Emily Gilmore: Why She’s Not Your Typical ‘Toxic Parent’ That Lorelai Claims Her To Be – And Why She’s Actually The Best Part Of ‘Gilmore Girls’

When you think of ‘Gilmore Girls’, you automatically think of Lorelai and Rory. They are the Gilmore girls that made the entire show. But what we tend to forget is that there’s an entire third Gilmore girl, and that’s none other than Emily Gilmore, Lorelai’s mother and Rory’s grandmother. The actress behind the not-so-lovable Emily, Kelly Bishop, even published her autobiography in September and called it, ‘The Third Gilmore Girl’. Bishop spoke with Salon Talks of her most well-known character in her decades long career, which includes works like ‘Dirty Dancing’ with Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey.

Here’s what she had to say of Emily:

‘She’s a different kind of TV mom from the ones I grew up with, with “Leave It To Beaver” and things like that. She’s definitely a mother, but she’s kind of a tough piece of work, and I’d imagine there are more mothers like that on television now. But she was rather unusual, and yet it’s played off so beautifully with Lorelai and Rory and that nice relationship. So you’d have two different kinds of moms.

She was just fun to play. She’s strong and doesn’t worry about hurting people’s feelings, really. And she’s going to say what she means and try to get what she wants, and I love a woman like that.

I really worked on that role. I don’t audition anymore; I refuse to do it. I’ve done it enough. At this point in my life, I say, “They know what I look like. They know what I can do. If they want me, they can hire me. If not, just leave me alone.” But I worked hard on [the “Gilmore Girls’ audition] and always did because I believe as an actor, a major part of your job is to do the words as written, to present what the author wanted.

And so, I really worked on that role. And in a sense, almost knew it without the pages, which I also did at other auditions. I would walk in with the pages, but I wouldn’t put them down because I thought that would indicate that this is my final performance. If you see me holding pages, this is my work in progress. But I was kind of giving my final performance or what it was at that point. So it made it a stronger presentation, and I went in, I did it. I thought I nailed it. I thought it was good. And then I left.

There were a couple of other women there for the same role. I went home. And you wait for a little bit. And I was waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and calling my agent, saying, “Have you heard from them?” And as it turns out, she really was looking for the Rory and Lorelai characters. They were the leads of the show. What I didn’t know is that she had already decided, and I thought, “Well, are they going to call me back out to California and have me read for the studio?” They didn’t do that and I’m going, “I’m kind of giving up hope here.”

I asked Amy about it probably a couple of years later. I said, “How many other women?” Because I was always curious about who I was up against that I didn’t know. She said, “We saw a lot of women. I told them that I’d already found you and so just to stop bothering me with that.” But I didn’t know that. So I was waiting and waiting. Then finally my agent called and said, “You won’t have to go to California to read for the studio.” And I was like, “Uh oh.” He said, “Because they’re offering you the job.” And I went, “Oh! OK, cool.” So that’s how I got it. I thought I did a really good audition. I just didn’t know. You don’t know.’

Of working with Lauren Graham, who played Lorelai, Bledel, who played Rory, and Ed Hermann, who played Emily’s husband Richard, and of his passing in 2014, Bishop said:

‘Lauren [Graham] is truly like a daughter to me now. We hit it off from day one, we just got along great. I love her acting, I love her intelligence and her sense of humor. Alexis [Bledel] was much more shy, partly because she was kind of a new actress. She wasn’t used to the banter and the camaraderie and all of that. So I got to know her somewhat, but not a lot. And Edward Herrmann was a dream. He was my age, a theater actor, and it was just a joy to work with him.

We had gone to Austin to do a big television, theater, film thing. The “Gilmore Girls” part was Alexis and myself and Lauren Graham and Amy. We’d had a little question-and-answer period in the theater and somebody asked about where our lives would be now. I said, ‘If he were with us, I would say probably very much the same place, keep moving on doing the same thing. But now that he’s gone, this is a whole new world for Emily. This is completely different.’

