TV mom Emily Gilmore was a "tough piece of work," and that's why Kelly Bishop loved her

Kelly Bishop is not a mom in real life, but that doesn't mean she doesn't know a thing or two about how to be one. Emily Gilmore was "kind of a tough piece of work," she said reflecting on her stand-out role as the matriarch on the perennially wholesome early aughts comedy-drama "Gilmore Girls." "She's going to say what she means and try to get what she wants, and I love a woman like that."

And that's exactly the sort of woman Bishop is during our "Salon Talks" conversation. Her sparkling verve — which fans know through her portrayal of Emily — has seen different iterations across her accomplished career.

During our chat, Bishop shared stories, from her early days as a dancer in New York, during which she held a leading role in the original production of "A Chorus Line," to playing Baby's mom in the '80s classic, "Dirty Dancing." Bishop's life, now chronicled in "The Third Gilmore Girl," is a testament to the ultra-rare quality of knowing exactly who you are.

Watch my "Salon Talks with the Tony Award-winning dancer and beloved actor to hear more about why she decided not to have children, how therapy has changed her life and why dogs have always been her closest companions.

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

At the recent Emmy Awards, there was a discussion about TV moms and how their role has evolved over time. How would you describe Emily Gilmore as a TV mom?

She's a different kind of TV mom from the ones I grew up with, with "Leave It To Beaver" and things like that. She's definitely a mother, but she's kind of a tough piece of work, and I'd imagine there are more mothers like that on television now. But she was rather unusual, and yet it's played off so beautifully with Lorelai and Rory and that nice relationship. So you'd have two different kinds of moms.

Fans do love Emily for her honesty and for her strong sense of self. What did you love most about her?

She was just fun to play. She's strong and doesn't worry about hurting people's feelings, really. And she's going to say what she means and try to get what she wants, and I love a woman like that.

"Gilmore Girls" creator Amy Sherman-Palladino wrote the foreword of your memoir. She saw many, many actresses read for the role of Emily, saying that she would basically know her when she walked in. Can you talk about the experience of trying out for that role and how you felt once you'd actually gotten it?

I really worked on that role. I don't audition anymore; I refuse to do it. I've done it enough. At this point in my life, I say, "They know what I look like. They know what I can do. If they want me, they can hire me. If not, just leave me alone." But I worked hard on [the "Gilmore Girls' audition] and always did because I believe as an actor, a major part of your job is to do the words as written, to present what the author wanted.

And so, I really worked on that role. And in a sense, almost knew it without the pages, which I also did at other auditions. I would walk in with the pages, but I wouldn't put them down because I thought that would indicate that this is my final performance. If you see me holding pages, this is my work in progress. But I was kind of giving my final performance or what it was at that point. So it made it a stronger presentation, and I went in, I did it. I thought I nailed it. I thought it was good. And then I left.

There were a couple of other women there for the same role. I went home. And you wait for a little bit. And I was waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and calling my agent, saying, "Have you heard from them?" And as it turns out, she really was looking for the Rory and Lorelai characters. They were the leads of the show. What I didn't know is that she had already decided, and I thought, "Well, are they going to call me back out to California and have me read for the studio?" They didn't do that and I'm going, "I'm kind of giving up hope here."

I asked Amy about it probably a couple of years later. I said, "How many other women?" Because I was always curious about who I was up against that I didn't know. She said, "We saw a lot of women. I told them that I'd already found you and so just to stop bothering me with that." But I didn't know that. So I was waiting and waiting. Then finally my agent called and said, "You won't have to go to California to read for the studio." And I was like, "Uh oh." He said, "Because they're offering you the job." And I went, "Oh! OK, cool." So that's how I got it. I thought I did a really good audition. I just didn't know. You don't know.

Emily Gilmore comes alive through her relationships with her daughter Lorelai, granddaughter Rory, and husband Richard. What were your favorite things about working with that cast?

Lauren [Graham] is truly like a daughter to me now. We hit it off from day one, we just got along great. I love her acting, I love her intelligence and her sense of humor. Alexis [Bledel] was much more shy, partly because she was kind of a new actress. She wasn't used to the banter and the camaraderie and all of that. So I got to know her somewhat, but not a lot. And Edward Herrmann was a dream. He was my age, a theater actor, and it was just a joy to work with him.

