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Throughout the majority of her career in the entertainment industry, beginning with her Broadway debut in 1975, Kelly Bishop was not interested in being in the public eye. The dancer turned actress, best known for her roles in A Chorus Line, Dirty Dancing, and Gilmore Girls, had a passion for the arts and wanted to be a working actress for as long as Hollywood would have her. Even now, at the age of 80, she wants to continue taking on new roles. But all the while, she wanted her private life to remain just that.
“I never had any interest in being a star or being a major celebrity, doing red carpets and being on the covers of magazines. It’s not something that appealed to me,” Bishop tells Rolling Stone. “Watching some of the reality shows like The Bachelor and all of those things, everybody kind of wants to be a star and their fantasy of what being a star is doesn’t really take into account all of the work it takes. I just thought, ‘I want to do the work, I don’t want to have to worry about my image.’”
But in her new memoir The Third Gilmore Girl, published by Gallery Books on Sept. 17, Bishop bares all. Over the years, she says, many people have suggested she document her story, given the high-profile projects she worked on, the showbiz legends she worked with, and even her rocky personal life — from her divorce from a philandering, gambling-addicted husband to a subsequent affair with a married man, and even having an abortion at a time when it was taboo for women to openly discuss.
It was Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino who finally convinced her to put pen to paper. Fans of the beloved series will be happy to know that Sherman-Palladino even wrote the foreword for Bishop’s book, retelling the moment she decided to cast Bishop as Gilmore Girls’ matriarch: “Kelly was regal, with a whiskey voice and perfect comic timing. She sat down, crossed her fabulous dancer’s legs, and opened her mouth,” Sherman-Palladino writes of Bishop’s audition. “Three words in — I knew it. This was Emily. There were no second choices…Without Kelly it never would’ve worked.”
In her vulnerable and revealing account of her life, Bishop discusses her childhood, sharing how her abusive father and her parents’ tumultuous relationship ended up being the inspiration for her character in A Chorus Line. She also goes into detail about her failed first marriage, subsequent love affairs, a secret abortion, sexism in Hollywood, and her 37-year marriage to her husband Lee Leonard, who died of cancer in 2018. It’s all taught her some very valuable lessons she’s finally ready to share.
“[In the book] I wrote about when I was young and living in Los Angeles and having a true epiphany. This thought came to me: ‘I’m so lucky to be me because I get to hang around with myself,’” Bishop says. “That’s a very life-affirming thing. It’s so important that we love ourselves. Don’t let someone else define whether you’re lovable. Make yourself lovable, and if you’re doing things that you don’t think are appropriate or lovable, well, stop it. Do something else.”
In your memoir, you describe how your Chorus Line character, Sheila Bryant, a dancer who uses ballet as a form of escape, was inspired by your life. Even the lyrics to the song “At the Ballet,” about a cheating husband who creates pain and chaos at home, were lifted from your childhood. What do you think about the impact that show has had on theater and pop culture?
First of all, that’s a real ego stroke. It started out as just a workshop. It wasn’t a show and it didn’t have a title. It was just an experiment. I wanted to make the transition from dancer to actor and I knew that would be difficult, so I thought, I’ve got to find a way to show people that this is what I do and this is who I am. In my mind, [A Chorus Line] is a play about dancers, so I thought it was perfect, because I know how to dance; I’ve got that locked down. Now I want to go and express myself as an actor. When they came up with “At the Ballet,” the day that [director] Michael Bennett called me in the room and played it for me, I was completely blown away. It’s a beautiful song. I think it’s the best song in the show, actually. I knew that it was [based on] me, of course, because it was my story, but it was also a composite of other dancers, and when you put us all together, it made Sheila.
How meaningful was the moment when you won your Tony Award for playing Sheila in A Chorus Line?
Amazing, because I truly did not think I’d win. I secretly thought Priscilla Lopez [who originated the role of dancer Diana Morales] would win. I love Priscilla. She was my very best friend then and she’s my very best friend now, so I will always support her and she will always support me. Her character was really popular in the show and she was very, very good in it and it was just common knowledge that she was going to win. Part of me thought, “Well, I’m really doing the acting here. I really would like to win,” but I accepted it completely, because I was getting the opportunity I had so wanted and I was doing my thing, I was acting. So I was willing to be very generous about it and a big girl and not ruin the evening for her by sitting around pouting. I just accepted that. So when I won, it was astonishing to me. I didn’t plan anything, including a speech, because I didn’t think I was going to win.
How do you think your relationships with your parents impacted your life?
