Gilmore Girls fans have a complicated relationship with the many loves of Alexis Bledel’s Rory. Some of them are awful, some of them are awful in different ways, and some of them are named Jess, but if things had gone a bit differently, Rory might’ve had a boyfriend we could all get behind: Ryan Gosling. As reported by Vulture, Gilmore Girls casting director Jami Rudofsky revealed at this weekend’s Gilmore Girls Fan Festival in Connecticut that Gosling auditioned for a part on the show. There’s no indication his character would’ve actually dated Rory, but come on. He’s Ryan Gosling.
Rudofsky had cast Gosling in an independent film before working on Gilmore Girls and before Gosling had become a star, explaining that she initially didn’t like him “because he was late and he was blonde.” However, she then realized he was actually “amazing,” and had him audition for “a football character” on the show. Apparently, though, his audition was so awful that it made everyone question Rudofsky’s judgement—a question that we assume was put to rest 11 or so years later when Drive came out, because Drive is awesome.
Who knows, if Gosling had been cast on Gilmore Girls, maybe he would’ve ended up starring on Supernatural for a million years instead of Jared Padalecki. Then Gosling wouldn’t have had the same movie career, and we’d suffer though Gosling-less versions of The Notebook and Gangster Squad. Then, without Ryan Gosling’s character in The Big Short, maybe the 2007 financial crisis would’ve never even happened. Well, it probably still would have, but we wouldn’t get Ryan Gosling doing a weird fourth wall-breaking narration about it in a movie.