Ryan Gosling Almost Played a Football Hero on Gilmore Girls

Alongside Luke’s Diner and Miss Patty’s dance studio, Stars Hollow almost had an additional tourist attraction—Ryan Gosling.

At this weekend’s inaugural Gilmore Girls Fan Festival in Connecticut, Vulture reported that Gilmore Girls casting director Jami Rudofsky revealed that Gosling auditioned for a part on the show back in the day before he was a mega-star. Gosling reportedly would have played “a football character,” which one can only imagine would have lead to a brilliant odd-couple romance between bookish Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) and Gosling’s high school jock. It’s easy to imagine something like Crazy Stupid Love meets Gilmore Girls in a show that would give Friday Night Lights a run for the state championship of great ideas.

Lorelai (Lauren Graham) undoubtedly would have approved of the relationship, too, especially now that Gosling has officially declared that “women are better than men.”

There was just one problem, though: Rudofsky had cast Gosling in an independent film before working on Gilmore Girls and while she initially didn’t go for him “because he was late and he was blonde,” she soon realized he was actually “amazing.” When she started casting for Gilmore Girls, she asked him to audition. He tanked the try-out though. “Everyone was like, ‘Really, Jami?’” she said, according to Vulture.

Of course, this isn’t the first Gosling audition story to hit the web. Rumor has it he was also invited to audition for the Backstreet Boys.

[Vulture]