“Gilmore Girls'” Lauren Graham refreshingly opens up about being typecast

It’s tough for any actors in Hollywood, but we can’t deny that actresses have traditionally been more typecast than actors. To emphasize this, Lauren Graham talked about typecasting with Anna Faris for Faris’ podcast Unqualified. First off, if you didn’t know about Faris’ podcast revolving around relationship advice, now is the time to get acquainted. And second, Graham’s words on typecasting will ring so very true for many female actors.

The conversation alone between Gilmore Girls and Parenthood actress Graham and Mom actress Faris is worth listening to in full, but the intro focuses on something that Graham wrote in her book, Talking As Fast As I Can: Typecasting. Graham said:

"You have your leading lady, you have a side clown, you have an elder. You have these sort of things that recur, and within that, there's the amount of space something takes up, and I've played a lot of characters who we call it 'real estate.'"

"If I'm in a kid's movie, I'm playing the kid's mom. And those tend to just fall into a certain sameness."

She also said how since she wasn’t really perceived as — or didn’t really relate to —  the “babe” character, she spent a lot of her early acting career playing the “friend” role.

"For so many years, I was the best friend, or the wacky best friend, and then I kind of graduated into moms."

Although that might sound like Graham was making disparaging comments about our beloved Lorelai Gilmore, she was quick to state that Lorelai did not fall into this generic “mom” category. She called Lorelai “a fantastic character and being a mom was just one piece of who she was.”

Well, duh, but of course ?.

Graham said this pattern of going from friend to mom has made her wonder what’s next. She said, “So in the book, I sort of was asking the question, ‘What’s next? Cranky grandma?’”

Hey, that wouldn’t so bad since Kelly Bishop made cranky grandma an art form as Emily Gilmore on Gilmore Girls.

While it is upsetting that even actresses as beloved as Graham face typecasting in their careers, we applaud her for being so open about it. Maybe the next generation of female actors will have it just a bit easier because of frank discussions like this one between Graham and Faris.