Lauren Graham Says Peter Krause Created a Home 'COVID Corner' While the Two Were Apart for 5 Months
Lauren Graham is revealing the COVID-friendly surprise she came home to after being apart from longtime love Peter Krause for almost 5 months.
During a new episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, airing Thursday, the actress explained that Krause made the couple's house "a little different" during their time apart amid the coronavirus pandemic.
While filming the new Disney+ series The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers in Vancouver, Graham, 54, explained that she couldn't "come and go" back to her home with Krause, 55, because of quarantine rules.
"Normally that's a two-hour flight and you come home on the weekends but I couldn't do that. So we were separated for almost 5 months, which had never happened before," she told host Ellen DeGeneres.
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Upon returning to her house, Graham said "there were more piles" than usual and Krause and his son, Roman, had "really bonded."
And while the Gilmore Girls actress said it's "fantastic" that Krause spent quality time with his son, she joked it made her "reentry more difficult."
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"It was more like they were the married couple … they were like, 'We don't do it that way anymore' in the kitchen or whatever. They were like, 'No, no, no, this is how things happen,'" Graham recalled.
The actress also explained Krause's latest addition to their home: the "COVID Corner."
"Peter started a thing, I guess to make COVID life fun, where he'd go to the store and stock up on ridiculous amounts of whatever and leave it in the corner of the living room and then he'd call it 'COVID corner' as if that somehow made these piles of stuff fun, or a place to visit or a place to show the guests," she shared.
"He'd be like 'Hey guys, have you seen 'COVID corner?' And I was like 'It's not an amusement park,'" she teased.
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Still, Graham said she felt she needed to "respect" Krause's space and "allow it to exist because these times are tough and everyone just dealt with it their own way."
"So if you need club soda or paper towels, come on over to 'COVID corner,'" she joked with DeGeneres.
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The relationship between Graham and Krause — who played Braverman siblings on NBC's Parenthood yet are a real-life couple — took off while filming the drama from 2010 to 2015.
Talking to Kelly Ripa in 2017 on Live with Kelly, Krause admitted that the two "kept things pretty quiet" during their relationship at the start. But before their days on Parenthood, Krause and Graham met and worked alongside one another in the '90s.
"We had met on a show called Caroline in the City — a Lea Thompson show back in the day," Krause explained at the time. "We were guest-starring. … She had me move some furniture into her apartment for her back then. She had got something. I didn't catch the signal."
"He's really my favorite person to talk to," Graham told PEOPLE in November 2016 about Krause. "And he always makes me laugh. He's really, really funny."
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