She doesn’t smell snow! Melissa McCarthy starred on Gilmore Girls for seven seasons — but filming the beloved show wasn’t always an easy feat.
“Sometimes we were, like, crammed into small things with coats on but it was actually like 112 degrees in Burbank, [California]. And we were like, ‘Brrr, Connecticut!’” McCarthy, 52, told Entertainment Weekly in an interview published on Monday, June 12. “And I was like, ‘Are we explaining why I have Malaria and why I’m in a full flop sweat?’”
Gilmore Girls, which aired on The WB (and later The CW) from 2000 to 2007, followed mother-daughter duo Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) as they navigated life in their small quirky town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut. While the show was based up north, it filmed in sunny — and hot – California.
“When we did our first poster, someone passed out,” the Little Mermaid star continued. “Like, just [passed] out cold because we were all in coats and trying to look blustery and we were just sweating in weird places and [they were] like, ‘Look cold!’”
McCarthy, for her part, portrayed chef Sookie St. James — Lorelai’s best friend and business partner — on the multigenerational drama.
While McCarthy starred on all seven seasons of the original series, fans speculated that the Emmy winner might not make a return for the 2016 Netflix revival after claiming she hadn’t been asked to reprise her role.
“Thanks for the invite, but sadly no one asked me or Sookie to come back to Stars Hollow,” the Mike & Molly alum wrote via Twitter in February 2016 after a fan asked her to “come back” to Stars Hollow. “Wish them all the best!!”
Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, meanwhile, told TV Line earlier that month that she had reached out to McCarthy’s team — but hadn’t heard anything back.
“She’s really f–king busy. But the thing I have said [to her team] is, ‘Look, if Melissa is available and has an afternoon free, I’ll write her a scene,” the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel writer explained. “Melissa was one of us. If she has a spare moment to run over [to the set] — even if for just a cameo — we would be totally game,” she continued. “And if it’s a last-minute thing, I would write her in and we would figure it out. That’s the way we left it.”
Two months later, however, the Boss star announced that she would make an appearance somewhere in the four 90-minute episodes — and opened up to Us Weekly about the emotional experience of returning to set after so many years.
“I went back and visited about two weeks ago and saw the sets again and everybody on them and it just felt — oh, my God, I get so sentimental. It felt like the greatest idea in the world. It was just lovely. It was just lovely,” she gushed at the time. “There was the longest time when it was just not going to work out, schedule-wise, and then once we decided, like, ‘Is there any possible way?’ Something big fell out for me [and] something changed for them.”
While Sookie only made a brief appearance in the “Fall” episode of the revival — the final of the four installments — to make Lorelai and Luke’s (Scott Patterson) wedding cake, McCarthy gave an update on Monday about where she thinks her character would be today.
“She has like, 42 kids. I think they’re growing weed. I think her and [her husband] Jackson, [portrayed by Jackson Douglas] — she still cooks, but I think [they do] edibles,” she quipped to EW. “I think they run a very nice little mom-and-pop business with their 13 kids and she makes delicious edibles.”
