Chris Pine Was Almost In ‘Gilmore Girls’

Gilmore Girls could have featured an appearance from Chris Pine. Nowadays, Pine is known for his starring role as Captain Kirk the Star Trek film franchise and for robbing banks in the gritty Oscar-nominated Hell or High Water, but the actor almost got his start with a small role in Gilmore Girls.

Speaking to W Magazine, Chris Pine reminisced on his 15-year-long acting career and revealed that his first audition was for Gilmore Girls in the early 2000s.

“My first audition, professionally speaking, was for Gilmore Girls. My father [the actor Robert Pine] had gone in for an audition. I’d just graduated college and he told the casting directors that I was an actor: ‘My son’s coming back into town. Will you have him in for a reading?’ So nepotism at its best.”

Chris Pine would have graduated college in 2002, which was when Seasons 2 and 3 of Gilmore Girls were airing. These seasons featured the peak of Rory Gilmore’s boyfriend drama: Jess Mariano moves to Stars Hollow during Season 2 and causes plenty of trouble for Rory, eventually causing her to end her relationship with her first boyfriend Dean.

Gilmore Girls would have been interesting with Chris Pine as either Jess or Dean, and the actor certainly has the experience to play Rory Gilmore’s lovestruck boyfriend. During the interview, Pine noted that “I got my start playing boyfriends, princes, husbands to be,” and his resume reflects this. Pine’s first major film role was for The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement in which he played Nicholas Devereaux, a handsome prince courting Anne Hathaway’s Princess Mia Thermopolis.

With darker hair, Pine could have channeled brooding intensity and the sarcastic sense of humor he displays in the interview to become the perfect Jess Mariano on Gilmore Girls. On the other hand, the actor could have also been a charming and earnest Dean. Pine’s role in The Princess Diaries 2 as a spoiled, confident prince also displays what could have been if he had been cast as Logan Huntzberger, the wealthy playboy who dates Rory in the later seasons of Gilmore Girls and (spoiler!) is likely the father of her child in Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.

Unfortunately, the timing of the Gilmore Girls seasons reveals that Pine could not have played a boyfriend of Rory’s. Pine auditioned in 2002, making him too late to play Dean (who was in the first season in 2000) and Jess (who first appeared on the show in its second season in 2001). Logan, on the other hand, first appears in the fifth season of Gilmore Girls in 2004 – far too late for Chris Pine to have played him.

So, what Gilmore Girls role did Chris Pine audition for? There are a few possibilities, including Lane’s boyfriend and bandmate Dave Rygalski and Marty, who befriends Rory Gilmore at Yale and harbors a crush on her. The timing works better for Chris Pine as Dave: the character, who was eventually played by Adam Brody, first appeared on Gilmore Girls during the third season in October of 2002. Marty does not appear until a year later, during Gilmore Girls Season Four.

However, it turns out that while Chris Pine auditioned for a boyfriend on Gilmore Girls, he was not auditioning for one of Rory’s or Lane’s boyfriends. Instead, as revealed by Cosmopolitan, Pine auditioned to play Christopher, Rory Gilmore’s dad and Lorelai Gilmore’s on-again, off-again love interest. At first glance, this sounds incorrect, as Pine was only in his early twenties and Christopher is in his mid-thirties. Additionally, Christopher first appears in the very first season of Gilmore Girls.

It turns out, there is a simple explanation for Chris Pine’s audition as Christopher on Gilmore Girls. In an episode of Gilmore Guys, a podcast dedicated toGilmore Girls, the hosts interviewed Gilmore Girls casting directors Mara Casey and Jami Rudofsky, who confirmed that Chris Pine auditioned for the role of a younger Christopher in a flashback scene. Young Christopher appears in the thirteenth episode of the third season of Gilmore Girls, which aired in early 2003.

While Pine did not get the Gilmore Girls role, it is safe to say that his acting career (and his status as a Sexiest Man Alive) certainly has not suffered for the loss.

[Featured Image by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Rolex Awards for Enterprise]