Despite Gilmore Girls’ continued popularity on streaming platforms like Netflix, show star Lauren Graham hasn’t seen many residual checks arrive in her mailbox.
“There really are no residuals on Netflix,” Graham, 58, said with a laugh on the Wednesday, March 18, episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!. “Sorry, but I’ve been paid in love.”
Graham starred as fast-talking single mother Lorelai Gilmore on The WB’s Gilmore Girls from 2000 to 2007. The seven-season dramedy chronicled Lorelai’s home life with her teenage daughter, Rory (Alexis Bledel), in the quirky small town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut. At the same time, Lorelai navigated her own estrangement from parents Emily and Richard (played by Kelly Bishop and Edward Hermann). Almost the entire cast, except for the late Hermann, later reunited for a 2016 limited-episode revival on Netflix.
Residuals are the monetary stipends sent to show actors whenever a TV series airs in syndication in the years after production wrapped. After SAG-AFTRA went on strike amid a fight for fair streaming residuals in 2023, many stars have since shared the receipts of their checks, claiming that they only receive pennies per episode.
While Gilmore occasionally airs on cable channels, it’s also streaming via Netflix and Hulu.
“I will say [the enduring fandom] can be strange at times because, on one hand, people are starting to say, like, ‘You raised me,’ and I’m like, ‘I hope there were other adults involved,’” Graham said during a February appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “And then, on the other hand, people are like, ‘I just have the show on in the background. It puts my dog to sleep, We’re not even listening anymore. It’s just on, like, background music.’”
At the time, Graham gushed that playing Lorelai on Amy Sherman-Palladino’s network hit was “the best part I ever had.”
“I love doing it, and I think it was a really wonderful [experience],” the Z Suite star gushed. “It’s just that thing where it was the perfect material at the perfect time with the perfect writer — and it just means so much to me.”
While Graham would always return home to Stars Hollow for another batch of episodes, she has complicated feelings about continuing the story.
“How do you honor those people who have kept [Gilmore Girls] alive?” Graham asked former Parenthood costar Dax Shepard on the March 10 episode of his “Armchair Expert” podcast. “Is it giving them more? Is it doing what Reese Witherspoon is doing with Legally Blonde, Elle the prequel? Is this a Captain Marvel multiverse where you wanna follow whoever? Or do you try to go back?”
She added, “I always say — it’s not me trying to get out of the question — it is literally what I could picture given everyone’s lives and schedules is [a] Christmas movie. Because that’s what I think the Brits do so well with their beloved shows … You get the Christmas special. It’s not [multiple] episodes, but it’s seeing all your friends together again.”
