EXCLUSIVE: We Explain the Term 'Shipping' to the 'Gilmore Girls' and Their Reaction Is Priceless!
When Gilmore Girls first premiered in 2000, Mark Zuckerberg was still a junior in high school, and Twitter was just a tiny egg that was six years away from hatching.
During the series' seven year run, Gilmore Girls fans desperately cared and shared their opinions about which man they thought was best for Rory and Lorelai in various online forums -- but the fandom lacked the social media tools we are so accustomed to today.
ET sat down with stars Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel on the Luke's Diner set earlier this year, and we were eager to get their take on the shipping craze that the beloved mother/daughter WB drama helped spark 16 years ago. There was just one problem.
"What's shipping?" the on-screen mother and daughter duo said nearly simultaneously. (Do yourselves a favor and watch their adorably befuddled faces as we explain the social media staple in our exclusive interview above.)
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Since Gilmore Girls' initial run from 2000-2007, social media has become an integral and crucial part of the TV-watching experience. Live-tweeting your favorite shows and sharing your favorite episode moments on Facebook is the expected norm. And now, with Netflix's four-part Gilmore Girls revival debuting in just 11 days, Graham and Bledel are bracing themselves for the instantaneous and direct fan feedback that they never had when the series was originally on air.
"So far it's just been new," Graham said of social media reactions to the revival. "Because the fans are so enthusiastic, [Netflix] wants to control [the story spoilers] so [fans] can really enjoy the show and not have too many story points or too much out there before the shows happen."
"So there's just been this sort of lock down on set in terms of social media, which I think is fine with both of us," Graham continued with a nod to Bledel. "But so yeah, it's another element [where] everybody has to be on the same page about it."
As for the shipping aspect of things, both actresses are flattered that the fans are so "invested" in their character's love lives, but it can make real-life situations and online questions from fans tricky to handle.
"It always puts us in an impossible situation," Graham revealed, "because you can't have a favorite, because then you're alienating the other people. And you wouldn't have a favorite, of course, because they're all actors we enjoy working with, but it's good to know a new term that I didn't know before."
Netflix's four-part Gilmore Girls revival premieres Friday, Nov. 25.