Irony Behind the Inn That Was the Inspiration for ‘Gilmore Girls’

One of the most popular television series out there is Gilmore Girls. Not only did so many of us watch the original series from 2000 to 2007 but it's since been in syndication and is now on Netflix where I'm watching it again and loving it. There was a mini-series in 2016 as well.

Fingers crossed there's more to come.

Anyway, New England, and specifically the state of Connecticut was basically like another character playing a huge role in the series. That was a major part of the show's charm. Like most shows, location, location, location is a running theme that makes a series work.

According to Boston Uncovered the Mayflower Inn & Spa inspired the hit television series when Creator Amy-Sherman Palladino stayed there on vacation. It's in a quaint town of just 4,000 residents called Washington, Connecticut an hour west of Hartford and just two-and-a-half hours northeast of New York City.

The unparalleled hit series and comedy-drama is about a young, single mother Lorelai Gilmore (played by Lauren Graham) who runs the Dragonfly Inn, and her teenage daughter Rory (played by Alexis Bledel). The pair live in the adorable, small, fictional New England town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut, complete with quirky townsfolk. 'Stars Hollow' was outside of Hartford where Lorelai's wealthy parents lived.

Here's the ironic part. Only one scene was filmed in New England, and that's in the opening credits, where the very first frame is a shot of 'Stars Hallow' from above. In real life, that place is Royalton, Vermont, according to Goole maps. 

We're so used to television series and movies being filmed on location somewhere with a similar feel. However, Gilmore Girls was almost entirely filmed on a Warner Brothers Studio backlot, and on soundstages in the sunny Southern California city of Burbank.

According to several Wikipedia references, production designers decorated the fictional town with fake leaves or fake snow to make it look and feel very New England.  Meanwhile, even when they left Warner Brothers to film a few scenes, they didn't venture to New England.

Chilton, that private high school Rory attended, was filmed at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills. When Rory was off to Yale University, some of those shots were filmed at Pomona College in northern California and the University of California.  

I truly thought it was being filmed in a New England town but nope, the power of the Hollywood feels prevails.