Why The Cast Of Gilmore Girls Had Difficulty Adjusting To The New Stars Hollow

The Gilmore Girls revival is in the middle of shooting the four 90-minute episodes that will be available on Netflix later this year. While most of the cast is coming back and most of the settings on the series have stayed the same, there’s one thing the cast of Gilmore Girls has had to adjust to: the set. Recently, Scott Patterson, who played Luke on the original series and will be reprising the role in the revival, revealed why it took some time to get used to the new Stars Hollow. He wasn’t the only person who was weirded out by the set, either. 

When I walked in the diner the first time, everything felt better. The diner was nicer. The flooring was nicer. It felt a little bigger.

Luke’s Diner in Stars Hollow has gone through some changes over the years. At one point, Lorelei Gilmore helped Luke to paint and spruce things up in the diner when it was starting to look a little dingy. But the changes Scott Patterson described to EW weren’t simply aesthetic changes. Things might actually be a little bit bigger and nicer, considering much of the Gilmore Girls set had to be reworked and rebuilt. (Most sets are torn down after a show finishes out its run and must be rebuilt for any revival that comes together. Such was the case for the Fuller House home, too.) We might also want to consider that it has been nearly a decade since Gilmore Girls was originally on the air. Patterson might simply have trouble remembering exactly what the diner was like the first time around. 

It’s not just Stars Hollow locations that feel a little different, either. Other series regular Kelly Bishop, who is set to return as Emily Gilmore, also says the set was changed in ways that were difficult to adjust to. 

I think our whole house is slightly bigger. I was in the dining room and it’s bigger. Because when you used to go by the dining room table there was the credenza by the side and it was a bit of a squeeze and there’s no squeeze now.

Recreating sets just from images and footage from the original series is no easy task. In some cases, the new set sounds a lot better. Scott Patterson, for instance, called it "nicer" and Kelly Bishop seemed pleased as punch to not be bumping around the highfalutin house set her character occupies. Still, any changes definitely take time to get used to, and if anyone is going to notice a set that feels a little different, it's going to be the people who were a major part of the show's original run. 

You can try to spot the changes to the set for yourself when Gilmore Girls premieres on Netflix later this year. If you're itching to see Stars Hollow again, you can also check out the images the subscription streaming service released earlier this week. In addition, here's everything that we know about the upcoming series.  

Jessica Rawden
Managing Editor

Jessica Rawden is Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. She’s been kicking out news stories since 2007 and joined the full-time staff in 2014. She oversees news content, hiring and training for the site, and her areas of expertise include theme parks, rom-coms, Hallmark (particularly Christmas movie season), reality TV, celebrity interviews and primetime. She loves a good animated movie. Jessica has a Masters in Library Science degree from Indiana University, and used to be found behind a reference desk most definitely not shushing people. She now uses those skills in researching and tracking down information in very different ways.