Gilmore Girls revival sets: The new Stars Hollow took some getting used to

When Stars Hollow was rebuilt for the Netflix revival of Gilmore Girls, the set-builders had to recreate sets from pictures of a show that had been off the air for nearly a decade.

During an on-set visit, EW got an exclusive first look at those recreated sets, and we can assure you: Everything from Luke’s Diner to the Stars Hollow gazebo to Rory’s bedroom looks authentic. But some things stuck out to the cast. “When I walked in the diner the first time, everything felt better. The diner was nicer. The flooring was nicer. It felt a little bigger,” says Scott Patterson, who plays Luke and spent a lot of the original show’s seven seasons in his eponymous eatery.

For Kelly Bishop, who plays matriarch Emily Gilmore, the Gilmore home was rebuilt with a few notable changes. “I think our whole house is slightly bigger,” she says with a laugh. “I was in the dining room and it’s bigger. Because when you used to go by the dining room table there was the credenza by the side and it was a bit of a squeeze and there’s no squeeze now,” Bishop adds. Then again, as she recalls, it’s not as if the Gilmore household ever remained the same season after season. “Our first year we didn’t have a terrace and we had a wall behind the bar. I don’t know how they got away with it. Certainly by the third year, maybe the second, there were French doors and a patio and a hallway with a staircase going up. We didn’t see Richard’s office for the first four years!”

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And it wasn’t just the sets that required getting used to. When the new hair team attempted to create an Emily Gilmore ‘do, Bishop recalls, “I said, ‘Her hair goes like this. This is a helmet. This does not move. There’s nothing natural about her hair.’”

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