(2005) Bledel Charts New Territory
(Sunday, May 29 12:04 AM)
By Jay Bobbin
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Alexis Bledel still enjoys being a girl, or more to the television point, one of the "Gilmore Girls."
About to appear on movie screens in "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," the young actress has just finished her fifth season on The WB's comedy-drama about a close mother-daughter relationship. Besides continuing in summer repeats in its traditional Tuesday slot, the series is repeating earlier episodes virtually every day on ABC Family. The first three seasons are also available on DVD.
Those chart the growth of wiser-than-her-years Rory Gilmore (Bledel), who keeps pace mentally and verbally with her single mother, Lorelai (Lauren Graham), but is at an emotional crossroads as the show heads toward its sixth year.
In the season finale that aired two weeks ago, the normally driven Rory was reassessing virtually all the plans she had made for herself. To a degree, her decisions involved her current beau -- privileged Logan Huntzberger (Matt Czuchry) -- and his rather picky family, but her ultraconservative grandparents (Edward Herrmann, Kelly Bishop) also factored in. A result of it all: one very panicked Lorelai.
"Rory has been on a very specific path for most of her young life," Bledel, 23, reasons, "so last season was the year that sort of opened her eyes to the fact that there are so many other things. She realized how competitive the field she was trying to get into is, and how slim her chances actually were, and how hard she'd have to work ... when she already was working hard. We saw more about her than her academic goals, and it was fun to see where it would go."
Executive producer Amy Sherman-Palladino determined, according to Bledel, that viewers had "never really seen [Rory] mess up too much. She was almost annoyingly perfect. You just never saw her do anything normal teenagers do, and Amy said when Rory messes up, it's big. That's like her affair, if you can call it that, with Dean (Rory's ex-boyfriend, with whom she became intimate while he was separated from his wife). I certainly don't want to judge Rory, but it was an interesting surprise when I got that script."
Sending Rory to Yale could have altered the show's premise by separating her from Lorelai, but frequent phone calls and visits home kept the relatives united. "I think it's been done as smoothly as possible," Bledel says. "For a while, it seemed like they were on the phone a lot, but they're so important to each other, they always go back to each other at the end of the day with whatever they've experienced."
Bledel moonlighted by playing a young prostitute in the recent highly stylized movie "Sin City," for which she worked in front of a blank "green screen" for directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller.
"It was unlike anything I'd ever done or seen," she reflects. "It's stunning visually, really amazing to watch. Making it was challenging but kind of fun at the same time. You basically have only your costume and the other actors to help get you into character. Working with two directors was a great experience; they were harmonious as a team, and you got double the input."
Last summer was busy for Bledel, since "Sin City" was filmed at the same time as "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," based on the Ann Brashares novel and opening nationwide Wednesday, June 1. Among those playing her best friends in the new film is Amber Tamblyn ("Joan of Arcadia"), and Bledel says "it was fun working with people my own age or close to it. We just had a blast. The director (Ken Kwapis) would be like, 'OK, girls, it's time to shoot. Girls? Hello?'"
"Gilmore Girls" frequently places Bledel opposite older actors, and she says, "I love working with people I can learn a lot from, but it's a whole new experience to co-star with people my age.
You're all on the same page in a lot of ways. Since Amber also has done a series, it was cool because we could commiserate about the long hours. That's something nobody wants to hear you complain about, but when you know someone else has been going through the same thing, you can at least complain to each other."
Most movie scripts don't demand the rapid-fire dialogue Sherman-Palladino built into "Gilmore Girls" from the start. "It's hard," says Bledel, who adds that when she gives voice to a film script, "People are like, 'Slow down. Take your time.' I'm not used to that luxury, and it's wonderful. There are so many more possibilities, and you can just slow your whole performance down and see what you can find. [Doing a 'Gilmore' scene over], it's like resetting all the buttons and basically starting from scratch."
When her lengthy stint as Rory is finally finished, Bledel admits she'd have to think long and hard about doing another series after playing someone so tailored to her.
"It's been so intense," she says. "I'd hope to work on things with shorter commitments and just ease my way through. I've actually started to give a lot of thought to when the show ends, because it's been life-changing in a way. By its nature, it's all-consuming, so a lot of my life has been built around this schedule for the last five years. It's exciting to think about the future, though."
http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve_main/1,1002,271952991,00.html
Submitted by Trisha
By Jay Bobbin
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Alexis Bledel still enjoys being a girl, or more to the television point, one of the "Gilmore Girls."