My mother was just so influential and she bent over backwards to provide me with the opportunity to be able to dance. My father didn’t want to pay for my dance lessons. It wasn’t that we couldn’t afford it, frankly I think it was a way of punishing my mother just to be mean. My mother was a very good classical pianist — she probably could have gone on to be a professional except that she was too shy to want to have an audience — and being the resourceful woman that she was, she offered herself up as the pianist for the class at my ballet school. Then when she decided to move after their divorce, she thought Northern California seemed like a good location because that’s where my ballet teachers were moving, and off we went. My father was a whole other thing. I’m sorry that he was where he was. I think it was the alcohol more than anything. He could certainly be a decent guy, but he had a raging temper and a real drinking problem, and it was just unresolvable. It’s unfortunate.
In the book, you discuss having an abortion when you got pregnant after your divorce. Why was this something you wanted to reveal?
Originally, as I was writing the book, it wasn’t in there. It wasn’t something I particularly wanted to share with anyone. It was very private and, for me, it was very sad. I was just going to leave it alone. [But] when Roe v. Wade got killed by the Supreme Court [in 2022] I saw more major celebrities than I am coming out saying, “I had an abortion.” I thought, “Darn it, I’m putting my two cents in there, too.” I decided to include it because it’s a book and I could go into detail and explain exactly how I was thinking, what the process was, and what I had to go through. I’m very pro-choice. Those who are anti-choice, or however you want to describe that side, are entitled to their feelings, but there’s a sense that [they think] you just pop in and go, “I’d like to have an abortion today” and your provider says, “Sure, it’s going to cost you this much money, you want to do it later this afternoon?” I wanted it to be very clear to the other side that this is not done in an irresponsible way by abortion providers. Everybody takes this very seriously and that’s why they make you wait, because you might change your mind. I thought that was so responsible and it made me feel better about the whole process, as much as you could really feel good about it. I thought, they’re protecting the women, they’re protecting the potential child, and they’re doing everything they can to make sure everybody’s on the same page here. I thought, people have to know that.
We also learn in the book that in 2003 you went to a pro-choice rally in Washington, D.C., along with Amy Sherman-Palladino and Gilmore Girls producer Helen Pai in honor of the Roe v. Wade anniversary. What was it like to be there that day?
It was so inspiring. I have political opinions about things — I always vote, I sign petitions, and do things like that — but I’ve never been an activist. The march was on the anniversary of [the passage of] Roe v. Wade, and having grown up in the 1950s, when abortion was illegal was a terrible thing, I hate to say it, but getting pregnant was like getting polio or something. You were in trouble unless you were a rich kid and then they figured out other ways to help you out. But I was so relieved when Roe v. Wade became law. It was just such a breath of fresh air because that was something that you didn’t have to worry about anymore. I wanted to celebrate that on the anniversary. I was so overwhelmed by the number of people. Of course, I expected tons of women, and there were, but there were so many families there. It was just a real mixture of America. There were speeches, but when it came to the march itself, it was quiet. It was just a very peaceful walk. It felt wonderful.
How are you feeling about the upcoming presidential election?
I’m very excited. I don’t think I have to explain to anyone but I’m a liberal. Period. I like Joe Biden — I think he’s a very honorable man, he’s smart, and he’s certainly experienced. But we all knew the way [the election] was feeling because of his age, which I get on some level, because I get tired, too. I’m 80, and he’s only one year older than me. He’s not decrepit, but that night of the debate, he was dreadful. It just broke my heart. He seemed to be completely lost. So I think most of us who were on the left side were very discouraged. Then when he supported Kamala Harris’ run, it was such a relief. There’s so much enthusiasm now. I had been very concerned about the young voters, but now young voters want to get out there. I want to feel like there’s somebody really smart and energetic [running].
And maybe the first woman president.
Finally. I remember when Hillary [Clinton] was running and people didn’t like her. They’d say, “She’s so cold.” I would say, “I don’t want a girlfriend. I want a president.” She shouldn’t have to be warm and fuzzy. Just give me a good brain.
Speaking of women who are not warm and fuzzy but have a good brain, the role of Emily Gilmore came to you later in your career but has had a lasting impact on pop culture. How does it feel to know you’ve touched so many lives through Gilmore Girls?
I absolutely love it. I was so surprised when young people would say, “Emily’s my favorite character.” I’d go, “Really? Not Rory?” I couldn’t figure it out. But now it tickles me. I just love it, because I love playing Emily. The longer we got into the show, the more Amy would put in even just a couple of sentences that would illustrate a little bit more depth in Emily — more about her insecurities and the tension in her and her always trying to do the right thing. I thought it made her much more vulnerable. That’s what I was thinking about her on my own but I never discussed it with anyone. When I was delivering the lines, I didn’t have to say what was going on, but I had to know that there was a full human being inside there.
You don’t mince words about Amy and her husband Dan Palladino leaving Gilmore Girls before Season Seven over a conflict with Warner Bros., saying the studio “deserved to lose” the show to Netflix in 2014. How do you think the original series would have ended if Amy and Dan stayed on?
