I Was Today Years Old When I Learned That Jared Padalecki Was Not The Original Dean On "Gilmore Girls"
Who is this imposter Dean?!
It's been almost 20 years since Gilmore Girls first aired!
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One of the most memorable scenes of the pilot is when Rory meets Dean, the guy who will eventually become her first love. He's played by Jared Padalecki (who weirdly has a brother named Dean on Supernatural...confusing).
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Recently, I made a surprising discovery: Dean was initially played by a totally different actor. There's an unaired version of the Gilmore Girls pilot that has a different Dean and it's...really weird to see.
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The OG Dean was played by Nathan Wetherington, who you might recognize from True Detective. He also came seriously close to getting the role of Seth Cohen on The OC and was in the running for Anakin in Star Wars.
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Apparently, the crew shot the scene between Rory and Dean over 40 times to get it right. When the pilot eventually got picked up, they decided to recast Dean and reshoot the pilot. And that's how we ended up with Jared!
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I know characters get recast all the time and things change, but...it's still weird to think about anyone other than Jared playing Dean.
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Oh, and that's not the only casting change they made. Melissa McCarthy was also not the original Sookie ā she was played by Alex Borstein in the unaired pilot.
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THIS IS ALL SO MUCH TO PROCESS.
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Are you really? Are you REALLY Dean?? Or are you merely an imposter?
Anyway. I'm going to go rewatch Gilmore Girls now and try not to think about this.
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