Juggling character development in an ensemble cast is a major undertaking. When it came to the hit WB showGilmore Girls, the focus was of course, onLauren Graham’s Lorelai Gilmore andAlexis Bledel’s Rory Gilmore. The mother-daughter dynamic was the main driving force of theAmy Sherman Palladino-created show, but there were also moments with Lorelai and Rory’s extended family that fans got to see grow and develop over the course of seven seasons. Lorelai had a complicated relationship with her parents after running away with a newborn Rory when she was just a teenager. Played byKelly BishopandEd Herrmann, Emily and Richard Gilmore re-entered Lorelai’s life when she needed money for Rory’s private school tuition.
Initially flat, stuck-up characters, Emily and Richard also grew tremendouslyacross seven seasons, along with their relationships with both Lorelai and Rory. When speaking with Collider’sTaylor Gatesat PaleyFest, Bishop talked about Emily’s character development, saying, “The vulnerability in Emily didn’t really come out overtly for a couple of years,butI always felt that there was a frontthat’s all about the status quo and the group that you move in.”
“She’s a Human Being”: Kelly Bishop Defends Emily’s Complicated Character in ‘Gilmore Girls’
InGilmore Girls, Lorelai had rejected an affluent upbringingfilled with narcissism and control in favor of raising Rory in an environment where her daughter could grow up to be whomever she wanted to be.That tension caused a lot of issues, particularly between Lorelai and Emily, who on more than one occasion had resigned herself to being the “corporate wife.” She and Richard got married, she had Lorelai, and she viewed being his wife and running their household as her full-time job until his death. Bishop explains to Collider that Emily did eventually get to show her heart, saying:
“Of course it’s sort of that thing of being stronger than the other people or ‘I’ll scare you before you scare me’ sort of thing. So when we actually started talking in some dialogue andwe started to realize that Emily really did have a heart down there someplace, it was really delightful and it made perfect sense to me. Of courseshe’s a human being.”
In the revival,Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, Emily is now a widow, trying to find herself separate from Richard. The show, it’d been established that Emily was a History major at Smith before she and Richard were married. In addition to continuing to repair the tumultuous relationship with her daughter,the revival allowed fans to see Emily apart from the obligations of the last 60 years of her life. Emily and Richard’s marriage was one of love — that wasn’t the obligation — but the societal obligation for her to marry someone of status and be a wife hung over her like a Damocles sword. In the revival, she was able to dig out that History degree and work at a whaling museum, finding peace in a third act of her life.
All episodes ofGilmore Girlsare available to watch on Netflix. Stay with Collider for the latest updates.
Gilmore Girls
