Lauren Graham is shedding light on the unfortunate reality of beloved shows like Gilmore Girls being made available on streaming platforms.
After more than a decade on Netflix, plus a 2016 revival miniseries that premiered on the platform, the actress recently clarified that she gets “no residuals” for the original WB series being on the streamer.
“We have definitely reached more people than we were reaching on The WB,” she said on Jimmy Kimmel Live of the Amy Sherman-Palladino show’s new life on Netflix. “And now it’s trickled into younger people, older people, men whose kids or wives probably have forced them to watch it. Yeah, I get stopped a lot. It surprises me every time though. I don’t know why.”
When asked how much she makes off the series, which originally ran for seven seasons from 2000 to 2007, Graham said, “There really are no residuals on Netflix. But I’ve been paid in love.”
After Graham and her co-stars reunited for the Netflix miniseries Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life in 2016, producer Gavin Polone sued Warner Bros., claiming he did not receive his fair share of profits for either the original series or the revival.
Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel in ‘Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life’ (Saeed Adyani/Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Polone accused the studio and several of its divisions of “manipulat[ing] its back room accounting and distort[ing] the interpretation of its contractual obligations.”
Following the show’s return to the Nielsen Streaming Chart in October at no. 8, Gilmore Girls also became available to stream on Hulu in December.
