'Gilmore Girls' creator said she 'had to fight' for Melissa McCarthy

Melissa McCarthy is one of the funniest women in Hollywood right now. With roles in Bridesmaids, The Heat and Spy, McCarthy has become a household name. But what if she never got her role as Sookie St. James
in the beloved Gilmore Girls in which she spent seven years on?

That almost happened. The creator of WB’s Gilmore Girls, Amy Sherman-Palladino, said at her panel at the 2015 ATX TV Festival in Austin, Texas that McCarthy almost didn’t get her role.

“To get Melissa, I had to fight,” Sherman-Palladino said, according to E!. "They weren't sure. It wasn't that people didn't like her, but she was a different energy. She was a different kind of chick. And the part was just written for a woman, there was no body type, there was nothing specific about it. I was like, 'I need someone funny who could really act.'"

Sherman-Palladino also said, during her “Coffee With Amy Sherman-Palladino” panel, that she did not work on the last season of the show, and wasn’t invited back for the final episode, according to Deadline.

“We left it in the hands of our writers, so it wasn’t like we got Saddam Hussein to come in,” she said. “We had smart, strong writers who had been with us and trained with us. We felt like, ‘Well, if we can’t be there, at least it’s in the hands of people that we know will honor the spirit of what we set up.’”

Image courtesy of ACE/INFphoto.com