Was the Young Lorelai a Good Fit?
November 14, 2009 by Arieanna
In ‘Dear Emily and Richard‘, we are given a series of flashback scenes that star Chelsea Brummet as Young Lorelai. I’ve always thought the casting was pretty good, at least visually. Perhaps Chelsea wasn’t as naturally spunky as Lauren Graham, but they look pretty similar, don’t you think?
You can learn more about Chelsea Brummet at her website or imdb profile.
Here are all the ‘Young Lorelai’ scenes from this episode:
Watch this episode of Gilmore Girls on TheWB.com here.
Images: TheWB.com & Newscom
they look pretty similar except for the eye color. which i think with alexis and lauren their eyes are so noticable that young lorelai was almost unrealistic with brown eyes..
You can tell they tried to make her eyes look blue in the episode but you could still tell they weren’t.
Absolutely not. I never liked her. She played Lor horribly, and barely looked like her. They put those blueish purple contacts on her, but they looked horrible. Mostly, her acting was awful. I did not buy that she was Lor as a teen at all.
There was a cut scene on the DVD box set that I saw recently. It was that actress in a maid’s outfit with a little girl, who was supposed to be Rory. They were walking through the Independence Inn one last time after it closed. I am so glad they cut that scene, because she was so not Lor in that clip.
In an earlier episode, when Rory is coming out, she finds a picture of younger Loralai and its a picture they took of Lauren and made her look younger. The picture looks exactly like Loralai because it is. So I think it was a bad idea to do the flash backs with another actress. They probably shouldn’t have done the flashbacks at all. Then again, i couldn’t come up with anything better
I’m not sure anyone could have pulled it off because Lauren is such an amazing actress and whoever was cast in that role had some big shoes to fill! Although they do look similar with the dark hair, the girl who played young Lorelai is a lot shorter than Lauren and they don’t even have the same eye color.
I don’t like when shows do flashbacks and have other actors play a younger version of the characters. They should have just done what the writers on Friends did in “The One With the Prom Video” and had Lauren play the younger version of Lorelai. It’s a great episode because we get to see what it was like when Lorelai was a teen and actually were able to see the events that led up to her leaving home, but it almost ruins it for me to see another actor playing a character that I have such great affection for!!
I thiknk Chelsea was good, except for the eye color, that were obviously contacts.
But the actor that was suposed to be Chris wasn’t that convincing, he doesn’t resemble David Sutcliffe. And having Lauren play a sixteen year old would have been worse.
I like the scenes as themselves and think they are revealing, especially as to how Lorelai and Christopher’s lives changed, what Lorelai saw in Christopher that would make her think his idea of marriage was not workable, and why her saying no the way she did would have such an impact on him.
But I agree with Martin that she looked more like Lorelai than the actor who plays young Christopher, and with the others who note Lauren Graham’s speaking style. It’s very unique, and if you’ve seen the show in other languages, you hear both good and bad voices for the language track speaking in her style.
My cousin does animation where often an actor’s voice can be made to sound young by manipulation – they probably should have had Lauren Graham and David Sutcliffe do the voice-overs and manipulate the sound, but maybe it would be harder to do with actors, especially Lorelai, as Lauren Graham makes her so unique.
I probably have a little more fondness for the “young” Lorelai/Chris actors than most since their presence at the Gilmore’s just prior to their offscreen “lets make a Rory moment” was the first clip from GG that I ever saw. That was immediately followed by Lorelai looking for Rory at Sherry’s hospital so when I recognized Lauren [from her guest arc on News Radio] I knew I had tripped over GG purely by accident. After getting in synch with the pilot episode a few weeks later I have enjoyed watching ever since.
I actually liked young Lorelai’s somewhat stilted voice as it indicated a strong and independent but not completely confident person who would eventually grow into the verbally confident and competent Lorelai of the entire series. The guy who played Chris though was a complete throw-away.
sorry to say i really didnt like this ep – all the history just seemed pointless to me because i didnt buy either actor as the young lorelai or christopher, felt like i was just watching some other show! its a shame because it would have been nice to see the history if it felt real. nothing against the actors, they just looked way too different and had no chemistry. not sure if it would have been any better using the adult actors – friends could get away with it to an extent because it was a sitcom. ive never seen flashbacks done particularly successfully in dramas, maybe its just my bias tho!
Have not seen the episode in awhile but what sticks out for me is her body language. Confident even cocky. If I remember right she just throws her stuff around when entering the house.
Like older Lorelai she likes her booze. I said before that I do not like it when she drinks. She makes mistakes and sleeps with Christopher.
Although this time there is Rory to be thankful for.
Rory(Alexis) does more talking with her eyes than anybody.
I think that the young Lorelai was generally a fairly good fit. I was a little saddened to see what a brat she was though (by flinging her jersey on the floor and announcing it with the sole intention of infuriating her mother).
She was a lot better than Christopher though! I don’t think that Loralai would have dated him in a million years
I LOVED her as young Lorelai! I would have loved to see more of her, I have always wished they put the deleted scenes from the Season 3 finale in with her just to see this actress as Lorelai again.
healthy and beautifull
I think Lorelai is a toned down version of her former self before Rory. So this younger Lorelai should have been spunkier and full of more pop culture references. And the blue eyes, come on people, the blue eyes are it, blue eyes= Gilmore Girl. I dont think the actress did a good job playing Lore, but I also think the writing could have used a tweek.