Then when we did the reboot and they gave me the story, there was some place to go with it, something to explore. So, in a peculiar way, it made it really good for me as much as I would not have chosen that. Amy’s father had died a couple of years before, and I know that that was hard on her, but I think she had observed her mother being a widow. She had that information to put into Emily’s character, and I just went with it. I thought she had some wonderful stuff in there.’

Let’s talk Emily…

Emily was a very complex character. When I think of Emily, I immediately think of the time she meddled in Lorelai’s life in season 5 when she tried to break Lorelai and Luke up by getting Christopher, Lorelai’s ex and father of her daughter, to come to Emily and Richard’s vow renewal to try to win Lorelai back. It was a pivotal moment for Lorelai and Emily’s already estranged relationship as mother and daughter, for it defined their entire relationship and marked a new beginning for the duo. The moment where Lorelai disowned Emily when she realized what she’d done and her motives behind her actions was highlighted their entire relationship.

Lorelai’s relationship with her mother was always complicated. Lorelai had always felt controlled by her mother, and her mother never stopped wanting to control her. In Emily’s mind, she was doing what was best for her daughter because, as the saying goes, ‘mother knows best.’ In reality, her actions had always caused trouble and led to more friction. Her wanting to do the right thing by her daughter wasn’t ever done with good intention, but rather for Lorelai to be the version of herself that Emily thrived for her to be. She’d always seemed so disappointed and felt disappointed every time she realized that Lorelai was the last ever person to be controlled by her.

That controlling behaviour that Lorelai experienced at the hands of her mother was the reason why she left home and moved her life to the small town that is Stars Hallow. When she first had Rory as a 16 year old teenager, she lived in a tiny basement in a hotel, which she ended up working at and moving her way up career wide into her adult years. Living under such circumstances seemed much better and healthier for her than living in wealth under the same roof as her mother, and that says a heck of a lot about Emily as a person, as a woman, and as a mother. When Rory showed Emily where she and Lorelai lived when Rory was a baby broke Emily’s heart, because it was then that she realized just how far off her view of the establishment and essence of her relationship with Lorelai.

When Emily met the woman that took Lorelai and Rory in when they first moved to Stars Hallow, Emily didn’t show much gratitude, but rather a resentment and sadness. She felt sadness that instead of encouraging Lorelai to come home where Emily felt she belonged, the woman took her in and practically became the mother figure that Lorelai needed at the time. Emily felt resentment that another woman became the mother figure for Lorelai, a role that she felt was taken away from her. Despite her questionable actions and treatment towards her daughter, Emily always strived to have a close bond with her daughter, and she was jealous of the bond Lorelai had with Rory. It was something she wanted to have with Lorelai. But as Lorelai told Emily, she and Rory are best friends first, mother and daughter second, whereas she and Emily were mother and daughter only.

When most of the ‘Gilmore Girls’ fans think of Emily Gilmore, they think of her as the villain of the show. That might be true. No one likes to see someone be treated by a parent the way Emily treated Lorelai. It was unfair, and in some cosmic sort of way, abusive. Though Emily wasn’t someone who was very likeable, she was an essential part of the show, if not the most essential part of the show. She was our key to understanding who Lorelai was as a character and as a person. In later seasons, we see that Emily also impacted Rory’s character growth as well. Rory was Emily’s chance for a do-over. She knew that she’d never be able to have a good, solid relationship with her daughter and have her become the version of herself that Emily so desperately tried to make her out to be, so Rory was her chance. It was most evident when she took Rory in when Rory quit Yale and was estranged from Lorelai. Emily attempted to make her into the version of Lorelai she wished she’d become had she been able to control the narrative. Emily even called Rory Lorelai during their fight that had Rory move out of her grandparents’ home and into the Yale dorm room.

