Gilmore Girls: Why Chad Michael Murray's Tristan Dugray Was Recast

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In 2016, Amy Sherman-Palladino's beloved series "Gilmore Girls" got a revival courtesy of Netflix — subtitled "Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life" — and a whole bunch of actors from the original series returned to reprise their roles, including the incredibly booked and busy Melissa McCarthy (who originated the role of Sookie St. James back in 2000). So what happened to Tristan Dugray, the character first played by Chad Michael Murray?

Let me paint the scene for you. Longtime best friends and academic rivals Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) and Paris Geller (Liza Weil) return to their high school, Chilton, to speak to current students; while they're there, Paris panics after thinking she sees Tristan, for whom she once carried an enormous and embarrassing torch, and drags Rory into the bathroom to hide. We barely see Tristan, but he's not played by Murray; instead, he's played by Anton Narinskiy. So what happened?

Speaking to Entertainment Tonight in 2017, Murray revealed he was asked to return but said no because he couldn't make it work. "I heard [it was happening] and I wasn't available at the time. I'm pretty positive I was having a baby – my first child," Murray recalled. "It just did not work into what we were doing at that moment, so I know that somebody went out and was Tristan, but it wasn't me." Still, he only had good things to say about his replacement. "But I hear strong work, good job, man!" he said, clapping. "You know, Tristan's secret was be that guy that every girl wants to be next to, but just isn't sure they should be and I heard he did it well." So who is Tristan in the world of "Gilmore Girls," anyway?

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A huge and recurring theme in "Gilmore Girls" is the push and pull Rory feels between a higher echelon of society and her upbringing. What I mean by that is Rory's mother Lorelai (Lauren Graham) raised her daughter modestly for her entire life ... only for Rory to be given the opportunity to attend Chilton, a top-tier preparatory school, thanks to her wealthy grandparents Emily and Richard Gilmore (Kelly Bishop and the late, great Edward Herrmann). Chilton, which is filled with extremely rich kids, feels foreign to Rory at first ... and the fact that Tristan Dugray keeps bullying her to show he has a weird crush on her certainly doesn't help.

Tristan exists, more than anything else, as a plot device to tempt Rory away from her more grounded life in Stars Hollow (and the show does this a lot better later on with the fabulously rich Logan Huntzberger, Rory's college boyfriend played by Matt Czuchry). To put a finer point on it, Tristan exists to create a love triangle between himself, Rory, and Stars Hollow High student Dean Forester (Jared Padalecki), Rory's boyfriend. I wouldn't say Tristan plays his hand well when it comes to romancing Rory. He calls her "Mary" (a joke about her being a virgin), is incredibly rude to her almost all of the time, and is just sort of a pest, clearing the day for Dean to win Rory's heart. Still, Tristan and Rory do share a moment ... but it happens somewhat shortly before he leaves the series forever.

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After Tristan is a weird jerk to Rory for a while throughout the first season of "Gilmore Girls," the two briefly connect during a party at a classmate's house after Dean and Rory break up for the first time (Dean told Rory he loved her and Rory wasn't ready to say it back, leading him to end things). After watching Tristan break up with his girlfriend in real time at the party, Rory tries to comfort him, and they kiss ... but she breaks down crying and flees the party. 

Desperate to put distance between herself and Tristan, Rory insists that he and Paris should actually go on a date, and even though it apparently goes well, Tristan tells Paris afterwards that he just wants to be friends, absolutely humiliating her. Making matters worse, Tristan tries to woo Rory again during the season 1 finale "Love, Daisies and Troubadours" by picking up tickets to a PJ Harvey concert; even though she tells him she won't go with him, Tristan tells Paris that they're going on a date, leaving the easily irked Paris incandescent with rage (at Rory, specifically). Tristan's Rory dream is dashed yet again when she tells Dean, at the front gates of Chilton, that she loves him too.

Chad Michael Murray's final appearance as Tristan comes in the season 2 episode "Run Away, Little Boy" when a jealous Dean is angry that Rory and Tristan are playing Juliet and Romeo in a performance at school. Thankfully, this whole saga ends at the close of this episode, when Tristan reveals that he's being sent to military school in North Carolina. Based on the timeline, this could be a sneaky reference to Murray's next role: "One Tree Hill."

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If you happen to be a millennial woman like me who was a pre-teen during Chad Michael Murray's run on "Gilmore Girls," you know he became a teen heartthrob in pretty short order thanks to starring roles in the aforementioned drama "One Tree Hill" and rom-coms geared to teens like "Freaky Friday" and "A Cinderella Story." Throughout the years, Murray has appeared on shows like "Southland," "Chosen," "Agent Carter," and "Riverdale" and in films like "Fruitvale Station" and "Other People's Children." He currently stars on "Sullivan's Crossing," a Canadian drama that airs on The CW, as California 'Cal' Jones, and in 2025, he reunited with co-stars Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan to appear in the long-awaited sequel "Freakier Friday."

In "Freakier Friday" — where Anna Coleman's (Lohan) daughter Harper (Julia Butters) swaps bodies with her mom and Harper's stepsister-to-be Lily Reyes (Sophia Hammons) lands in Tess Coleman's (Curtis) body — Murray reprises his role as Jake Austin, Anna's ex and the object of her desire in the first film. Lily and Harper, trapped in Anna and Tess's bodies, try to use Jake to break up Anna and her fiancé Eric (Manny Jacinto), and it definitely doesn't go as planned.

According to Murray, he was thrilled to come back. "It was awesome. It was just a nostalgic kick," Murray told fans at Christmas Con 2024 (via People Magazine). "It felt like a high school reunion, you know? It felt like no time had passed, and yet we had entire lives in between." With that said, it's genuinely too bad he couldn't experience the same thing on the "Gilmore Girls" revival.