The actress appeared Saturday at TCA to promote her upcoming Hulu drama ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’
Alexis Bledel has already lined up her first post-Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life gig, but questions about more episodes of the revival could not escape her at the Television Critics Association winter press tour.
Appearing Saturday on a panel to discuss her upcoming Hulu drama The Handmaid’s Tale, Bledel was asked about the future of the beloved drama.
“We want to tell a great story,” Bledel said when asked by reporters following the panel. “[A Year in the Life] came together so naturally in a way. We had the fan reunion in Austin and we picked up momentum from there and it came together so quickly and it really seemed like the right thing. I think most of us are just wanting to tell a good story and I think that came together in A Year in the Life. The only thing I can say about a future installment of the show is it would be about the story and certainly the timing.”
However, Bledel stressed that there have been no talks about more episodes. “I haven’t heard anything,” she said. “It hasn’t been a conversation as of yet.”
As diehard fans already well know – spoiler alert – the four-part revival ends with Bledel’s Rory telling her shocked mother Lorelai (Lauren Graham) that she’s pregnant. Although those words were long known to be how series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino intended to end the original series when it aired on The WB in the early aughts, the uncertainty of who the father is and how Rory will handle motherhood has left the door open for potential future episodes.
When asked, Bledel said she had no preference or idea about who the father is. “It all lives in Amy’s imagination,” she said. “She has a very clear vision and always has, and we haven’t had input as to the story or the characters on that show very much. On Year in the Life, we did a little bit more than the original run of the show, but it really is all Amy.”
Questions about future installments come a little more than a month after Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life launched around the world on Netflix. When asked about the potential for more, Sherman-Palladino told THR there had not been any talks about returning to the world of Stars Hollow (yet).
“We pitched this as close-ended. We pitched it as: ‘This is the year in the life. This is the way it was ending,'” Sherman-Palladino told THR in December after the revival had been released. “Netflix and Warner Bros., we all went into this sort of saying that this was it. So there really haven’t been any more discussions about: Is there going to be anything else? I don’t know.”
Other series regulars have already expressed interest. Days after the revival’s release, Kelly Bishop told THR she would “always jump at the chance” to work with Sherman-Palladino. “I’ll work with Amy anytime she wants to write something for me,” Bishop said.
Scott Patterson was even more bullish about the potential for more episodes. “It’d be nice to do it every year. Maybe every two years, do a three-month thing, do four more chapters,” Patterson told THR. “It was really rewarding and people got a sense that, if this was going to be the last thing, that we now have some closure.”
It seems safe to assume that Netflix would be open to more new installments since the revival performed so strongly straight out of the gate. When it was released the day after Thanksgiving amidst much fanfare, nearly six million adults 18-49 watched the premiere in the live-plus-three-day window, and 83 percent of those viewers went on to watch all four 90-minute chapters.
In the meantime, Bledel can be seen in The Handmaid’s Tale which launches April 26 on Hulu.
