From 2000 to 2007, Agena ― who’s of Japanese descent ― endeared herself to a era of viewers as Lane Kim, the very best pal of Alexis Bledel’s Rory Gilmore, on the beloved comedy-drama sequence.
Showing on the “Dear Felicity” podcast this week to mirror on the expertise, the actor acknowledged that taking part in the position was a “survival mode situation” ― although she’s grateful to have had the prospect to carry some much-needed Asian illustration to the small display screen.
“For myself, it was such a survival mode situation, and I didn’t kind of think of it that way at the time,” she stated.
On the time of her “Gilmore Girls” casting, Agena was 27, greater than a decade older than her 16-year-old character. The Hawaiian-born actor additionally stated she doesn’t assume she’d be thought-about for the position of Kim, who was Korean American, if “Gilmore Girls” had been being produced in 2024.
“The best thing is to have a Korean American writer [and a] Korean American actor,” she stated. “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.”
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Still, Agena said, she appreciates the love “Gilmore Girls” followers have for Lane “because I love her, too.”
“When I meet someone who knows ‘Gilmore Girls’ or who loves Lane, it’s like, I recognize that love,” she added. “I see that you love that person.”
“I think what [the character] was for people was different than what it was for me,” she explained. “So, 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, because I get that comment a lot ― about what it was like for them to see someone like that onscreen.”
Since “Gilmore Girls” went off the air in 2007, Agena has gone on to seem on “Private Practice” and “Scandal.” From 2017 to 2018, she had a recurring position as Pam Bradley on Netflix’s “13 Reasons Why,” and a yr later, returned to community tv as Dr. Edrisa Tanaka on Fox’s “Prodigal Son.”
Listen to Keiko Agena’s ‘Dear Felicity’ interview below. Her comments on ‘Gilmore Girls’ begin around the 1:05 mark.
