Talking As Fast As I Can... Lauren Graham

Anyone who knows me knows that I am obsessed with Gilmore Girls, like weirdly know scenes inside out kind of obsessed. Having watched it for the first time at 22 I found myself relating more to Lorelai and belly laughing at her one-liners and many, many mishaps. I even have a video saved on my phone of Lorelai falling on a table in Luke's diner after being so embarrassed at kissing Luke - you can't hear the scene in it though, all you can hear is my cackle laugh and snort. So you can imagine how happy I was when Lauren Graham released a memoir - I snapped it right up!

The blurb:

In Talking As Fast As I Can, Lauren Graham hits pause for a moment and looks back on her life, sharing laugh-out-loud stories about growing up, starting out as an actress, and, years later, sitting in her trailer on the Parenthood set and asking herself, "Did you, um, make it?"

 She opens up about the challenges of being single in Hollywood ("Strangers were worried about me; that's how long I was single!"), the time she was asked to audition her butt for a role, and her experience being a judge onProject Runway ("It's like I had a fashion-induced blackout").

In "What It Was Like, Part One," Graham sits down for an epic Gilmore Girls marathon and reflects on being cast as the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore. The essay "What It Was Like, Part Two" reveals how it felt to pick up the role again nine years later, and what doing so has meant to her.

Some more things you will learn about Lauren: She once tried to go vegan just to bond with Ellen DeGeneres, she's aware that meeting guys at awards shows has its pitfalls ("If you're meeting someone for the first time after three hours of hair, makeup, and styling, you've already set the bar too high"), and she's a card-carrying REI shopper ("My bungee cords now earn points!").

My thoughts:
I always thought that Lorelai's humour and wit came from great writers of the show but I think it might have come from Lauren - she is hilarious. Like, laughing out loud at 1am kind of funny. 

There was a lot about Lauren that I didn't know as she is quite a private person in comparison to other lead actresses, especially in the age of social media, and I felt that she shared a lot more than I was expecting. It's clear from the beginning that Lauren has had a very colourful life and it's no surprise really that she has ended up being the smart, successful woman she is now. 

Obviously as a Gilmore Girls fan some of my favourite chapters were the ones which she focused on that period of her life, both the original and A Year in the Life. I loved that the relationships we saw onscreen were clearly similar off screen - Lauren speaks highly of all her co-stars both in Gilmore Girls and Parenthood (which she also starred in for five years). I also found it interesting to learn about the struggles Lauren faced as a young actress, as I think most people assume it is always a glamorous job, when in fact it is mostly the complete opposite. 

Overall, I found this a really fun read and definitely learned quite a bit along the way. It also made me go back to Netflix and flick through my favourite Gilmore Girls episodes. No shame here.

You can buy Talking As Fast As I Can here, and be sure to follow Lauren Graham on Twitter for some good laughs.