It was a struggle. If they had stayed for the seventh year, we probably would have gotten to a tenth season or even more. That said, this is the way it panned out. I got along with the executives at Warner Bros. but I always felt they didn’t quite know how different Gilmore Girls was from those other teenage shows that they had on the WB. It really wasn’t until Netflix picked up the series and it just took off again [that they understood]. Netflix and Warner Bros. teamed up to do those four extra episodes, so by then I’m going, OK, Warner Bros. just got it, and of course they’re reaping the benefits of it. They’re all making a lot of money off this — not the actors, but everybody else. And now the show continually gets a new audience. I find it delightful, because I think it’s a good show, it’s got a good spirit to it. There’s a deep kindness and love between the mother and daughter, on top of which it’s also very, very funny and intelligent. The smarter you are, the more you enjoy it. There’s a lot going on there.
How did it feel to revisit Gilmore Girls in Netflix’s A Year in the Life, especially following the 2014 death of your friend and scene partner Edward Herrmann, who played Emily’s husband Richard Gilmore?
It was tough. I knew even before I got the script, it’s going to be a big change for Emily. Everybody else hopefully will have grown and had other experiences and relationships will have changed. But with Emily, it’s going to be a whole new world, and it was. In the oddest way, the fact that we didn’t have Ed gave me probably the best storyline, because Emily was exploring constantly. Amy’s father had died [before the revival] and she’d been very close to him. She was able to draw on her mother’s behavior, being a widow, to inform Emily. During that time, it was kind of awful for me, because my husband was so sick and he was older. I kind of sat there every once in a while and thought, “Is this sort of practice for the real deal?” Of course, you can never anticipate or prepare yourself for that, you don’t know [how it feels] until it hits you. But overall it was a wonderful experience for me. Amy made it work and now she’s on to other things. The fact that Gilmore Girls ended when it did afforded the opportunity for her to move on, and all of us to move on, in theory.
Would you ever reunite for another chapter of Gilmore Girls?
I’d do another chapter but I think that is always dependent on the main characters. It would have to work for Lauren [Graham], Alexis [Bledel], and Scott [Patterson] primarily, and me. We all felt very proud of that show, because it was a quality show. I think we’d be happy to go back and give it a shot again. I’m just not sure Amy and Dan would be that interested because they’re expanding their horizons.
In your book, you mention how Amy wrote a part for you in her Amazon series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel after your husband died and you expressed to her a desire to be distracted by work. What did that mean to you?
My agent called and said that casting had offered me this role and I thought, it’s not necessarily from Amy; it could be that it was just out there. So I sent her a text and I asked, “Is this something that you want me to do?” She came back and said, “Yes, yes, yes.” Then I realized that was almost a direct result of the fact that when I’d had lunch with Amy and Lauren [Graham] a few weeks before, I was talking about the emptiness of my life and Amy thought to herself, “Oh, I know how to fix that.” That character I played was a hoot.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a terrific show, and because it was Amazon there was so much more money in the coffers, I think Amy said, “I need this and I need that,” and they go, “OK.” Every episode looked like a full movie. Look at those crowd scenes with 600 people. I like it because all those background players were getting paid. It was high-quality production value on that show.
You recount numerous instances of sexism over your career —pushing back on producers wanting you to wear costumes that felt sexier than they needed to be for the roles you played, fighting to be paid the same amount as your male counterparts, feeling marginalized by men in positions of power. How do you think the treatment of women in the business has improved over time?
We know there was a thing called a casting couch. That’s the way it was. The powerful men could demand certain favors if you wanted the role. I think that women are more powerful now than they were and feel less likely to have to put up with that. They’re less likely to say, “OK.” The real thing that’s interesting now is they’re more likely to say, “Hey, everybody. You know what just happened to me?” That really changed things, too, the whole #MeToo movement. I’ve talked to my contemporaries, women in the business, and that was sort of the way it was every place in the 1940s and the 1950s and even the early 1960s. Women had to put up with being called “dear” and being patted on the rear end and getting a hug from a producer as a greeting and then realizing it was just a little bit more of a hug than you really wanted. We just put up with it and I think women now aren’t going to do that. I also think men are hopefully a lot more aware now, know that’s not appropriate behavior, and have accepted that as a good change.
What do you hope people take away from your life story?
I would like people to follow their dreams, to just go for it if you love it. I have this theory: If you’re good at something, you love it and if you love something, you’re good at it. Go find what you love and if that doesn’t work out, it’s surprising how often there’s something standing right next to that thing you wanted to do that is complementary to your dream, and you can make money on it, you can get hired, and you’ll still get enjoyment out of it. What a gift to be getting paid for something you enjoy doing.
