Gilmore Girls’ original plan for the character of Luke Danes would’ve led to the show not only being very different, but also a lot worse. Created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, Gilmore Girls launched on what was then The WB network back in 2000, running for seven seasons in total (with the final season airing on The CW), before getting a Netflix revival series, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, arrived back in 2016.
Gilmore Girls centered around Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) in the quirky town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut. The series follows a variety of different townspeople in their lives, each as weird and wonderful as the next, but few members of the Stars Hollow community were as important to Gilmore Girls as Luke Danes (Scott Patterson). The owner of Luke’s, the diner Rory and Lorelai frequent, he’s the main love interest of Lorelai across much of the series, with the pair becoming Gilmore Girls’ will-they/won’t-they item. In the end, of course, they did, but Gilmore Girls initially had different plans for Luke.
The part of Luke may have become an intrinsic element of the series, but he didn’t start out as such. In fact, he didn’t even start out as a ‘he’. When Gilmore Girls was being developed, the role that would become Luke Danes was actually just a guest spot. The part itself wasn’t intended as a love interest for Lorelai, but a smaller role for the pilot episode. The character was written in a way that was unisex, but at the time Sherman-Palladino had ‘Luke’ as a woman called Daisy. She told EW: “Luke was originally a female character. [The network] came to me and said we need another guy, so I literally just took a character and changed the name, didn’t even change any of the dialogue because I’m that lazy.”
While it’s fun to imagine someone with the personality of Luke in the body of a woman called Daisy, that wouldn’t have led to one of the show’s strongest relationships. Even when Patterson eventually landed the part - because, as Sherman-Palladino notes, the network wanted more men - he was only signed on for the pilot, which gradually became a bigger role over time. When the sparks started to fly between Patterson and Graham, with an undeniable chemistry developing between the two on Gilmore Girls, that’s when Luke became a regular character and the love interest angle really started to develop.
It’s unclear just how the series would’ve worked with Luke in a small role, either with that name or as a woman called Daisy, but it’s probably fair to say it would’ve been a lot worse off. Luke and Lorelai’s romantic relationship forms a key part of the show, but their interactions as a whole (when both are unaware of their feelings) make for some great comedy and drama. Luke also becomes a father figure to Rory, and is generally one of the most important characters in Gilmore Girls. It’s impossible to imagine Lorelai, and indeed Stars Hollow, without the Luke Danes we got, but it very nearly happened.
Next: Gilmore Girls: Who Is The Father Of Rory’s Baby?
