Lauren Graham says Netflix's 'Gilmore Girls' revival was 'joyous'

BEVERLY HILLS — It's been nine years since Gilmore Girls ended its run on WB and CW, but it wasn't difficult for cast members to dive back into their roles for Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, which premieres Nov. 25 on Netflix.

"It was easy. It was joyous.It was fun. It was exhilarating. It was the old show. There was no sense of having to resuscitate something," Lauren Graham, who plays Lorelai, said Wednesday at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. "It was meant to continue."

A clip of the first two minutes of Gilmore's return, played before a panel that featured Graham, co-stars Alexis Bledel and Scott Patterson and executive producers Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, opens in a snowy setting: Lorelai sips coffee at the Stars Hollow gazebo as Rory (Bledel) arrives, fresh off a seven-hour plane trip from London, where she works. And the famed snappy dialogue begins.

The revival, consisting of four 90-minute "chapters" set in different seasons of a single year, represent a Gilmore return for Sherman-Palladino and Palladino, who were not with the show during its seventh and final season on CW. Netflix's structure, which allows for fewer, longer episodes with no commercials, offered an intriguing opportunity.

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"When Netflix popped up and decided to storm the world and take it over overnight, we thought, 'What a great opportunity to delve into a different form, to tell stories in a different way, to see characters we love and get back into a room with these characters and go at it in a completely different way,' " Sherman-Palladino said.

The episodes bring back most of the stars from the original, and acknowledges the death of Lorelai's father, Richard, who was played by the late Edward Herrmann. The tumult over whether Melissa McCarthy, now a major film star, would return was overwrought, Sherman-Palladino said. It was a matter of figuring out scheduling for McCarthy, who had Ghostbusters obligations.

"We love her. We always knew we were going to figure it out. (But) it took on a life of its own," she said, blaming an age in which conflict is often the focus.

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Sherman-Palladino said she favored releasing the episodes individually in order to give viewers a chance to savor them, but that won't happen. That raises the possibility that some viewer will click to the end, find out the famed final four words Sherman-Palladino has always planned for the series' conclusion and share them on social media. (When asked if these four episodes are the definitive end, Sherman-Palladino didn't offer a direct answer.)

Instead, she advises fans to enjoy the ride. The words "will mean a lot more if you've taken the journey. They'll mean a lot less if you’ve flipped to the last page," she said. "It’s a fun trip. It's worth it."