Gilmore Girls was one of the most loved and watched TV shows of the early 2000s and made huge stars of its cast, including Melissa McCarthy.
The show won fans for its depiction of the mother-daughter dynamic, not just of main characters Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, but their mother and grandmother Emily Gilmore, played by Kelly Bishop.
Up until Gilmore Girls, Bishop had been a stage and screen actress who was best known for playing Marjorie Houseman, the mother of Frances ‘Baby’ Houseman in Dirty Dancing.
But Bishop was never meant to play the role.
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Kelly Bishop was born in the US state of Colorado on February 28, 1944. She trained as a ballet dancer and later moved to northern California to attend ballet school.
At 18, she moved to New York City, where she started dancing for a ballet company based at Radio City Music Hall.
In 1967 she was cast in her first Broadway role but her big break didn’t come until 1975 when she won the role of Sheila Bryant in the Broadway production of A Chorus Line.
Bishop was not only an original cast member of the production, which was written by famed composer and conductor Marvin Hamlisch, but the character was largely based on Bishop’s life.
The role netted her 1976 Tony Award for Best Supporting or Featured Actress (Musical).
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She followed this up with roles in other Broadway productions including Six Degrees of Separation, Neil Simon’s Proposals, The Last Night of Ballyhoo and Bus Stop.
In 1978, she made her movie debut in An Unmarried Woman.
Over the next nine years, she appeared mainly in made-for-TV movies and as a guest star in episodes of TV shows.
In 1986, she began filming a small part in the film Dirty Dancing. The low-budget film was shot on location in just 43 days, with a very tight budget.
Bishop once told The Canadian Press she was originally cast in the small role of glamorous resort guest Vivian Pressman, who tries to seduce Johnny.
Actress Lynne Lipton had been cast in the larger role of Marjorie Houseman and even filmed a few scenes on location before falling ill and had to leave the set.
With no time to waste, the producers asked Bishop to step in.
Incidentally, some early scenes with Lipton were never re-shot and made it into the film.
Bishop told The Canadian Press that after filming wrapped, many of the cast doubted the film would be a success and didn’t like the title.
“We didn’t think it was going to be a good movie. We didn’t. We thought the title was weird,” she said.
Instead, the film became a smash hit and Bishop, who was 43 when the film came out, was soon being offered other ‘mother roles’ including in films Private Parts and Wonder Boys.
She also continued to guest star in hit TV shows such as Murphy Brown, Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Then, after years of small roles and bit parts, she was offered the role of Emily Gilmore in the TV show Gilmore Girls.
Emily was the wealthy matriarch of the Gilmore family and often clashed with daughter Lorelai, played by Lauren Graham, and Lauren’s daughter, Rory, played by Alexis Bledil.
Their complicated relationship formed a fundamental aspect of the series, which ran for seven seasons.
The show, which ended in 2007, was once voted in the top 100 greatest TV shows of all time.
It has since found a new generation of fans through reruns on Netflix.
Bishop reprised her role in the 2016 Netflix series, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.
Sadly, Edward Herrmann, who played Emily’s husband Richard Gilmore, was not part of the show, dying from a brain tumour in 2014.
In 2016, Bishop admitted during press events she missed his presence on the set of the revival.
“Edward and I, not only did we enjoy working together, we were friends. We became friends very quickly when we started the show back in 2000 and we maintained our friendship after the show was over,” she told RadioTimes.com.
She said the two shared a trailer during the original show’s run.
“There was just such a comfort and a fondness and a friend,” Bishop said.
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Bishop has continued to work, appearing in the 2023 series The Watchful Eye and two series by the creator of Gilmore Girls – Bunheads, and the Golden Globe-winning show The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel.
Bishop, now 80, lives in New Jersey and has just written a book, The Third Gilmore Girl: A Memoir, which will be released in September.
It will trace her six-decade show business career, first marriage to compulsive gambler Peter Miller and second marriage to television broadcaster Lee Leonard, who died in 2018. Bishop does not have children.