You won respective Tony Awards on the same night in 1976.

I remember looking in the drawer at my house, and it was an old newspaper clipping, all yellowed. And I looked at it and I went, "Oh my God. We won the same night." And there we are standing there. 

You've shared that his death in 2014 had a really profound impact on you and on Emily as a character.

We had gone to Austin to do a big television, theater, film thing. The "Gilmore Girls" part was Alexis and myself and Lauren Graham and Amy. We'd had a little question-and-answer period in the theater and somebody asked about where our lives would be now. I said, "If he were with us, I would say probably very much the same place, keep moving on doing the same thing. But now that he's gone, this is a whole new world for Emily. This is completely different."

Then when we did the reboot and they gave me the story, there was some place to go with it, something to explore. So, in a peculiar way, it made it really good for me as much as I would not have chosen that. Amy's father had died a couple of years before, and I know that that was hard on her, but I think she had observed her mother being a widow. She had that information to put into Emily's character, and I just went with it. I thought she had some wonderful stuff in there.

There are quite a few animals featured in the book. You write about how you and your German Shepherd, Venus, were close companions and that you tend to prefer the company of animals to humans. Have animals always been a part of your life?

They have. When I was growing up, my first memories as a little girl were. . . there was a Pekingese that I used to tease relentlessly, and she used to bite me. My mother, rightly so, yelled at me because I was bothering the dog. Not long after that, we had a beautiful English setter named Pete who apparently had come to the door. This is before my memories even, but literally one Christmas Eve [he] came to the door. They later found the owner of that dog, but he apparently came to the house and saw how happy the dog was and just said, "You take him." Then I remember we adopted a pair of Siamese cats that had become homeless somehow. So we had cats. And that just kind of continued.

When I went to New York as a dancer at 18 years old, I had to leave the current dog behind. I just thought it was hard on dogs and hard on you to have a dog in the city. When I was married in my first marriage, and I didn't really want to have a pet or didn't want to have a dog, he had to go off and get this puppy. He brought this puppy home and I said, "I really, really don't want a dog." My feeling is that he didn't buy it, he traded it for a rifle, apparently. I didn't even know he had a rifle. He was a compulsive gambler and a bit of a philanderer, and I thought, I know what he was doing. "She'll stay home and take care of this puppy and I can run around and do what I want," which is exactly what [happened]. But that dog was magnificent. She was great. And then I picked up a couple of cats in Vegas prior to that. So I've always had animals around me.

You write so beautifully of your relationship with your second husband, Lee Leonard. You've said that after his passing, you're looking for serenity, and you've spoken openly about your mental health journey and working with a cognitive behavioralist. What's been the biggest benefit of therapy for you?

I gave myself the gift in "A Chorus Line" because I was finally making money on a regular basis and I wanted to explore a little bit more about myself, mainly because I kept finding myself in a relationship where I would hit the three-year mark and want to be out of there. "I'm bored, I'm bored, I'm bored." I thought, "Now this is a pattern. So we've got to break this pattern." Since I had the money and my dearest friend was seeing this therapist and I saw her improvement, I thought, "OK, I'll go to him." It was several sessions in before he explained to me that he was a strict Freudian, which meant I was supposed to come three times a week for five years. Wasn't part of my plan. [Laughter.]

I never went three times a week. I went twice a week for quite a while and grew a lot and learned a lot. I think it always helps an actor to explore psychology because that's where we go when we're trying to find a character. I benefited so much from that and felt that actually, I probably wouldn't have gotten together with Lee if I hadn't done that because he was a pretty powerful man. And I think I would've been intimidated by him. So I had changed that much.

Then, after he passed, and I was horrified by it but expected it, I was trying to find the new me. Peace of mind, serenity, focus, I'm not looking for happy, I don't want to love. And somebody told me about a therapist, that's a cognitive behavioralist, that she was going to who had helped her. So I said, "See if your doctor knows anyone out in my area where I live," and he recommended this woman whom I just have such a good time with. She even explained to me, "It is not psychoanalysis. I'm going to talk to you. I'm not going to make you just sit there and talk to me." So there's a lot of exchange going on. She has suggestions, and so she's very comfortable. If she weren't my therapist, I think I'd want her to be my friend.

