It's a good weekend for binging. In addition to stuffing ourselves with leftover turkey sandwiches, there is also some great new material to binge watch on Netflix. Namely, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life has been released, to the joy of fans who had been waiting nearly a decade to find out what happened to the denizens of Stars Hollow. While the four 90 minute episodes have provided tons of plot twists and excitement, perhaps the biggest WTF moment was that Emily Gilmore finally found a maid that she liked. Enter Berta and her extended family who had moved themselves into the Gilmore house. But what you didn't know is that Berta is played by an actress that is already on the show- Rose Abdoo aka Gypsy the mechanic.
Despite Berta having a pretty substantial amount of appearances in Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, many fans (myself included) didn't put it all together; Berta is Gypsy with a silly accent and even sillier wig. The good folks over at TV Line who realized that Rose Abdoo was playing dual roles, and now Lauren Graham herself has elaborated regarding how this double role came to be. She said on Twitter:
Well, there you go. Sometimes you just need to be at the right place at the right time. Rose Abdoo now understands this first hand, and got some extra screen time and presumably money out of the deal.
Berta is one of the more surprisingly delightful new characters in A Year in the Life. While nobody is able to communicate with the maid and her family, the audience is occasionally privy to her dialogue through captions. That is how we learn that Berta is just a nice hard working lady who wants to be with her family. During the flashback to Richard's funeral in "Winter", we see Berta reassure Emily that everything will be ok, and that she will be there to help Emily with whatever she needs. This immediately made me adore the weird character- a feeling that has only increased since learning that it was actually Gypsy the whole time.
Rose Abdoo is not the first Gilmore Girls actor to play multiple roles in the series. This practice started with Mad TV actress Alex Borstein. Borstein was originally supposed to play Sookie in the series, but her schedule was simply too hectic at the time- making way for Melissa McCarthy's star making moment. But Borstein did appear in a few roles on the series. She played Drella the Harpist at the Independence Inn for the first few episodes, and eventually took on the role of the Gilmore's quirky stylist Miss Celine. Actress Marion Ross played Richard's mother Lorelai for a handful of episodes. But after Trix was killed off, she played another Gilmore- Marilyn. Richard's cousin Marilyn was present in two episodes in Seasons 4 and 5, to hilarious results.
You can currently watch Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, complete with two Rose Abdoo characters, on Netflix.
