INT: Lauren Graham

I’ve
got a secret… I’ve never watched “Gilmore Girls”.
Like, ever! I
think at one time it was on during “Buffy the Vampire
Slayer” and that is frankly one of my favorite shows of all
time. But even still,
“Gilmore Girls” never really pulled me in.
I had heard it was a great show, but truthfully, not my
thing. So I wasn’t too
familiar with Lauren Graham, who is the MILF on the show.
But she also did some great work in the film, BAD SANTA.
Now, since her show has gone on to syndication heaven, she is
moving into film. She can now
be seen alongside Steve Carell in EVAN
A
LM
IGHTY as the Noah incarnate suffering wife.

Lauren
was kind enough to hang out with a bunch of journalists recently on
the back-lot at Universal Studios. And
truth be told, meeting her, I almost wanted to go back and watch
“Gilmore Girls”…I said almost.
She is lovely and really quite stunning.
She is also an amazingly down to earth lady, very classy,
warm and just a pleasant person to be around.
He spoke of working with Steve and Morgan Freeman in EVAN A
LM
IGHTY and she also talked a little about saying goodbye to
television (for now). You’ll
be able to see her when EVAN opens on June 22nd.

Lauren
Graham

What were the
biggest challenges in being cast as the wife in a movie like this?
What do you bring to the table in trying to make this character more
interesting and comedic and colorful?

Well, I don’t
try to think about it that way because that’s not my job in this. I
love movies like this, and I think somebody has to be the straight
man. And also to me, one of the things I liked about this movie was
the heart of it, and the real emotional story of this man who seems
to be going crazy. No one believes him and I think that’s an
important part of the story. I have had years and years of talking
fast and being sassy, and I’m as happy to do something simpler.
[Laughing] So it’s not about trying to turn it into something else,
it’s just trying to do a good job with what this is. So that’s what
I tried to do.

“Gilmore
Girls” has turned you into a cult figure. What do you want to do
with your career now that the series has ended? Did you catch the
Joan of Arc reference?

[Laughing] No,
it didn’t occur to me until somebody said it to me. And then of
course, my grandmother, who knows every book of the Bible, was like,
“Well, her name was Sarah, so I don’t know why they called her
Joan.” Wait, what was the first thing? “I’m a cult.”
I think what my hope is, is that the only downside of having a
steady job on television is, I think for all actors, there’s a piece
of…, there’s some adrenaline, and part of the love of the job is
not knowing what’s coming next, and the variety.

And I remember
having this a couple years into the show, I was like, “There’s
some feeling that I miss. What is it?” And it was kind of the
unexpected, and not knowing what the next thing might be, or if I
would get it or not get it. And so kind of to begin to get back to
that unknown is…I’m sure after a while, it will drive me crazy,
but for now, it feels really nice, and I’m doing a movie now, and
I’m going to do something else in like a month, so I know what my
next couple things are, and I’m just really excited to have
different experiences. And I feel I’ve kind of earned that, you
know? [Laughing] It’s sort of like I feel like I’ve put in a lot of
time in medical school.

Because
“Gilmore Girls” is kind of like medical school, you know what
I mean? [Laughing] And now I’m going to go do my residency. Can
anyone help me with this analogy? And I’ll try to be a doctor in one
area… [Laughing] I just am going to really enjoy the variety.
I just mean I put in a lot of time at one thing, and now I sort of
get to reap the benefits, is how I think about it. But if you think
about it this way, I could be a doctor by now, had I gone to medical
school instead of going to “Gilmore Girls.” Seven years. That
would be about right. [Lauging] “Graham Thinks She’s a Doctor:
Confused?” I’m writing your article for you.

If someone
you cared about in your life went this nuts how would you deal with
it? Would you stick with them or bail?

Well, I think I
kind of go through all the colors in this because you want to
believe them, you look for a rational explanation; you finally
decide you can’t take it anymore, and then
Morgan
Freeman is your waiter and he tells you what to
do. That’s pretty much how I hope it would go. I don’t know. You
can’t possibly know. I think the movie raises the question of,
“How far will your faith take you? What do you do in the face
of doubt? Is the power of love enough to get over what you perceive
to be the reality of something?” And I don’t know the answers
to all those questions. But we ask them here, in this little PG
movie. [Laughing] It makes you think.

