Lauren Graham plays with the adults on ‘Parenthood’

Lauren Graham may just be the good luck charm needed for the NBC series “Parenthood.”

Casting the wildly appealing star of the long-running hit “Gilmore Girls” reversed a peculiar streak of bad luck visited upon the series, originally set to bow on September 23, 2009.

The first tragedy to strike the show was the death on April 30, 2009, of 44-year-old Nora O’Brien, NBC’s executive in charge of drama, who died on the Sausalito, Calif., set of the series. She experienced a brain aneurysm while playing basketball with the cast and crew during a break in filming.

The second tragedy came a few months later when, on July 10, series star Maura Tierney was diagnosed with breast cancer. “Parenthood” was pushed back to midseason and its Wednesday night slot was filled by the middling medical drama “Mercy.” Things got worse in September, when Tierney, also 44, announced that she was leaving the show to better accommodate her treatment schedule.

“Parenthood” has a large ensemble cast of seasoned actors, everyone from familiar TV faces such Peter Krause and Craig T. Nelson to folks you haven’t seen in a while, like Bonnie Bedelia. Tierney had name recognition from her long tenure as Abby Lockhart on “ER.” She would be hard to replace. Helen Hunt, a “Mad About You” star before she won as Oscar for “As Good As It Gets,” seemed like a logical solution, but talks fell through. Graham, who had her own “Gilmore Girls” following, seemed to make more sense. She had just done a revival of “Guys and Dolls” on Broadway, and a pilot that wasn’t picked up, when she got the call.

“This kind of came up. It wasn’t anything I planned on doing,” says Graham, 43. “I told myself, I’m not playing a single mom again, that’s for sure. But I kind of fell in love with it.”

All of Tierney’s scenes had to be reshot in the pilot. “The whole situation was very unusual,” Graham says. “The cast didn’t’ know what was going to happen. It was difficult. I think they’d waited a long time and to have movement [was good]. It just had to move forward. I looked at it as: can I do this part? Mainly, do I connect to this job?

Graham plays Sarah Braverman, one of the series’ four siblings and the one whose life is in the worst shape. Sarah’s broke. She’s so broke she has to move back in with her parents (Nelson, Bedelia). Her ex is a burnt-out musician. She’s 38 and her job prospects are nil. Her two children are truculent and, in her own words, “degenerate.” In the airport of life, this is baggage you want to check.

Accustomed to Amy Sherman-Palladino’s rapid-fire dialogue on “Gilmore Girls,” Graham liked the change of pace on “Parenthood.”

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