That’s never to say that Emily never loved Lorelai or Rory. It’s the exact opposite. She loved those girls through and through, Lorelai especially, and she was eager to spend more time with them and get to know them all over again. That was why she initiated the now-famous Friday night dinner ritual as a condition for Lorelai to borrow money for Rory attending Chilton. Emily wasn’t ever the nicest to Lorelai. She never shied away from criticizing her judging her, particularly in front of Rory, for her choices in life, most notably for running away from home instead of marrying Christopher when she found out she was pregnant with Rory like she and Richard had planned. But she loved Lorelai and was the happiest when she got to spend time with her. She had the biggest smile on her face when she and Lorelai got to do a silly dance to ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’ at a fashion show. Lorelai was weirded out, but it was a really cute and tender moment between the two. Emily was willing to go out of her way and out of her comfort zone to bond with Lorelai. Though she knew that their relationship was too broken for them to be as close as Lorelai was with Rory, she never failed to try.

According to statistics, ‘Gilmore Girls’ is the most rewatched show on Netflix by its subscribers, and the number of people rewatching the show is 14% higher in the fall and winter months than they are in the summer and spring months. I’m not even ashamed to say it, but these statistics include me and my rewatches of the show. The more I rewatch it, the more I understand its complexity and brilliance, and the more I rewatch the show, the more I actually empathize of Emily Gilmore and actually feel for her pain. I guess you could say that my appreciation and admiration came with age, experience, and the witnessing of such a difficult relationship between a parent and their adult child. Throughout my life, I’d had my own share of a complicated relationship with my mother. But it was nothing like the relationship I witnessed my husband have with his father. My mother and I had our share of difficulties and miscommunications throughout my childhood, adolescence and adult years. Even now we have our misfortunes from time to time. I grew to really understand my mother’s life when I got married myself; even more so now that I have my own child.

My mother has always been a tough cookie. I never doubted that she loved me. She provided me with tough love because she prepared me for the real world – a world that’s filled with hatred, judgement, despair, as well as endless criticism and assumptions of people like me; those who are physically disabled. She was tough, but it was out of love and care for me and for the well-being of my life. Her tough love prepared for the real world that I now have to endure on my own. Again, our relationship wasn’t always smooth sailing. We had our own rifts. But my complicated relationship was nothing like the one I’d witnessed between my husband and his father. In more ways than one, their relationship dynamic reminded me of that of Emily and Lorelai. My husband, too, felt like he was never good enough for his father, and he, too, And just like Emily, my husband’s father tried to control my husband’s life, and a lot of times, just like Emily did, his father had manipulated him to try to get his son to be the version of himself his father envisioned him to be.

Being a partner of someone who has such a difficult relationship with a parent can be challenging. That’s why I related so much to Rory when she started dating Logan and the dynamic of the relationship he had with his father, which mirrored that of the one Lorelai had with Emily, started to show itself on-screen. Emily was different than Mitchum, Logan’s father. No matter her faults, and there were a lot of them, Emily always tried to better herself and redeem her character arc. When she knew she messed up, she always tried to undo her mistakes. She always tried to prove that she was good enough to be in Lorelai’s life. And despite being so harsh on Lorelai, and eventually on Rory, she always defended them when she knew it was her time to do so. Who could ever forget the time she defended Rory and threw down Shira Huntzberger, Logan’s mother, after she found out Mitchum was the reason Rory quit Yale. As transcribed, Emily said, ‘You were a two-bit gold digger, fresh off the bus from Hicksville when you met Mitchum at whatever bar you happened to stumble into. And what made Mitchum decide to choose you to marry amongst the pack of women he was bedding at the time, I’ll never know. But hats off to you for bagging him. He’s still a playboy, you know? Well, of course you know. That would explain why your weight goes up and down 30 pounds every other month. But that’s your cross to bear. But these are ugly realities. No one needs to talk about them. Those kids are staying together for as long as they like. You won’t stop them. Now, enjoy the event.’ And that time Emily defended Lorelai against Christopher’s parents when they first found out of Lorelai’s pregnancy with Rory at 16 – PRICELESS!