What was it
like working opposite Steve
Carell, and what did you think of his metrosexual
makeover?

I thought that
was really funny, because when I saw it…I mean, first of all, I
got so used to seeing him in that stuff every day that he would just
look weird when you saw him without it. [Laughing] And the
metrosexual stuff I thought played really well. It was great. I
mean, again, we sort of had the more dramatic scenes in the movie,
so I wasn’t like holding my sides laughing during them because that
wasn’t the tone of the scene. [Laughing] But he’s a very funny guy.
I really appreciate how he approaches things. He’s a real actor, you
know? I liked his work in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” because I
thought, “This is so interesting. It’s so small and subtle, and
he’s coming from the character. He’s not coming from like, ‘I’m
doing something wacky and big!'” And I just like that. So it
was fun.

What were
your encounters with the animals you worked with?

Well, it’s
amazing to me…Like everything in this movie, one thing that was
really striking was how every single person in every single
department was the best at what they do. And that’s from transpo to
props to all the ADs. They work at a level that is so high, so the
amazing stuff with the animals was less what was my interaction with
them, but watching these trainers get them kindly and very simply to
do what they wanted them to do. Because I just thought, “These
giraffes have not been training to do Evan Almighty like their whole
lives. How
do they know to bring him the hammer?”

You know, so
much of the stuff is real that you see in the movie. So that was
really amazing. I mean, we weren’t like sitting around petting the
lions or anything, but it was cool to watch them walk by. [Laughing]
You’re like sitting drinking coffee, and you just got strangely used
to it. But I didn’t like sit down and talk to anybody. The animal we
dealt the most with was…We’ve all talked about it, so you probably
already heard about Toothy the alpaca, who had an underbite? You
didn’t hear about Toothy?

[The
journalists all respond with No.]

Well, he was our
favorite! He has this huge underbite, and he was really
unattractive. And I think we made the trainers mad because we called
him Toothy and that’s not his name. But the little boys got really
into Toothy as like a mythical figure, even though he was right
there. But they’d be like, “Do you think Toothy knows we’re
rolling? Do you think Toothy knows we’re home?” [Laughing] And
like we’d be at dinner, and they’d like, “What do you think
Toothy’s eating for dinner?” So he was the one that somehow,
became of his unusual appearance, struck gold in our hearts.
[Laughing] We loved Toothy!

How was it
doing the action sequences and have you worked with animals before?

It was totally
new. I’ve been on a show where I walk and talk until the cows come
home and then suddenly we’re doing it, again a lot of it was real
enough that it wasn’t like reacting to nothing. It was more that
when I see the movie there are thousands of animals. When I did the
movie, there were five. When I see the movie, there’s a huge amount
of water. When I did the movie, there was a hose, but there was
enough that you weren’t just creating something out of nothing, but
it was all new to me.

You said you have another project in a month, can you talk about working
on these other projects?

Well
this movie I’m doing right now is called “Laws of Motion.”
It’s an independent film that the playwright Craig Lucas is
directing and Hilary Swank is a producer on it and has a supporting
part in it just to lend her name to it. And that’s really cool
actually and inspiring to see an actress who has a company who is
helping get stuff made because she believes in it. It’s the story of
a dysfunctional family and Matthew Perry is my husband and we have
sort of a quiet marriage that is in trouble, and his brother and
sister come to stay with us to disastrous results.

And
it’s just kind of a dark comedy, but it’s a very conservative,
preppy shut down character who is just trying to be nice to these
people who she thinks are freaks. And so that’s a cool kind of
different place to be. And then the next thing is I’m doing a wife
world tour. I don’t know if you could tell. I’m playing Greg
Kinnear’s wife in a movie about the man who invented the
intermittent windshield wiper and it’s based on a true story. It’s a
really great story because he felt that his patent was stolen by the
car companies and he in real life spent his life not necessarily
fighting for money, which he ended up getting quite a bit of, but
fighting for the rights of inventors. And he’s a real figure among
inventors as someone who really stood up for their rights and it’s
like an amazing part for Greg. And in that one I have five kids.

Who’s
directing it?

Mark
Abraham. He’s a big producer. He just produced “Children of
Men” among many other things and Dante Spinotti is shooting it. I
don’t know that that movie has a title. The working title is ‘Flash
of Genius.’

