While catching up with Milo Ventimiglia at the Entertainment Weekly and People Upfronts party Monday night (he stars in NBC’s upcoming show This Is Us with Mandy Moore), we couldn’t help but ask him about another one of his projects: Netflix’s Gilmore Girls reboot. Ventimiglia is set to return to play Jess, Rory’s teenage rebel turned erudite book publisher ex-boyfriend, in three out of the four new episodes. Last we saw Jess, he grew into a more evolved version of himself, imparting some enlightening advice to temporary Yale dropout Rory. So what’s he doing now?
“He matured into a very decent guy,” Ventimiglia said. “A very, very decent guy, but he never lost his angle of disdain for things that pissed him off. But he chose to help others along in a more positive way as opposed to the angle of being an angsty teen. He grew up.” So could that mean a mature meeting of the exes — considering that sweet, cute townie Dean (Jared Padalecki) and smarmy-hot, rich college boyfriend Logan (Matt Czuchry) will overlap in one of the series’ new episodes — is in the cards?
“I don’t know, if they got together, what it would look like — or not look like,” Ventimiglia hedged. “I can neither confirm nor deny anything.” As long as it’s not a fistfight at a Stars Hollow house party (Luke would be so mad) or an awkward three-way dinner date where Logan shows up sloppy drunk.
“When boys are boys, they’re at odds, but when they grow up and you’re a man, you could look across the aisle at another man and be like, ‘Hey man, I respect you — where you are now, and I respect where you’ve been and I’m happy to see you,’” he added. Wait, what?
“Oh, no. No, fuck, that was more me than Jess,” Ventimiglia said, catching himself, in pure Mariano fashion. “If [the Palladinos] don’t write the words as Jess, I don’t know what to say as Milo. Yeah, it’s weird. I’m sorry.”