The moment I realized just how deeply Emily (and Richard) cared for Lorelai was when in the very last episode of the original ‘Gilmore Girls’ series, when Emily and Richard attended Rory’s graduation and goodbye party for the entire Stars Hollow town, which was all orchestrated by Luke. As Richard and Emily were about to leave the party, Richard commended Lorelai and, as he choked up, he told her that Rory’s party was a testament not to Rory as person, but rather to Lorelai and what a wonderful human being she was. It was a beautiful moment between a father and daughter, a moment that Lorelai was always so eager to share and experience. This marked the last time we saw Edward Hermann as Richard Gilmore as he passed away in December 2014. And then when Lorelai said to Emily she’d see her and her father for Friday night dinner even though they had no obligation to do so anymore almost brought Emily to tears. Emily was so happy to know that her daughter would come to her because she wanted to and not because they had an agreement to do so. She couldn’t contain the joy on her face. But, of course, it wouldn’t be in Emily Gilmore’s style not to throw a jab at Lorelai, so in that moment, she couldn’t contain herself and criticized her for not wearing jeans to dinner. Emily wouldn’t dare to do that to Rory, though. She was the apple of Emily’s eye, her pride and joy. The moment between grandmother and granddaughter where Emily told Rory that being her grandmother was an honor was so sweet; a true gift.

Why she’s not your typical ‘Toxic Mom’…

If Lorelai was a real person, she’d tell you that Emily was your typical toxic mom. As Kelly Bishop said herself of her character in an interview with Salon, ‘Emily Gilmore was a tough piece of work. She’s going to say what she means and try to get what she wants, and I love a woman like that.’ Emily could be quite cruel to Lorelai at times, with a lot of her actions being unforgivable. When we’re first introduced to Emily, we, the audience, are meant to believe that Emily is the villain in the arc of ‘Gilmore Girls’ because Lorelai doesn’t like her. As the series went on, however, we realize that Emily was so much more than Lorelai made out her to be, and she was actually the best character in the entire show.

Emily was the type of person that came from a different time and lived by what society had told her about what’s right and what’s wrong. As she told Lorelai during their very first Friday night dinner, ‘When you have a child, you get married. That’s what you do.’ We all know now that it’s not necessarily what people do in their lives. People have babies without getting married. Some don’t even end up with the other parent and raise their children as single parents – like Lorelai did. Lorelai spent a heck of a lot of time and effort trying to prove her mother wrong, but no avail. Emily does everything she can to get Lorelai to do things ‘the Emily Way’. She even thought she was doing Lorelai a favour when she tried to break her and Luke up by inviting Christopher to her and Richar’s vow renewal so that Christopher could win Lorelai back.

As I mentioned before, that was a pivotal moment in Lorelai and Emily’s relationship. Lorelai had cut ties with her parents following Emily’s betrayal, and though Rory was still obligated to come to every Friday night dinner because of their agreement, she still very much let Emily know that she was on her mother’s side and wasn’t going to play nice. Emily got her way when Luke broke up with Lorelai following the vow renewal. Eventually, Emily realized that she made a mistake and went to Luke’s diner to tell him exactly that. Though Luke and Lorelai got back together and moved on from that specific mess and Lorelai and Emily eventually made up, it was only years later, after Lorelai divorced Christopher, that Emily really voiced how proud she was of Lorelai for standing on her own two feet, for being an independent woman, and for living her life without needing a man.

It was just about the nicest thing Emily ever said to Lorelai in Lorelai’s entire life, and Lorelai is genuinely by her mother’s praising of her. Emily spent Lorelai’s entire life judging her, criticizing her, and belittling her, even in front of Lorelai’s own daughter, so that moment where Emily is finally praising Lorelai was an important one. Her treatment towards Lorelai was despicable, and I personally always questioned why Lorelai even continued to have a relationship with her after all these years. There comes a time in one’s adult life where you say, ‘Enough is enough!’ And that Lorelai did, and she still went back to Emily and continued to have a relationship with her thereafter despite her continued toxicity.