It
sounds like these are great projects.

Yeah.

Do
you find that people really know you from “Gilmore Girls” and
that your work on the series got you these film roles?

I
don’t know. I really don’t know. What a lot of directors like still
is “Bad Santa.” And I had a small part in that weird movie,
but…

A
great line…

A
great line that my father still is like, “ah.” But I’m not
really sure. I think this movie even though it wasn’t out yet
helped. And I do think the reputation of the show, of course, has
been a huge help and I’m just glad that the projects don’t resemble
each other very much, either in tone or I mean they’re adjoined by
being somebody’s wife but at this age that’s what you’re…there are
stories about relationships and that’s the kind of movie I like
anyway. So I feel really lucky. I seriously thought I was going to
be planting like an herb garden and be sitting at this junket like,
you guys, at three o’clock in the afternoon “Judge Judy”
comes on and she is so great. So I’m happy to be just kind of
floating around doing stuff; though “Judge Judy” is great.

Can you talk about working with Morgan Freeman?

I
loved that scene. And that was the scene in the movie that really
struck me as kind of a new way to say something really simple. And I
just loved the message of that scene, which is just because you
believe in something and ask for help doesn’t mean you get it handed
to you. It’s still your job as a person to figure things out for
yourself. And he’s really, he’s an impressive person to be around so
you have no problem, because that was a tricky scene in that I’m
like “Hi, can I get some more fries or whatever?” And he’s
like, “Are you all right?” And then I just thought who would
you open up to in this circumstance? But with him it’s actually very
easy. He is, I have found with the best people that I have worked
with that it’s the simplest work in a way because you’re just
connected and it all feels as truthful as it possibly can and so you
just want to keep doing it to try different things or something. But
he’s just really cool.

He
likes to mess with us, does he mess with you too?

Yeah.
I forget what he said to me, but I had been warned. And so he sassed
me and I kind of sassed him back and he was like, he was kind of
like, “This one can stay.” And I was like “Cool. I got
him.” But I was like shaking, shaking, shaking. Because you know
you don’t want to be sassy to someone you respect unless you know
that’s the only way that they will respect you. He’s funny. He’s
just funny and he’s really comfortable in his skin so he’s not, he
just likes to play around.

Now that you are going to be doing more movies, is there a pet
project that you’d like to do or a character that you’re dying
to play?

No.
Now that I’m doing more movies, what I really want to do is a
musical. But no. I’m still just kind of riding this wave. I haven’t
had time. I had like two weeks off the show and I haven’t had time
to really think about — even in terms of the TV show — what I
would like to do next. So that will take a little time I think.

A
musical?

Yeah.
A musical would great.

You’re done with television?

No.
I love television. I would go back for sure. But again it’s like not
until I know because let’s face it, the next thing will be a
disaster. It’ll last three episodes and that’s just the odds. That’s
just what happens.

And
there’s the reunion movie of the “Gilmore Girls”.

And
there’s the reunion movie of the “Gilmore Girls.” Yeah.

What
were your emotions when the show ended?

You know it was
really mixed because I felt that the show was telling us it was
over. I mean from the beginning of this year having nothing to do
with David Rosenthal who took it over, I felt then it’s really, I
don’t know what else there is to do here. And we all were feeling
restless. But also you feel so attached. It’s like a project like
that becomes a person. You want to leave the person in the right
place or something. And so it was really a struggle, and I think we
felt like, to do that show just cost a certain amount of time and
dedication. It never got easier.

You know usually
in years five, six, seven on a show like that you get into a
routine. The days become normal. And that never really happened
there. It’s the nature of how much language, of just the big long
scenes, the long shots and the fact that it was really mainly the
two of us. So we discussed all kinds of different options for is
there a way to do this but let us have a more regular kind of work
day and they tried and we tried and at the end of the day there
wasn’t a way to do it any differently and I think they felt it was
going to cost them a whole lot to try to renegotiate with everybody.
So it felt right. It felt like the right thing. And all those
discussions and kind of angst about it also felt right because it
should, it was one of the best jobs I ever had and so of course it
was hard. It was hard to leave. But then it was done I thought,
“Oh, all right.”

Let me know
what you think. Send questions
or comments to [email protected].