Are Alexis Bledel & Mae Whitman Friends?

It’s a match made in television sibling heaven: Alexis Bledel, Lauren Graham’s daughter on Gilmore Girls, and Mae Whitman, Lauren Graham’s daughter on Parenthood, are finally working together. I mean, it’s only natural that these two talented women would one day meet (they’re basically half-sisters, for crying out loud), but would they actually be friends? Because the thing that I’ve always wondered is whether or not Alexis Bledel and Mae Whitman are friends in real life.

So, when I heard the news that the Bledel and Whitman will be working together on a reading of Black List’s College Republicans — the two will be playing Karl Rove and Lee Atwater, hilariously enough — it sent me straight to the Internet. Because is this news finally the confirmation we all have been waiting for that Lauren Graham’s two television daughters are really long-time friends? Not so fast. “Long-time” might be the wrong descriptor here.

The two only met for the first time last year, according to a photo that Mae Whitman posted to Twitter. In the photo, Lauren Graham is stuck between a rock and a hard place, standing between her two television daughters as they look angrily on. The caption of the wonderfully posed photo reads, “AT LONG LAST WE MEET #drawyourswords #breaktheinternet.” So, um, clearly they’re not one big happy family.

Or are they? Because later that night Whitman posted another photo to Instagram of her and Bledel hugging it out big time. The caption on that photo reads, “JK YALL!!!! We decided to adopt each other!!! Rory and Amber Bravermore!!!” From the looks of the picture, it’s as if they were always supposed to be in each other’s lives.

Considering that Whitman and Bledel will be working with each other on a number of projects this year, I think it’s only natural that their friendship will grow. With Whitman cast in a small role in the Gilmore Girls revival, and the two of them working together on this Black List reading, these two sisters coming together as best friends is kind of a given if it hasn’t happened already. And thank god for it. That’s bound to make family dinners a whole lot less awkward.