In his new book, The Girls: From Golden to Gilmore, screenwriter Stan Zimmerman reflects on how he may have played a part in casting an integral Gilmore Girls role: Matt Czuchry as Logan Huntzberger, Rory Gilmore’s dreamy boyfriend during her college years at Yale.
Zimmerman, who was a writer and consulting producer on the WB and CW show’s fifth season, recalls that the Gilmore Girls casting office was right by the writer’s room. He caught a glimpse of the “two young, adorable” actors who had come in for the final callback to play Logan.
“I blurted out [to show creator Amy Sherman-Palladino], ‘You have to hire the blonde one!,’” Zimmerman writes. “That was Matt Czuchry.” He pointed out that he thought Czuchry would look “great” opposite Alexis Bledel, who played Rory, and that the actor felt like “old money” (Logan is the son of the influential and wealthy newspaper magnate Mitchum Huntzberger.)
“Even though I don’t approve of all his character’s choices in later seasons and the reboot, I’ll always be ‘Team Logan,’” Zimmerman continues. Years later, when he ran into Czuchry again, Zimmerman joked that he took “full credit” for the actor’s success. Czuchry has since appeared in shows like The Good Wife and The Resident.
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Zimmerman, who also wrote for TV shows like The Golden Girls and Roseanne, looks back on his career in The Girls, out now from Indigo River Publishing. It was on Roseanne that he, along with his writing partner James Berg, met Sherman-Palladino, who eventually hired the team to write on Gilmore Girls' fifth season. The dramedy follows the lives of single mother Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) and her daughter Rory (Bledel), who live in the quirky Connecticut town, Stars Hollow.
Zimmerman, who penned episodes like “Norman Mailer, I’m Pregnant!” and “Pulp Friction,” says that he loved writing for Lorelai’s character in particular.
“I loved [that] her very crazy train of thought could go many different places and then back around again,” he tells PEOPLE. “And I just loved Lauren Graham. There was such a synergy between the actor and the character and it was just perfect casting.”
Zimmerman also says that Bledel was “so open” with him, despite being told that the actress was generally “reserved," and that she was talented in her first big role as Rory.
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“To have started her acting career on that show,” he says. “Think of the people she got to watch every day at work: Kelly Bishop [as Emily Gilmore], Edward Herrmann [as Richard Gilmore], Sally Struthers [as Babette], the great Liz Torres [as Miss Patty].”
which originally aired from 2000 to 2007, and had a Netflix reboot, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, in 2016, is still wildly popular today. It was one of the most streamed shows of 2023 and fan events, like the Gilmore Girls Fan Festival, now called The Firelight Event, continue to spread Stars Hollow cheer. While a great way for fans to connect with cast and crew, Zimmerman says the event brings its attendees together too.
“So many mothers and daughters come and it's such a beautiful thing that they were able to sit down and watch a TV show together,” he says. He and Berg have tried to get similar shows off the ground since, but they haven’t been picked up.