About to appear on movie screens in "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," the young actress has just finished her fifth season on The WB's comedy-drama about a close mother-daughter relationship. Besides continuing in summer repeats in its traditional Tuesday slot, the series is repeating earlier episodes virtually every day on ABC Family. The first three seasons are also available on DVD.
Those chart the growth of wiser-than-her-years Rory Gilmore (Bledel), who keeps pace mentally and verbally with her single mother, Lorelai (Lauren Graham), but is at an emotional crossroads as the show heads toward its sixth year.
In the season finale that aired two weeks ago, the normally driven Rory was reassessing virtually all the plans she had made for herself. To a degree, her decisions involved her current beau -- privileged Logan Huntzberger (Matt Czuchry) -- and his rather picky family, but her ultraconservative grandparents (Edward Herrmann, Kelly Bishop) also factored in. A result of it all: one very panicked Lorelai.
"Rory has been on a very specific path for most of her young life," Bledel, 23, reasons, "so last season was the year that sort of opened her eyes to the fact that there are so many other things. She realized how competitive the field she was trying to get into is, and how slim her chances actually were, and how hard she'd have to work ... when she already was working hard. We saw more about her than her academic goals, and it was fun to see where it would go."
Executive producer Amy Sherman-Palladino determined, according to Bledel, that viewers had "never really seen [Rory] mess up too much. She was almost annoyingly perfect. You just never saw her do anything normal teenagers do, and Amy said when Rory messes up, it's big. That's like her affair, if you can call it that, with Dean (Rory's ex-boyfriend, with whom she became intimate while he was separated from his wife). I certainly don't want to judge Rory, but it was an interesting surprise when I got that script."
Sending Rory to Yale could have altered the show's premise by separating her from Lorelai, but frequent phone calls and visits home kept the relatives united. "I think it's been done as smoothly as possible," Bledel says. "For a while, it seemed like they were on the phone a lot, but they're so important to each other, they always go back to each other at the end of the day with whatever they've experienced."
Bledel moonlighted by playing a young prostitute in the recent highly stylized movie "Sin City," for which she worked in front of a blank "green screen" for directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller.
"It was unlike anything I'd ever done or seen," she reflects. "It's stunning visually, really amazing to watch. Making it was challenging but kind of fun at the same time. You basically have only your costume and the other actors to help get you into character. Working with two directors was a great experience; they were harmonious as a team, and you got double the input."
Last summer was busy for Bledel, since "Sin City" was filmed at the same time as "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," based on the Ann Brashares novel and opening nationwide Wednesday, June 1. Among those playing her best friends in the new film is Amber Tamblyn ("Joan of Arcadia"), and Bledel says "it was fun working with people my own age or close to it. We just had a blast. The director (Ken Kwapis) would be like, 'OK, girls, it's time to shoot. Girls? Hello?'"
"Gilmore Girls" frequently places Bledel opposite older actors, and she says, "I love working with people I can learn a lot from, but it's a whole new experience to co-star with people my age.
You're all on the same page in a lot of ways. Since Amber also has done a series, it was cool because we could commiserate about the long hours. That's something nobody wants to hear you complain about, but when you know someone else has been going through the same thing, you can at least complain to each other."
Most movie scripts don't demand the rapid-fire dialogue Sherman-Palladino built into "Gilmore Girls" from the start. "It's hard," says Bledel, who adds that when she gives voice to a film script, "People are like, 'Slow down. Take your time.' I'm not used to that luxury, and it's wonderful. There are so many more possibilities, and you can just slow your whole performance down and see what you can find. [Doing a 'Gilmore' scene over], it's like resetting all the buttons and basically starting from scratch."
When her lengthy stint as Rory is finally finished, Bledel admits she'd have to think long and hard about doing another series after playing someone so tailored to her.
"It's been so intense," she says. "I'd hope to work on things with shorter commitments and just ease my way through. I've actually started to give a lot of thought to when the show ends, because it's been life-changing in a way. By its nature, it's all-consuming, so a lot of my life has been built around this schedule for the last five years. It's exciting to think about the future, though."
http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve_main/1,1002,271952991,00.html
Submitted by Trisha
posted by MissCoffee @ 1:25 p.m.
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