Sally Struthers Says She Got Her “Gilmore Girls” Role in Part Because of Her 'Diminutive' Size

Sometimes height does matter!

Sally Struthers, who played Babette Dell in Gilmore Girls, shared on a recent episode of the Let’s Talk About That! podcast that she had been working in a two-woman musical in Las Vegas called Always ... Patsy Cline when she got a call from her manager about an audition.

“ '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,’ ” Struthers recalled.

“ ‘And her name is Babette, and they're looking for a diminutive actress to play it,’ ” she continued. “ 'They're not seeing anyone over five feet tall. And then they're gonna cast someone very tall to be your jazz musician husband.' ”

Related: The 'Gilmore Girls' Cast: Where Are They Now?

She recalled that she worked late that Sunday night before going into her audition on Monday, and when the producers and writers finally saw her, she got to know them and chatted for a bit — a tactic she jokingly referred to as the “divert, inflect.”

“And [I] just talked and talked about being short and some of my experiences only being this high and all that as an adult,” Struthers, 77, said. “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!’ ”

Struthers noted that she was grateful for getting the chance to work on the show, as “every single moment” on the set was a “joyful” one — especially since a good friend of hers, Liz Torres, was also cast in the show as Miss Patty, the dance school teacher.

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“And we got to work together again, but we're awful together,” the All in the Family actress joked. “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.”

She also recalled her first day on set and bonding with her costar Ted Rooney, who played her character’s tall husband Morey Dell. She said she eventually realized that they had grown up in the same town and had close ties after recognizing his name on the call sheet.

Related: Sally Struthers Says She Was ‘Fat-Shamed’ by Betty White, Calls Her a ‘Very Passive-Aggressive Woman’

“I said, ‘So you are Ted Rooney son of Ed Rooney, my high school math teacher,’ ” she recalled. “He says, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘So you grew up in Portland too?’ ‘Uh huh.’ ‘And you went to Grand High School too?’ ‘Uh huh.’ "

She continued, “I said, ‘What year were you?’ He says, ‘Well, I look older than you. 'cause how tall and lanky I am, but I'm actually younger than you. I think I was a freshman when you were graduating as a senior.' ”

Those weren’t the only connections she made on the show, as she went on to praise Gilmore Girls stars Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel, whom she said it was “wonderful” to work with. She also thanked Gilmore Girls creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino for creating the show, which spanned seven seasons on the WB and was revived for Netflix in the 2016 limited series Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.

“It was joyful,” she reiterated of her time on the show.

Gilmore Girls and Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life are available to stream on Netflix.

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