Arielle Kebbel did not expect fans to end up saying “justice for Lindsay” decades after her stint on Gilmore Girls.
“When I moved to L.A. that was my first audition. It was my first job. I was 17. I remember I was on the phone with my mom one time in Coffee Bean and I was like, ‘Oh, hang on, mom, these girls are talking to me.’ They’re like, ‘Are you Lindsay? … We hate you,’” Kebbel said during a recent interview with Us Weekly about her Fox series, Rescue: HI-Surf. “And I remember thinking at that moment, like, ‘OK, I guess that’s what ‘making it’ looks like.’ And then cut to present day, I will be out at a coffee shop and people will be like, ‘You deserve more. F Dean!’”
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With a laugh, Kebbel added, “It’s like, ‘Wow how times have changed.’ And I’ll just look at them and be like, ‘You know what? I appreciate that. Thank you.’ Lindsay’s day has finally arrived.”
Gilmore Girls fans met Lindsay during season 3 of the series when she started dating Rory’s (Alexis Bledel) ex-boyfriend Dean (Jared Padalecki). During season 4, Dean and Lindsay get married, with Rory later having an affair with Dean. While Gilmore Girls aired from 2000 to 2007 on The WB (with season 7 airing on The CW), fans have since turned on Dean for being Rory’s worst boyfriend.
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“My favorite thing that I saw — I can’t remember if it was on TikTok or Instagram — but someone made a horror film edit, like if Dean was a serial killer,” Kebbel told Us. “I live for it. I would make that horror film with Lindsay as the detective on the case.”
Kebbel went on to appear in several TV shows including The Vampire Diaries and 90210 as well as movies like John Tucker Must Die and Fifty Shades Freed. To Us, she is also one of the OG Hallmark Christmas movie stars, appearing in 2012’s A Bride for Christmas with network darling Andrew Walker.
“I like to say I made his Hallmark career,” she joked to Us. “That was my first Hallmark Christmas movie and I think it was his too. We got really lucky. We had a great director. There was just something about the wittiness and humor in that script that I remember reading it and being like, ‘This is funny.’ And I was excited I’d never done a Christmas movie, and I was excited to infuse that humor into it. I’m a sucker for a good rom-com.”
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When asked if she would make another Hallmark movie, Kebbel said there would have to be a special script.
“I think if there was that special sauce again, I would love to do it,” she said. “At the same time, part of what makes those special is, I think, holding out and then being willing to dive in when you go, ‘This is the right moment again.’”
For now, fans can catch Kebbel on Rescue: HI-Surf (Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on Fox) as Em, a lifeguard on the North Shore of O‘ahu, Hawaii.
“We had two weeks of intense training. I definitely went to the hospital,” she told Us. “It’s the only job I’ve ever been on where the more cuts and scrapes and bruises I got, we never had to cover them up. That’s part of the show, that’s part of the character.”
