Frankie de la Cretaz Reads Rory and Lorelai's Birth Charts
Lorelai is a Taurus, Rory is a Libra, And More Astrological Secrets of the Gilmore Girls
Welcome to the fourth installment of the Gilmore Women Questionnaire. We’re so excited to share our conversation with this month about watching — and initially hating — Gilmore Girls. Between how much Lorelai talked (and how self-important she was) and how little credit the show gives Emily, Frankie just couldn’t get into it.
But eventually, Frankie found a way in through astrology — by drawing up Rory and Lorelai’s birth charts, and discovering that these two characters’ astrological placements honestly explain a lot.
Frankie is a beloved sports and culture writer who you may know as the co-author of Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League, or from their recent Harper’s Bazaar profile on Sue Bird (Frankie asks the WNBA icon what she and fiancée Megan Rapinoe talk about in couples therapy), their iconic piece about the queerness of A League of Their Own, and/or their fantastic sports newsletter,. (Later, we’ll see what astrological placements allow for this prolific publishing record!)
We’ll be back to our Season 7 antics very soon, and we’ll roll out more of these questionnaires over the next few months. As always, if you love what we do here and want access to these interviews and our entire archive, join us as a paid subscriber.
xoxo,
Maggie and Megan
Welcome to Gilmore Women: Two journalists discuss everything that’s wrong with every episode of Gilmore Girls & why we still love it.
MAGGIE: We like to start by asking if you remember the first time you saw Gilmore Girls, and if you do, do you remember anything about it?
FRANKIE DE LA CRETAZ: No.
MAGGIE: You don't?
FRANKIE: I’m gonna be totally frank. Let me position myself in terms of my age here. I graduated high school in 2003, so Gilmore Girls was in the culture around me. I was old enough to watch it in real time. And a lot of people seemed to be watching it and I definitely watched it when it was on. I wasn't someone who was a weekly viewer, but I tend to be pretty culturally literate, and so I was definitely aware of it. But I don't remember the first time I watched it.
But I never saw the series the whole way through, like when it originally aired. But maybe like 10-ish years ago, I had a roommate who moved into my house with her daughter, and she’d had her daughter at 17 and the two of them would watch Gilmore Girls together, and it was like their show.
Almost every day, I would hear the theme song playing from their room. I kept feeling like I should really watch. I always had really good feelings about the show. I remember liking it. I remembered liking these characters who talked too much and made too many pop culture references.
Anyway, the pandemic! I decided now is the time I'm going to do a full watch of Gilmore Girls. And it became a hate-watch immediately because it turns out Lorelai Gilmore is my least favorite television character in the history of television characters. The first time I attempted to watch the series the whole way through I actually had to stop because I was struggling so much with Lorelai.
MAGGIE: Tell us! What was triggering or upsetting?
FRANKIE: I just wanted her to stop talking... which is weird because I love banter. We're gonna talk about astrology a little bit later and I am an Aquarius Venus. One of my love languages is witty banter. So for me, I really thought this should be very much my vibe. But I think for me Lorelai's lack of self-awareness and the fact that she thinks everyone around her should think that all of her self-absorption is cute, is something that I really, really struggle with.
And Rory is difficult in her own way, too. I actually don't really like either of them, which is a fascinating thing to be like, I watched this whole show with the two main characters that I didn’t really want to root for either of them. But I think that’s what I struggle with so much is the fact that everyone around these two women really coddled them in a way that I don’t think they really deserve. They really need some people to like bully them a little bit.
MAGGIE: Yeah, I think that’s why Luke is such a good foil for Lorelai.
FRANKIE: But he still adores her! We can talk more about this, but he adores her in a way that he sees her for who she is, in a way that I don’t know that anyone else really does.
MEGAN: So did you end up finishing it? Did you come back to it?
FRANKIE: I watched it all except the final season.
MEGAN: You tapped out at 6?
FRANKIE: Yes. I tapped out at 6.
MEGAN: A common choice a lot of people make.
FRANKIE: I’m one of those people who even if I don’t finish a show or even if I don’t watch a show at all, I have read all of the criticism of the thing, so I at least know all of the storylines.
MAGGIE: Oh my god. OK, I love that you had a Lorelai and Rory roommate situation. I would be so interested to know what someone who had their child at 17 thinks of the show, but apparently they liked it.
FRANKIE: They love it. But I think in a lot of ways, you know, you don't get a lot of representation on television of teen moms who have these good relationships with their children.
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