A S-P Interview

Sorry to be gone so long! Just thought I'd quickly drop off the A S-P interview from Ausiello.

She's baaack! Gilmore Girls' beloved, loquacious creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, just got the green light from Fox to begin production on her new comedy, The Return of Jezebel James. And whom did she call first? I'm not gonna toot my own horn, but if you read on, you'll figure it out for yourselves, as I get the ousted genius to dish not only on her upcoming series but also on her former one. She isn't watching, but c'mon, AS-P simply wouldn't be AS-P if she didn't have something to say about it.

Ausiello: How's unemployment?
AS-P: It's fantastic! I'm so good at it! I never knew I had a talent for something like this!

Ausiello: Well, it sounds like you're headed back to work. Tell me about the new show.
AS-P: It's called The Return of Jezebel James, and it's basically a sister buddy comedy. It's about a very successful, very driven, very problem-solving kind of woman who's a young-adult book publisher. She has her own imprint. And she decides to have a baby on her own, and the doctor says, "Whoops, you're not going to be able to do that by yourself. Sorry, sweetheart!" And she winds up tracking down her younger, much-less-focused sister, who's the polar opposite of her. And she says to her, "I will cut you a deal and pay you to carry my baby for me. But you have to move in with me, so that I can watch you and make sure it doesn't come out with three heads." And the younger sister, having very limited options, agrees, and that's where our series takes off. But the pilot is these two women reconnecting and cutting a deal.

Ausiello: Is it an hour?
AS-P: It's a half-hour multi-camera, baby!

Ausiello: Wow.
AS-P: "Oh, my god, are you kidding?!?!" I'm returning to my roots. The weird thing is I started on Roseanne, and I never thought I was going to be an hour-long writer. And then somewhere along the way, sitcoms started to be very bad, and very hard, and the process is very draining, and the opportunity to do Gilmore Girls kind of fell into my lap. For me it was returning to roots that I never thought I was going to leave in the first place.

Ausiello: So Fox is ordering a pilot, right?
AS-P: A pilot and, "Don't annoy us." That's the other order, which I already told them I can't fulfill. (Laughs)

Ausiello: Have you started casting the show in your head?
AS-P: I've been thinking about casting since I started writing this thing.

Ausiello: Can you tell me your dream picks?
AS-P: I don't wanna say because then if I don't get the dream, the second dream will have become my first dream. And then she'll know that I liked another dream and say, "You didn't like me first." And then all of a sudden everyone's dream is mad at each other's dream, and then all the dreams are broken. But these characters, much like with Gilmore, really have to be able to do a lot of things. These are really tough-women parts. The older sister in the pilot has to be funny and strong and cry and flip out. There's a lot of ground covered in the 22 minutes of craziness I plan to put on the air. It's a search for another Lauren Graham. What's nice to me about these girls — as opposed to Lorelai and Rory — is that Lorelai and Rory were so in sync with each other and that bond was so deeply engrained in them. These girls have no bond. (Laughs) These girls barely know each other's telephone numbers. Their lives are so separate and so different. They really are building a brand new relationship, which is kind of nice.

Ausiello: Will Dan be involved?
AS-P: I'm workin' on him. He's my partner in crime. Nothing's going to be as much fun, and, also, he's the best that there is. I'm not going to find anyone better than him to move forward with. He's avoiding me right now, but I am workin' on him. (Laughs)

Ausiello: Now I have a few Gilmore Girls questions for ya.
AS-P: (Adopting a Southern accent) Oh, honey, I got nothin' to say about Gilmore Girls.

Ausiello: At least tell me if you've been watching it.
AS-P: I have not been watching it.

Ausiello: Not at all?
AS-P: No. Couldn't do it. I think we actually talked about this in my ginormous 12-hour marathon interview with you [last April].

