'Gilmore Girls' Star Keiko Agena Just Revealed How She REALLY Feels About Controversial Lane Kim
Gilmore Girls simply wouldn’t be the same without Lane Kim. Played by Keiko Agena, Lane is much more than just Rory’s best friend. She’s feisty, hilarious, and can totally keep up with Lorelai and Rory’s hectic conversations (something not EVERYONE in Stars Hollow can do cough Kirk cough). However, the actress recently revealed how she really feels about playing a complicated, and sometimes controversial character like Lane.
Here's what Keiko Agena had to say about playing Lane Kim on Gilmore Girls.
Even though Lane and Rory are inseparable throughout the series’ seven-season run, Keiko recently revealed she’s actually super close to two other Gilmore Girls cast members: John Cabrera (who played Brian) and Sean Gunn (who starred as our beloved Kirk)!
“There is this kind of lovely nostalgia for that time, and yet also we have years since then,” she says on a recent episode of the Dear Felicity rewatch podcast (via People). “I [have] gone to both of their weddings. Our friendship is part Gilmore Girls and appreciation for that crazy time, and then part just like a million other things.”
Saeed Adyani/Netflix
The insane nostalgia surrounding Gilmore Girls means that everyone has their own annual Gilmore Girls rewatch…and that as we get farther away from the 2000s, the more glaring some of the show’s choices are. Fans have been vocal about Lane’s story arc on the show (namely the fact she had to shelve her dreams of being a rockstar when she got pregnant), and Keiko herself has thought about it more critically in recent years.
“The best thing is to have a Korean American writer [and a] Korean American actor,” she says. “I don't think that that role, cast that way, would happen today. But at that time, in 2000, it was such a different time that I definitely know I wouldn't have said no or pulled myself out of that situation at that time...Now it's just a mix of just having gratitude for having gone through that experience and having that experience.”
But even with its flaws, no one can deny how special Stars Hollow and the Gilmores are — and how much Lane has meant for people. Brit + Co writer Aleena Malik notes how Lane's experiences "mirrored many of my own, and, at a time when there was such little Asian representation, this was extremely impactful."
“In a weird way, I feel like I want to honor the experience that people had from the show, and what it meant to them, especially young Asian people," Keiko Agena says. "Because I get that comment a lot, about what it was like for them to see someone like that on screen.”
“I think I'm at a transition point in my life where I have to let go of the pressure that I put on myself to be the best version of who it is that I think that you love,” she continues. “Because I love her too. I can tell, when I meet someone who knows Gilmore Girls or who loves Lane, it's like, I recognize that love. I see that you love that person.”
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