‘Gilmore Girls’: How Jess Actor Milo Ventimiglia Helped Dean Actor Jared Padalecki Behind the Scenes
On Gilmore Girls, both Jess (Milo Ventimiglia) and Dean (Jared Padaelcki) vied for Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel)’s heart. Behind the scenes, Ventimiglia and Padalecki had a bromance for the ages. It was Padalecki’s first big job so Ventimiglia took him under his wing, especially on lunch breaks.
Padalecki was a guest on Scott Patterson’s I Am All In podcast. Reminiscing about the good old days on Gilmore Girls, Padalecki shared how Ventimiglia took him under his wing.
Milo Ventimiglia taught Jared Padalecki the rules for leaving the ‘Gilmore Girls’ set for lunch
Before Gilmore Girls, Padalecki had only done one movie. Ventimiglia had already appeared on shows like Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Saved By the Bell: The New Class. He was a regular on Opposite Sex before Gilmore Girls came along so Ventimigilia knew how to work in television.
“Milo kind of showed me the ropes a little bit,” Padalecki said on I Am All In. “I just stayed in my trailer, I didn’t know. One time we were shooting and he was like, ‘Hey, we’re not in the next scene, we have lunch, do you want to go grab a bite?’ And I was like, ‘We can leave?’ And this is season 2 or season 3 or something. ‘Yeah, we just gotta be back. They’ll text me or call me, give us a half hour heads up.’ Are you sure we’re not going to get in trouble? He’s like, ‘No man, it’s fine.’”
Milo Ventimiglia introduced Jared Padalecki to vegan food
Ventimiglia still eats vegan. So he took Padalecki out for vegan lunches.
“It’s funny because we’ve always gotten along extremely well,” Padalecki said. “Even from the get go where the scripts were lining us up to be rivals on camera, we just got along. We were just buddies. He was like, ‘Hey, let’s go get a bite.’ He may still be vegan or vegetarian. There was a little vegan place. We just went and I was like, ‘Where’s the burger?’ He’s like, ‘Well, it’s a Shitake mushroom sandwich.’ I was like whatever, I’ll take it.”
‘Gilmore Girls’ was an education for Jared Padalecki
Padalecki also told the story of how Patterson gave him a talking to to keep him focused on the work. Padalecki has carried the lessons he learned from Gilmore Girls on to Supernatural and Walker.
“So he would walk me around, let me know the ropes,” Padalecki said. “Even a season into Gilmore Girls I was still, in terms of understanding the business and the way it all works, I was still a white belt. I was on the way to become a black belt proverbially but very much a white belt so Milo helped me out.”