Ausiello: You did, and Dan said you guys were going to watch it.
AS-P: He may've said that, but I'm a woman, honey. And women can fry up the bacon and bring it home in a pan. Here's the bottom line: If it was great, I would feel horrible and want to throw myself off a building. And if it was not what I wanted it to be, I would throw myself off a… either way, I'd throw myself off a building. So there's no good outcome there. You know, I still have friends there. I keep in touch with the cast. I just felt like it's a new game and it's a new show. Good, bad or indifferent, it's a whole new thing.

Ausiello: Have you heard what they're doing story-wise?
AS-P: I'm really disconnected. Is one of them possessed?

Ausiello: Lorelai and Christopher are married.
AS-P: Wasn't that on the cover of TV Guide?

Ausiello: It was. We weren't very discreet about that.
AS-P: You weren't very discreet at all. You just threw it right out there, baby. I still read Mike Ausiello. That I read.

Ausiello: What was your reaction when you saw the cover?
AS-P: Look, it's a new regime, it's a new world. There are plenty of people who were not thrilled with me last year, so maybe they're happier with the road that's being taken now. I had my own ideas about everything, because I am me and, to me, my world and everything around me is really all I give a s--t about. So I had my own plans for this year. I had my own plans for a second year. And for a finale. But that didn't happen. So they've got to go their own way. I have no contact with that staff. They've done it totally on their own. I wish them all well while I'm at the Century City Mall. (Laughs)

Ausiello: If they asked you to come back for the finale, what would you say?
AS-P: Because I don't know where they've gone or what they're doing, that's almost an impossible question for me to answer because, like I said, I have it in my head how I want it to end, but that may not at all jive with what they're doing now. I would say I don't really see how that would happen, because it would be so weird for me to go, "OK, these writers have set their paths, so I'll just do that." That ain't Amy. Amy can't follow someone else's path. Then she wouldn't be the delightful human being that she is.

Ausiello: What if your ending will still made sense in the context of these new stories?
AS-P: Well, if it still made sense, then it's definitely something we could talk about. I love that show. That show was my child. It was my everything. Dan and I did nothing but that show for six years. We're still staring at each other like, "What do we talk about now?" And I love the crew there. My best friend, Helen, still works over there. And I adore Lauren and Alexis. I love them. I miss them very, very much. I miss not seeing them and working with them. So I can't say that it wouldn't be fun as hell to go back there and hang with them for a while. I'm just not sure if that's really going to be possible. Our story lines were very meticulous. Dan and I crafted arcs to go way, way, way back — for good, bad or indifferent. Whether you liked it or not, we really put a lot of time and energy into setting up very early what we could pay off at the end, and I'm not sure that would be such an easy thing to pull off. I won't say no, because it might happen. But I can't see it right now.

Ausiello: Have you made peace with the way the whole thing ended?
AS-P: All those suckers can bite my ass, ladies and gentleman. It's a business. I think they were wrong. (Laughs) I will always think that they were wrong to not sit down with us and figure out how this could work. The fact that there was no sit-down ever, no face-to-face with the studio or network to try and hash out what we needed and what we were asking for… that everybody just played it off like a negotiation… but that's Hollywood. That will always piss me off, because it's so frustrating that things get turned over to business affairs and then get reduced down to a strategy, as opposed to, "We've been in this for six years together. Can we sit down and talk about how we could make this work?" So, no. I'm still pissed off at something that was done to me in third grade. I'm very Russian in the, "You cross me, and I take your picture off the wall once you defect, and I don't know you anymore" [sense]. It wasn't personal, it was just what [Warner Bros.] felt they had to do. I'll always be sad that I don't get to close out Gilmore, because it was my kid. But I've got a new kid now. I've got a new baby now. I've got someone else to annoy me and make my ass chair-shaped.

Enjoy! As much as you can. A S-P doesn't seem so supported of her baby. Makes me kind of mad because if she truly wanted to stay with the show and end it her way, she wouldn't have let money come in the way. Personally, I'm thinking now that she just wanted out and that the contract/money issues were just an accuse.

Source from Ausiello Report.