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And then there was the day I walked onto the grand Gilmore house stage for the first time. It wasn’t just emotional because it had been re-created. It was also genuinely sad because Ed Herrmann had passed away the previous winter. You know how some people have such a big presence they just fill up a room? You might enter, and before you even see them you know they’re there? That was Ed. His presence was as tall and warm as he was. So his absence had a feeling too—the room was entirely different without his booming voice and easy laugh. Kelly spoke to him that first day on set. “Ed? We know you’re here. We miss you,” she said, and everyone choked up.

Those tears made sense. But some of my other teary reactions were just bizarre. For example, when Chris Eigeman, a dear friend, came to do his cameo, we sat down for a casual rehearsal, and as we started to read through our scene, I could not manage to get through my first line: “Why, Jason Stiles, as I live and breathe.” Normally, saying hello to someone in the beginning of a scene is not the emotional high point for the character or the actor. I was just so happy to see him again. My normal state of happy-to-see-someone does not usually involve tears, but on this show tissues were being handed to me a lot.

In another scene, I had trouble getting through the simple sentence “My name is Lorelai Gilmore, and I’m from a little town in Connecticut.” All I’m doing in that scene is giving some strangers basic information. Still, for some reason, tears. I guess I was overwhelmingly happy to get to say her name again.

For the reboot, all the sets had to be reconstructed, which also contributed to the surreal quality. No one had saved any set pieces from the old show, because why would they have? Netflix didn’t exist when the show ended, and no one had had any concrete reason to believe we’d be back in the Gilmore house or Luke’s diner or Stars Hollow ever again. There was no gazebo on the back lot anymore—they had to build one. There were no precise measurements of the rooms either, so while sets were reconstructed as closely as possible, in most cases the measurements were slightly off. This added to the eerie quality of being back: in the Gilmore house, for example, the foyer was completely familiar, yet just a little bit larger than it was in the original. Everything was the same yet brand-new. I noticed the slight changes because I knew these spaces as intimately as if it were a real house I’d actually lived in for years.

We were back on the Warner Brothers lot, as we had been the first time around, but all the stages that housed our sets were in different places. It was a constant surprise to walk out of Lorelai’s house and run into friends who work on the Ellen show, because previously we hadn’t been anywhere near Ellen. But on the other hand, because certain sets were so familiar, I’d sometimes lose track of where I was in time—for several fleeting moments every day, I’d think I was still doing the old show, until something from the present would remind me that time had passed.

Then there was El Ni?o. Given how tight our time was on the back lot, we couldn’t afford to lose any days there. But huge storms were predicted. And lots of rain. There aren’t many cloudy days in a town like Stars Hollow, so we worried. And we waited. But not only did it not storm, the weather played its part during the seasonal episodes as though it too had been cast in the show. When we were filming “Summer” it was balmy, “Fall” had a bit of crisp in the air, in “Spring” breezes lifted us up, and during “Winter” we had an unseasonable chill. For usually predictable Southern California, this was nothing short of magical. And the predicted El Ni?o storms? They didn’t happen.

Through it all, the emotion I felt most was gratitude. I treasured every experience and savored every scene in a way that was different from when I did the original show. Partially this had to do with being in a different place personally and professionally. I wasn’t new to the business anymore, and I had a much more acute sense of how lucky I was to be part of this cast and crew. I treasured the chance to speak words written by the Palladinos once more. And I now understood in greater depth how rare it was to have had the opportunity to be part of something this special in the first place. In the flurry of the first incarnation it was hard to have much perspective. This time I was thankful for every single day.

We were also buoyed by the enthusiasm we felt from all of you. Normally, when actors start a new show, we have no idea if what we’re doing will work, or if people will like it. To know we were making something that at least some people were already very excited about seeing was a thrilling novelty, and your support was a big part of what made every day feel special. Thank you so much for that. After all those years of having no answer when asked by you (and Mike Ausiello!) about the possibility of a Gilmore Girls movie, finally I had something to say. And that we’d landed at Netflix was an honor too. Executives usually walk around looking jumpy, but these Netflix and Warner Brothers execs were happy and smiling throughout it all. “We knew it was big, but we had no idea it was this big,” they said. Everyone was excited and proud.

So, what was it like? The truth is, it was so many things at once that there is no short way to describe it, no sound bite that does it justice. But I did keep a diary of sorts (which I wish I’d done the first time around), to try to cut through how overwhelming much of it was and to have a record I could look back on when it was done, to see if that could help me process the whole experience.

Here are just a few of the most memorable days of filming Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.