You observe in your memoir that you and Lee were both on the same page about not wanting to have children, and Emily and Lorelai do have a pretty fraught relationship. Did playing an iconic TV mom ever make you think differently about motherhood in general?

It didn't. I had made that decision when I was a child for some reason. I had very sophisticated thoughts when I was a child. More, it was because I wanted a career, I wanted to dance, I wanted freedom, and I knew the responsibility of having a child. A child becomes priority, as they should, and I wasn't ready for that. But I gave myself permission to change my mind, and I figured you have to do it by the time you're 35. Realizing in those days we didn't have a lot of the testing we have where you find out if the fetus is healthy and everything. I thought 35 seemed to change things. I got around that age, and of course, I had that unfortunate abortion and still knew I did not want to have children.

The odd thing is that when Lee and I were on our very first date, and it was just dinner, we had a very long discussion about the fact that he didn't want to have children. He explained to me that he had dated and been together with several women who he was really fond of, that he could be quite madly in love with them, but they wanted to have a family. And he knew he wasn't built for that. He does have a daughter whom he loves and who lives with me now, but that was not his plan. So that was a great relief to me, a great relief. I didn't have to worry about that to the point where a year after we were married, I went ahead and had tubal ligation because he didn't want kids, I didn't want kids. Let's just fix it.

Your career began notably on Broadway as a dancer. You originated the role of Sheila in "A Chorus Line." What was it like transitioning from dancing to acting?

It's exactly what I wanted to do. The last few years of my chorus life, I was trying to figure out how to maneuver myself into principal roles. They would naturally have to be in musicals because I was a musical performer, but I'm not a singer. I knew that that was a little tricky. If you want a principal role in a musical, you should be able to sing. I can sing. I just am not a singer. And things just evolve. If you find the right role, it is more of a character role. That was starting to happen for me, but then we did that tape session that turned into "A Chorus Line," and it was a perfect situation because to me, it was a play with music.

I was acting in it, that was my job, and the nice thing was I knew how to dance and I was a very good dancer. It just opened the door because the show was, even if I hadn't won the Tony Award, that show was huge. It took over the world, and it even saved New York in my mind because New York was really in dire straits talking about bankruptcy. The spirit of New York was so depressed, and somehow that show, I don't think it was only that show, but we were involved and it just kind of revived things. Stuff started happening and coming back and forth, all of us who were in that show, it was so beneficial.

You also starred in "Dirty Dancing" as Baby's mother, Marjorie. In the book, you say that working on the last number in that movie, "I've Had The Time Of My Life" encapsulated the whole experience of being a part of that film. What memories come to mind when you hear that song?

It's always that last scene, which we shot forever and ever and ever, and I was perfectly happy to sit there for another two weeks and shoot it. Jerry Orbach was just a remarkable man and a wonderful actor, but very, very bright, and he sort of hung around with me. Then I started realizing he would take off for a week, and I was there [on set] in either Virginia or North Carolina, and thought, "Why am I staying here? I don't do any scenes without him." So I started leaving and going home the same week he did. And of course, people think there's something funny going on between us, which there wasn't.

There's a golf scene in "Dirty Dancing," and the golf club there was just so happy to have us. I didn't have my clubs with me and he didn't have his, but they let us come on the course, gave us a cart, and loaned us clubs. We didn't have to pay for anything, and we got to play golf, that was great fun.

There were just so many nice people involved. I really enjoyed the crew, and I always have appreciated them, but I just never got to know them when I was just popping in and out doing a role. So it was just a good feeling.

You look so glamorous in all the photographs in "The Third Gilmore Girl." What was it like to take a trip back down memory lane as you compiled all those photos for the book?

That was the fun of it. I knew I wanted a lot of photographs, but I didn't know what was really appropriate. I knew there were certain ones I absolutely wanted in there, so I managed to, with the help of my publisher, hire a photo archivist. She came over to my house and went through all the stuff that I have, and took a lot of stuff with her.

And then I found out I had to pay royalties to a lot of people who had a picture of me like the New York Public Library and the Martha Swope estate. That even happened with the lyrics in the book "At The Ballet." Somebody else owns those lyrics. I had to pay royalties, and I'm going, "Wait a minute, that's my story. Those are my words, and I have to pay you?" But I wanted to put them in the book because I thought they blended nicely with the story. So yeah, the pictures, I would've put more in if I could, but I was happy with what we selected and agreed to it.