The thing about Emily is that she came from a world of wealth, class, and social status. Those were the things that were most important to her because she was taught from an early age that those things were important. That was why she meddled so much in Lorelai, and later Rory’s, life so much. A woman is supposed to be a wife and a mother, remember that? Even though she has an educational background, she never used it, and instead, became a wife to Richard and a mother to Lorelai. She became everything that was expected of her to become. She just couldn’t accept that Lorelai wanted to lead a completely different life than her, and that was the main reason for their friction. She was very much set in her ways. It took Lorelai completely shutting Emily out of her life after Emily broke her and Luke up for her to see just how much she needed to change. She saw how much she had to lose if she didn’t, so she did. Lorelai REALLY got to see that change in her mother when she praised her how she led her life after she divorced Christopher.

Authoritarian parenting is described as parents having high expectations for their children’s behavior and set rigid rules. Authoritarian parents give little explanation, little warmth, provide one-way communication, and give their children harsh punishments for their ‘bad’ behaviour. There are a lot of negative effects of authoritarian parenting on children as adults. These include:

• Children may have poor self-esteem 
• Children may have difficulty managing anger 
• Children may have a hard time making their own decisions 
• Children may rebel against authority figures later in life 

This is exactly the type of parenting style that Emily showcased towards Lorelai. She showcased this type of parenting style towards Rory as well when Rory moved in to Emily and Richard’s house when she quit Yale. We later learn that that was also how Logan, Rory’s college boyfriend, was raised by his father. This was also the parenting style Mrs. Kim brought on to Lane, Rory’s best friend at Stars Hollow. That was exactly why Lorelai showed a completely different parenting style towards Rory. Lorelai was the ‘best friend’ rather than a parent. She gave Rory all the love and care in the world; more than she could ever give to another person. Lorelai made Rory out to believe she was the perfect child and she could do no wrong, which also turned out to be problematic in its own way later in Rory’s life.

My husband was raised by an authoritarian parent, his father. As his partner, I could tell you that this type of parenting brought a lot of harm to my husband as adult. Because of his father’s authoritarian parenting, which then led to abuse and destruction in his life, my husband felt like he lacked love, emotional support, and self-esteem and respect for himself as a person. His father refused to change his ways for my husband, and therefore, my husband cut ties with his father. This was actually the best thing that happened for us as a family. We can now focus on being our own life as parents, so as to be a stronger unit and better parents to our own son instead of worrying so much about being good enough for a person that will never be happy with anything we do. We want our son to feel loved and supported. We want our son to be able to come to us without being afraid. We want our son to feel like he’s good enough. With that said, we also don’t want to over do it. We want to teach him that he’s not perfect, that he won’t always be loved in the outside world, that he won’t always get what he wants, that he won’t always win.

What makes Emily Gilmore so different than your typical toxic parent is that she was willing to change. She was willing to see her daughter and actually listen to her, which was why Lorelai was able to forgive her eventually. She was able to do that much later than Mrs. Kim did with Lane. Nonetheless, both women came to their senses. They saw their daughters die exactly who they were and not for what they wanted them to be. They listened to their wants and their needs. They gave them the space they each needed in order to become their own individuals, especially Mrs. Kim. They somehow became the golden examples of authoritarian, toxic parents redefining themselves and becoming not only better parents for their kids, but better people in general. We saw Emily become a much better and kinder person than we ever saw her in the 2016 ‘Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life’ revival following Richard’s passing. Emily was never a bad person. Ultimately, all she ever really wanted was to love her family, but she didn’t know how because she didn’t have the tools nor the guidance to show her how. It took her a long time to get to an emotionally and mentally healthy place in her life and go against everything she ever knew, but she got there, and I’m actually so f*cking proud of her for it.