Here's how Sally Struthers got a role on Gilmore Girls

Less than half an hour after her Gilmore Girls audition, Sally Struthers received a call that she had gotten the role. "And I mean, I was 20 minutes outside of the Warner Brothers lot, and I got a phone call from my manager saying, 'You got it!'" the actress said on the podcast Let's Talk About That!, according to Deadline.

Struthers is best known to older generations as Gloria Bunker, the daughter of Archie and Edith in the classic sitcom All in the Family. To Gilmore Girls fans and viewers of 2000s TV, she was Babette Dell, Lorelai and Rory's short, eccentric neighbor. Her manager told her that Warner Bros. wanted her to read for the series, surely because of her talent, but also because of her height.

"They want you at Warner Brothers to read for this series that's going on there called Gilmore Girls. And it's a character that lives next door to the woman and daughter who are the Gilmore girls. 'And her name is Babette, and they're looking for a diminutive actress to play it. They're not seeing anyone over five feet tall. And then they're gonna cast someone very tall to be your jazz musician husband.'"

Babette was similar to Miss Patty (Liz Torres); they gossiped and knew all the Stars Hollow rumors. In real life, Struthers and Torres were a laughing duo who enjoyed working together. "We got to work together again, but we're awful together. We [would] make each other laugh really hard, and so they kept splitting us up like teachers do in school. They kept saying, 'Liz, you go over and sit on that side of the sound stage and Sally, you sit over here, and you can't sit together…' Because we were making too much noise."