At 28, Lauren Graham Wasn’t Expecting To Succeed

In 1995, Lauren Graham was sleeping on her aunt’s couch in Long Beach, California. The then-28-year-old had been living in Brooklyn — booking a few small parts in soaps, and working as an SAT tutor and waitress on the side — but moved out west to audition for TV pilots.

“I would drive into LA and sit at the Beverly Center food court because Long Beach is like an hour away. So if I had two auditions three hours apart, I would sit and eat an Auntie Anne’s pretzel and a Diet Coke and wait,” Graham, now 57, tells Bustle. Happily, the hours she put in at the food court paid off. “All the agents said, ‘Everybody goes to LA for pilot season. Nobody gets a pilot their first season. Just go to some auditions, and meet some people.’ And I did get a pilot.”

It was called The Best Defense. The courthouse sitcom starred Steve Landesberg and Rita Moreno; Graham played a relatively inexperienced young lawyer, who argued in front of Moreno’s judge. While the pilot never aired, the experience was formative for her — partly thanks to one memorable scene with Moreno. “In the middle of my speech, [Moreno] goes, ‘Don’t whine.’ And I was like, Is that the scripted line? Or is she telling me not to whine, or is she telling me that my acting is bad? I don’t really know to this day,” Graham says. “I think she was telling me to toughen up.”

Toughen up, she did. Following The Best Defense, Graham would book a string of parts in popular sitcoms, including 3rd Rock from the Sun, Caroline in the City, and Seinfeld — memorably, as Jerry’s fan-favorite “speed dial” girlfriend — before landing her breakthrough role as Gilmore Girls’ witty Lorelai in 2000.

Now, Graham is returning to TV as Monica, a successful ad executive who loses her job after making a tone-deaf commercial, in Tubi’s The Z-Suite. The series sees Monica contending with her Gen Z colleagues, who have zero qualms about advocating for themselves in the workplace. It’s a world apart from how Graham began her career.

“I could only see what was next. I wouldn’t allow myself to think any bigger than that, which was good in that it kept me realistic, and probably was not great in that if something surprising happened, I wasn’t ready,” she says. “I was like, Wait, this is too big.” Luckily, when she was pushed into the deep end, she handled it just fine.

Below, Graham reflects on life at 28, including her early rejections, her Gilmore Girls audition, and her fun nights out with her former roommate Connie Britton.

Take me back to 1995, as you were embarking on your career. What were your goals at 28?

I do remember being a combination of ambitious and timid. I would set a goal that I could imagine, like when I first got to New York, I wanted to get a couple of lines in a soap or get a commercial because those paid pretty well. Then those things happened. So, I thought these half-hour shows are the big thing. I could play girl of the week or girl behind the counter. I had goals that were on my bucket list, like I wanted to be on Letterman and Celebrity Jeopardy. Then I’ll know I really have gotten what I wanted.

On the one hand, I’d go into auditions fearless and full of myself. But then sometimes, when these bigger opportunities would come up, I would really choke. It’s just very human, right? No matter where you are, part of you is like, “I know better than a lot of people,” and another part of you is like, “I don’t know anything at all.”

Because as an actor you’ve had to deal with a lot of rejection, what did you do to cheer yourself up or keep yourself motivated?

We all were told the statistics of how many people [find success]. By the way, there’s so many different ways to be successful. There’s a huge range within working as an actor. Some people do enough to get their health insurance, but they still have another job. And so one thing that helped was that I was not expecting to be handed anything, and I wasn’t even necessarily expecting to succeed.

One huge break was after grad school. I got an agent in New York, and some of my classmates who did the same showcase didn’t. So that was a little bit of encouragement. The noes had to be balanced somewhat with some kind of yes or some kind of break, or some kind of “you’re on the right path.” Only you can know if the pain of the noes outweighs the couple of yeses. That’s tough probably for everyone in any career, but in this one, where there’s no logic to it. You could be unemployed today and employed tomorrow, only you can keep you going.

You did end up getting quite a few yeses. You had a string of guest roles on sitcoms. Speaking of, your role on Seinfeld inspired this question: Who was number one on your speed dial at the time?

It probably rotated. That year, I still had a boyfriend back in Brooklyn. So, it would have been him or my college friend, who was also one of my roommates. Yeah, it wasn’t who it was supposed to be, like an emergency contact, because that’s really what that was for. You had your top three, that’s how you were going to report a fire or any other issue. I was like, “No, I’m fine. I’ll just call back to New York.”

What were your friendships and relationships like at the time?

When I came out to LA for this pilot season, there was somebody in my acting class, Connie Britton, who was also going out to LA. She had just done this movie that was from an ad she answered in Backstage Magazine that turned into The Brothers McMullen, which was a huge indie film hit. We didn’t know each other that well, but we were going out to see what would happen. We [both] had that first Motorola cell phone that flips, and the only people we knew to call were each other and our agents. That’s when I got 3rd Rock, and she got a part on Ellen. But it was fun. We were getting a couple lines on a sitcom. We were having parties in our empty rental house. There was possibility in the air.

What was the typical night out for you?

There were three typical nights out. One was at this place that doesn’t exist anymore, called The Mustache Cafe, because you could smoke cigarettes there. There were still smoking sections in restaurants, if that tells you anything. The other was sitting at the sushi counter at Matsuhisa. Who could afford that? I guess we thought we could. We didn’t care. And then the other one we’d go to was this Mexican place in the Valley, where it was rumored that George Clooney often went, but we never saw him there.

It was a time when people just had house parties, like you were always going to somebody’s house and just hanging out. That’s how you got people’s phone numbers.

In The Z Suite, your character’s Gen Z colleagues make a point to advocate for themselves and each other. Was there a time in your late 20s when you felt like you had to advocate for yourself?

Oh God, no. We wouldn’t have had the balls to do that. [But] there’s stuff I would deal with differently today, like I had fittings sometimes where the costumer would say something. It was a time when people spoke much more openly — not in a good way — about what they liked or didn’t like. You didn’t think twice about being handed the most padded bra you’ve ever seen. I was like, “Well, yeah, I got to be the hot whatever-it-is or somebody else will be the hot whatever-it-is.”

When it comes to Gilmore Girls, how did the experiences you had in your own life and work prepare you to play Lorelai?

It was all of them. It was the theater I did in college and grad school because I find that show very theatrical. You could put it on as a play, except that nothing ever happens, really. But the density and energy of the language is like theater.

I do think I walked in with a sense of ownership. I was prepared. I came in feeling like [I had] support around me. It was one of those times when I read something and I just could see it. At other auditions, I felt like I’d wedged myself into whatever the part was, which is part of acting and perfectly fine, and in some cases, I got those jobs, and that was fine. But [with Gilmore Girls], I just felt like I can do what this wants me to do. I can hear what [Amy Sherman-Palladino] intended when she wrote it, and that was a great fortune that we found each other.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.