Where the Gilmore Girls lead, Mark Consuelos will follow — and he’s proud of it.
“You know what I discovered in August? It was a rainy day and my nieces were visiting and I didn’t get control of the [TV] remote control and they’re 16 and 17 years old … and they were watching Gilmore Girls,” Consuelos, 52, said during the Thursday, November 30, episode of Live With Kelly and Mark in the middle of an interview with Melissa McCarthy. “I had never seen it.”
While Consuelos was initially “very upset” that he’d have to watch the seven-season series, he soon became “hooked.”
“But, by the third episode, I was in,” he gushed, with wife Kelly Ripa claiming that Consuelos even cried in parts. He added, “I think about Lorelai all the time. I think about [Sookie’s] produce, you’re very particular about your produce!”
Gilmore Girls, helmed by Amy Sherman-Palladino and husband Daniel Palladino, originally aired between 2000 and 2007 on The WB (and The CW for its final season). The series followed single mom Lorelai (Lauren Graham) as she raised teenage daughter Rory (Alexis Bledel) in their small town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut. McCarthy, 53, costarred as Lorelai’s best friend and business partner, Sookie St. James. (Sookie was the chef at the pair’s co-owned inn, often getting into spats with produce supplier and eventual husband Jackson Belleville over vegetable quality.)
Gilmore Girls ultimately returned for a limited A Year in the Life revival in November 2016, where all of the major cast members reunited for the Netflix special. After the four-episode reboot dropped on the streaming platform, many fans still enjoy rewatching the show. For Consuelos’ part, he started a group chat with his nieces to discuss their favorite moments from Gilmore Girls.
“He was on a text chain with my nieces now called, ‘The Gilmore Girlers,’” Ripa, 53, added, noting that the chat was “just the three of them.” Consuelos replied that the show “just catches you.”
McCarthy, there to promote new Peacock movie Genie, proclaimed that she “loved” that the show still remains so beloved among fans like Consuelos.
“That show … was the first time I had a regular job and it was literally, I think I said, By the time I turn 30, I was starting to do production — and I liked that quite a bit — and I liked both sides of [the industry]. I thought, ‘If I don’t have a job by the time I’m 30, I’m going to go the way of production because it’s just not going to happen,’” she recalled. “I [couldn’t] keep calling my mom and dad at 30 to be like, ‘I’m $24 short on my electric bill’ and then like two weeks before my 30th birthday, I got Gilmore. And it was a lifesaver.”
McCarthy added: “I feel like people have ownership of that show, which I think makes it fun because it was sweet to see a mother and daughter be such good friends instead of [how most shows] always show the combative side.”
