'Gilmore Girls': Jared Padalecki, Milo Ventimiglia, others join cast

Actors including Milo Ventimiglia, Jared Padalecki, and Sutton Foster are reportedly starring in the new Netflix episodes. How is the TV world different than when 'Gilmore' went off the air in 2007?

More original cast members are reportedly returning for the new Netflix episodes of the 2000s TV show “Gilmore Girls.” 

Actors Milo Ventimiglia and Jared Padalecki, who portrayed Jess Mariano and Dean Forester, both love interests of main character Rory (Alexis Bledel), are both set to return. In addition, Broadway actress Sutton Foster, who starred on the ABC Family show “Bunheads,” which was created by “Gilmore” creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, is reportedly set to appear as well. Foster was not originally on “Gilmore.” 

It has also been reported that actor David Sutcliffe, who portrayed mother Lorelai (Lauren Graham)’s love interest and Rory’s father, will come back for the new episodes.

Other cast members already announced to be coming back to the show are Kelly Bishop, Scott Patterson, Keiko Agena, Liza Weil, Sean Gunn, and Matt Czuchry.

Netflix’s new take on the show will take the form of four episodes that will each be 90 minutes. 

“Gilmore” aired from 2000 to 2007 on the WB and then the CW. It centered on mother Lorelai and daughter Rory, following Rory's path from high school to college. It was well-reviewed by critics at the time.

Prior to Netflix announcing it would revive the show, the streaming service had hosted the old episodes of the series on its service. Hollywood Reporter writer Lacey Rose wrote that "the WBTV dramedy has been a strong performer for the service."

When “Gilmore” went off the air in 2007, the TV world was obviously a quite different place. Netflix was six years away from debuting its acclaimed series “House of Cards” and entities like Hulu were similarly far from launching their shows.

Cable networks like HBO were forces on the scene, with HBO then airing such shows as “The Wire,” “Entourage,” and “Big Love.” But networks like AMC and Showtime were still gathering steam, with AMC having debuted its acclaimed series “Mad Men” just that same year and Showtime just having begun to air the show “Weeds,” for example, a couple of years earlier.

While many aspects of TV have changed, Sherman-Palladino recently said in an interview that she’d prefer more of an old-fashioned release schedule for her upcoming project. This is not unheard of on an online platform – "The Mindy Project" on Hulu releases an episode a week, as did, for example, "Community" on Yahoo Screen.

“My preference would be [that episodes] would not be released at once, because I feel like there’s going to be anticipation, and I think the diehard fans would enjoy it more with a little separation,” she said in an interview with TVLine. “Because the last thing you want is for someone to jump to the last episode and [ruin] it for everybody – which I think would happen, quite frankly, in this day and age of binging. So my preference would be to release them at least a day apart. Let people get a little sunlight and go for a walk around the corner. We have not spoken to Netflix about it, so I don’t know what their thought process is yet. But we’re planning to throw it out there.”