“It was all about the butt”
Scott Patterson recalls filming Gilmore Girls
Scott Patterson played Lorelai’s friend Luke in “Gilmore Girls” – here in the revival season “A New Year”.
© Saeed Adyani/Netflix
Scott Patterson looks back on the cult series “Gilmore Girls” – and a special day of shooting that he found “disturbing”.
Scott Patterson (63) was an integral part of the cult series “Gilmore Girls” about the mother-daughter team Lorelai (Lauren Graham, 55) and Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel, 40). In all seven seasons as well as the bonus edition “A New Year” on Netflix he embodied the character Luke, a restaurant owner and the later friend and partner of the main character Lorelai. In his podcast “I Am All In with Scott Patterson”, the actor is currently pursuing a remarkable project: He is watching – according to his own statements for the first time – the series that made him famous and shares thoughts and memories about individual “Gilmore Girls” -episodes.
The third-season episode “A Wild Night” left Patterson with horrible memories. “It’s disturbing and it’s disgusting” reveals the 63-year-old in retrospect. In the episode in question, the main character Lorelai and her best friend Sookie (Melissa McCarthy, 52) talk about Luke’s butt, which has a “nice shape”, as cook Sookie notes. The visibly annoyed Luke then urgently asks to end the conversation, whereupon Lorelai replies: “That was only flattering”.
Scott Patterson felt objectified in Gilmore Girls
“I didn’t feel comfortable doing it, and it made me angry,” the actor explains on the podcast. He felt “treated like an object” at the time, which was “never okay.” “Just because it was 2003 doesn’t mean that that it was okay,” Patterson said. For women, it’s “just as disgusting to objectify men as it is for men to objectify women, and it’s just as hurtful,” the actor adds on his podcast .
He repeatedly had to endure the dialogue about his butt that day because many shots of the scene were filmed. “It was all butt, butt, butt,” Patterson said. Even during the breaks in filming, the people on the set couldn’t have found another topic to talk about. Looking back, he describes that day of Gilmore Girls shooting as “the most disturbing time” he’s ever “spent on this set.” “I couldn’t wait for this day to be over,” says the actor.