Hey girl, you’ll never guess who *almost* appeared opposite Rory on “Gilmore Girls”

Looking back on the prior seven seasons of Gilmore Girls, many different faces have come and gone through Stars Hollow. Some were already familiar at the time, while others were brand new to our television screens…and some never actually made it through the door of Luke’s Diner. While we love to talk the, “OMG, can you believe they were on Gilmore Girls way back when?” sometimes it’s even more exciting to talk about the, “OMG, can you believe they were *almost* on Gilmore Girls??”

You think you might know everything about the show, but you probably don’t know this: At one point, Ryan Gosling auditioned for a role on the show, and the casting team didn’t care for him!

Man, the 2000s were crazy times.

At the Gilmore Girls Fan Festival in IRL Stars Hollow, Connecticut (Washington Depot, Connecticut), long-time casting directors Mara Casey and Jami Rudofsky touched on “the one who got away,” and the one who got away happened to be Ryan “Hey Girl” Gosling.

Before Gilmore Girls, Rudofsky was working on another “pretty teen drama,” where she saw young Ryan audition. According to Rudofsky, he came into the audition late, and he was blonde, and he had an attitude — but Rudofsky later realized that he was trying to ~stay in character~. Thankfully for Ryan, his audition stuck in her memory, because it was “one of the most amazing auditions, to this day, I’ve ever seen.”

So, when it came time to cast “a football character” (a part so small in the scheme of Gilmore Girls, neither Rudofsky nor Casey can even remember the actual character), Gosling came in and…

"I was so proud of myself, I was like 'I found a star you guys!' And he auditioned, and it kinda fell flat. And both [showrunner] Amy [Sherman-Palladino] and Mara were like, 'Really, Jami?'"

Really. Ryan Gosling auditioned for some “football character” on Gilmore Girls, and didn’t get it. But now stop for a second and think about the arguments we’d be having right now if we suddenly had to fight between Team Jess or TEAM RYAN? Oh gosh, maybe it’s a good thing his audition fell flat (sorry, Ryan. We still love you lots).