Lauren Graham Hopes ‘Gilmore Girls’ Fans Will “Come Along for This Ride” on Her New TV Show
Lauren Graham touched down in Park City on Thursday to attend the Sundance Film Festival premiere of her new film, Twinless. The bromance dramedy stars Dylan O’Brien opposite the film’s writer-director James Sweeney in the story of two young men who meet in a twin bereavement support group and form an unlikely bond.
Graham plays the mother of O’Brien’s characters — the Maze Runner star has dual roles as the twins, one who dies unexpectedly and the other as he attempts to find peace after losing his other half — and while the role is small, the veteran actress couldn’t pass it up. “I don’t often get offered something a little darker and something that felt like a cool challenge,” Graham told The Hollywood Reporter on the red carpet inside the Eccles Center Theatre. “It doesn’t need to be about me. I can just go do something because I like it.” Plus, she said she “loves Dylan’s work.”
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Of her few scenes with O’Brien, Graham noted that the two just really clicked. “He’s got such a great charisma and he just worked so hard on both of these twins and took it so seriously, but with a lightness and just kindness to the crew and to me. There’s no place he can’t go.”
As for Graham, she has places to go. The actress is scheduled to be in Park City for only about 24 hours before jetting off to New York City for a media promotion blitz for her new show, The Z-Suite on Tubi. The show, set to premiere Feb. 6, casts Graham as Monica Marks, an advertising maven, and Nico Santos as her loyal right-hand executive, both of whom find themselves pushed out and canceled after a blunder. Together, they must find a way back to glory while facing off against eager Gen Z staffers who have taken her place.
The schedule will include the morning show rounds, a red carpet premiere and press junket, a swirl that Graham hasn’t been on in a few years, she said. “I’m on a new network where [the show is among] the first scripted programming,” she explained. “There’s a little bit of pressure, but also just a lot of momentum and excitement and we will just try not to screw it up.”
After the trailer dropped this week, a handful of headlines appeared trying to connect the dots between Graham’s Lorelai Gilmore on Gilmore Girls and Monica Marks on The Z-Suite. Graham appreciates the connection but insists the characters could not be more different.
“There are no similarities and I hope they’ll come along for this ride,” she told THR. “I can’t do that. I can never replicate the beauty and the magic of that character and that writing and that time, so I might as well not try. This is something very different, but she’s fun and kooky and the show has a spirit to it that I think has a coziness to it, but it’s very different character.”
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