‘Gilmore Girls’: the series Anya Taylor-Joy became obsessed with
Now happy to embrace her status as one of Hollywood’s fastest-rising young stars, things could have turned out very differently for Anya Taylor-Joy if she’d followed her instincts and walked away on the cusp of making her professional breakthrough.
Both the actor and first-time director Robert Eggers were singled out as having bright futures in store when their respective debut, The Witch, arrived in 2015. However, Taylor-Joy was left so upset by her own performance that she didn’t think she’d ever be able to find any meaningful work ever again.
She even considered quitting acting altogether, but it wasn’t long before she realised what everybody else had realised when they first watched the atmospheric folk horror. She was a star in the making, one with bigger and brighter things lying in their future.
Of course, these days, Taylor-Joy is the Golden Globe-winning star of The Queen’s Gambit, the face of a blockbuster franchise, having replaced Charlize Theron in the action-packed prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Story. She is one of the most in-demand 20-somethings in the business and has already worked with George Miller, Edgar Wright, David O. Russell, and Denis Villeneuve.
Born in Miami to an Argentinian father of British descent and a Zambian-born mother with English and Spanish parents of her own, Taylor-Joy’s multicultural and multilingual upbringing has opened her eyes to all types of film and television content since her younger days. Still, when she was tasked to name her five favourite movies in conversation with Rotten Tomatoes, she pulled a fast one by including a TV show.
Not just any TV show, though, but a beloved small-screen favourite that endures as a lot of people’s go-to comfort show of choice. Taylor-Joy is quite clearly in the demographic of viewers who always end up turning to Gilmore Girls whenever they’re in need of a pick-me-up.
“My first time watching the series, though, I remember my elder sister being obsessed with it,” she explained. “Honestly, it feels very calming and self-loving to listen to a mother and daughter duo discuss coffee and the intricacies of Billy Idol’s pout on his album cover. Simpler times.”
Across seven seasons and more than 150 episodes, the misadventures and learning experiences of Lauren Graham’s Lorelai Gilmore and Alexis Bledel’s daughter Rory constantly found themselves became like a warm hug for its devoted fanbase. They’ve all played a huge part in keeping Gilmore Girls at the forefront of the pop culture consciousness almost 20 years after its initial run came to an end.
Netflix helped introduce the series to a brand new generation, too, with the revival happening on the back of a second wind that captured plenty more people than just Taylor-Joy first time around.
