Lauren Graham pulled the curtains on receiving zero residuals from Netflix for Gilmore Girls

Lauren Graham, one of the three Gilmore Girls, who played Lorelai Gilmore, recently revealed during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live that she has earned no residuals through Netflix since the heartwarming show was made available on the streaming platform.

Gilmore Girls, the fan-loved drama created by Amy Sherman Palladino centered around mother-daughter relationships spanning three generations, was made available on Netflix in 2014. Since then, it quickly rose among the most viewed shows on any streaming platform.

The show first aired on The WB in 2000 and became a chart-topping series for the network throughout the seven seasons(2000-2007) that it ran. Nine years after the seventh and final season, Netflix revived the series for a miniseries titled Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. The miniseries witnessed the return of Lorelai and her daughter Rory Gilmore played by Lauren Graham and Alexis Badel.

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New Audiences Reached Through Streaming of Gilmore Girls

The show garnered critical acclaim upon its initial release as the audience loved the unique, witty, and fast-paced dialogue exchange between the mother-daughter duo Lorelai and Rory played by Lauren Graham and Alexis Badel. Having spent more than a decade on streaming platforms, the show continues to hold popularity, among new and old fans who religiously rewatch. Graham explains that the show has trickled into the lives of new audiences, like "younger people, older people, men, whose kids or wives probably have forced them to watch it."

When questioned by Jimmy Kimmel, host of the talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live, about the new life of the show since its revival on Netflix, Lauren Graham reveals that Gilmore Girls has reached a much wider audience than "we were reaching on the WB" referring to the initial air of the show on the WB network.

On being further questioned about the residuals that she's earned from the show Gilmore Girls being available for streaming for almost a decade, Lauren Graham said apologetically, almost as if she's revealing a well-kept secret that "there really are no residuals on Netflix..yeah, sorry." She continued to add that she's "been paid in love" referring to the stronghold that the show continues to have over its audience. "Residuals" refer to the extra compensation that the performers (writers, producers, actors, etc) receive when their work is used beyond its initial purpose of creation, for example, revival into miniseries, or being streamed on services such as Netflix, Disney+, etc.

Similar claims were made by Gavin Polone, another key producer of the show alongside Amy Sherman Palladino, in 2016 when he sued several divisions of the Warner Bros studio. Polone claimed that he had not received his fair share of the profits from the revenues that the show earned from streaming after its original run (2000-2007) and from the Netflix miniseries revival Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. Polone accused the studio of "manipulate(ing) its back room accounting and distort(ing) the interpretation of its contractual obligations" to prevent Polone and his firm Hofflund/Polone from receiving their share of the profit.