give me Vaseline after that.”
His favorite actor to work with on the show was Lauren Graham. “The thing about Lauren is she can hit the ball back over the net faster than you believe. She’d try to get something by me at 3 AM when everyone was fading, but that’s when she’d bring the lightning.” And that “The thing I love about her is, even in rehearsal she’d bring it. Here’s Hurricane Scott and Hurricane Lauren, and the director. Her tenacity as an actress matched my own and it worked. Any tension that was there in the rehearsal process was there in the scene, and it came alive.” He said it was a crime that she didn’t win multiple Emmy’s and Golden Globes for the role. “Clearly her work was on par with anyone working in the industry at the time. This girl had to remember 90 pages of dialog every week!”
A fan asked why he and Lauren Graham never dated in real life. “If a guy and a girl are in a scene together and they’re boring as hell, it’s because they were dating. You can’t date your co-stars. It ruins the entire piece, and it has the potential to blow up the entire series.”
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