“Hey Upper East Siders, Gossip Girl here, and I have the biggest news ever…” our so remarkable show GG is coming back on July 8, through a reboot on the streaming service HBO Max, and today I will be your one and only source into the scandalous life of the newest Manhattan’s elite.
- Different but the same
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The brand-new generation promises a bunch of intrigues. Almost a decade after the original website has come to an end, a new group of private school teenagers becomes the spotlight of a modern Gossip Girl (we will talk more about it later!). With ten episodes of approximately one hour, the show will cover the social media’s presence in the recent New Yorker society.
Since it is a streaming program and no longer on television, Gossip Girl will feature more adult content than the original. Thomas Doherty, a cast member, reported in an interview to Man About Town Magazine that the new show is a combination of the original one and Euphoria.
“We are looking at a group of friends in their junior year. Those pieces are the same. They’re still in the uniforms […] Not everyone lives on the Upper East Side, though. Brooklyn’s not the bad place to live. Brooklyn’s probably cooler in the new version than Manhattan, ’cause it is in some places. Other than that, it has the DNA of the original”, the executive producer Joshua Safran told Entertainment Tonight.
Among the new other features, Constance and St. Judy are now one unique school. Furthermore, Kristen Bell is returning to give a voice to our iconic Gossip Girl.
- The cast we didn’t know we needed
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Serena, Blair, Nate and the entire original cast will always be loved, it’s a fact, considering that they were part of the youth of many. But in the Gossip Girl Reboot, the original group will still exist, the characters will talk about them sometimes, but here is something that can shock you: Fortunately, they are not coming back as protagonists.
Come down! Before any attack, it’s important to reflect on some points that happened in the original story. Remember when Chuck Bass swapped Blair for a hotel? Or the innumerable moments when B and S were competing and envying each other for ridiculous reasons? Not to mention the dubious character of people whom we were inevitably obsessed with. This collection of facts do not match with the present New York City.
Since 2012, when the original show said goodbye, everything changed a lot. The world is not the same, New York is not the same, as well as the teenagers and also the Gossip Girl fans. Considering that, the show can’t be the same. The executive producers told Cosmopolitan that they saw the reboot as a chance to correct the sins of the past. Then, the Upper East Siders can expect episodes with much more representativeness and issues that need to be discussed.
Jordan Alexander will give life to Julien Colloway, a character defined as influential, she will be Audrey Hope’s best friend, played by Emily Lind, while this one has been dating for years with Aki Menzies, character who belongs to the actor Evan Mock.
Zion Moreno is transsexual and played a transsexual character on Netflix’ show Control Z. However, it has not been revealed if her Gossip Girl character Luna La, defined as stylish, is trans.
For those who seek to associate the new cast with the original, Max Wolfe, played by Thomas Doherty, has some similarities with Chuck Bass, since they both love parties and are really seducers. But our new Chuck will be pansexual, in an interview for Cosmopolitan, Thomas stated that his character gets involved with boys, additionally, the actor commented: “Yes, I do get naked, and yes, I do indulge.”
Also interviewed by Cosmopolitan, Whitney Peak and Savannah Smith talked about representativeness, the first one, who plays Zoya Lott, the closest representation of the character Dan Humphrey, said: “I want all the hers and the hes and the theys and the people of color from all over the world to be able to watch the show and think, That’s a person who looks like me. I don’t have to be the stereotypical idea of who I am.” While Savannah, who gives life to the powerful Monet de Haan, highlighted the importance of proximity: “It’s really important for a Black girl, with twists in her hair, to be able to see someone in a position of power who looks like her”.
Eli Brown is behind Otto Bergmann IV, nicknamed Obie, described as a privileged guy. Whereas the case of the character Kate Keller is really interesting, the actress Tavi Gevinson and the Gossip Girl’s producers are purposely hiding information about her story, everything known so far is that Kate is full of ambition.
This amazing and super interesting new cast has cultivated a friendship that goes beyond the Gossip Girl sets. Emily Lind told Cosmopolitan that “the dynamic with the cast, from the second we all met, has always been like, Oh, we’ve known each other in different lives”
Every big fan enjoys following a cast on social media, so it’s awesome to know that the Gossip Girl team loves to interact, they are always taking pictures for Instagram, celebrating not only birthdays but even holidays together. Due to the pandemic, a large part of the cast couldn’t travel to see their families on Thanksgiving, the result of the situation was a holiday between friends. Zion Moreno, interviewed by Cosmopolitan, commented that it was the best Thanksgiving of her entire life. Who wouldn’t love to be part of this amazing squad?
- “And who am I?” That’s an outdated secret!
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Even with the amazing success, Gossip Girl is a far from flawless program, since it has some problems and an imperfect script, but there is a point where the show is visionary: The impact of social media on society. While Instagram and Snapchat did not exist, and Twitter and Facebook were only babies, Gossip Girl already introduced an anonymous blogger who exposed details of young people’s lives in New York, without even having a clue of the proportion that social networks would reach nowadays.
Even before the reboot was confirmed, Gossip Girl fans were already wondering how Blair and Serena would use Instagram and Twitter. It’s exciting to know that we will be able to have a taste of this experience in the show. Thinking about the innovation that the world has gone through since Gossip Girl’s end, there would be no sense in limiting the gossip network to a simple blog and an exclusive person behind it. So the famous GG is, right now, an extended social media platform. “My hope is that we make it to airing and people don’t know,” explained Joshua Safran to Cosmopolitan. We are excited to find out what’s new on the platform, but this secret will only be revealed when the reboot premieres, what we already know is that without the great link that surrounded the original series, we will have a new mystery within Manhattan’s elite.
Josh Schwartz told E! that “We felt like a version that was just our cast grown up…it didn’t really feel like a group of adults who were being controlled by Gossip Girl would make a lot of sense, so it felt like there was something really interesting about this idea that we are all Gossip Girl now, in our own way, that we are all purveyors of our own social media surveillance state, and how that’s evolved, and how that has morphed and mutated and telling that story through a new generation of upper east side high school kids felt like the right time.”
- A fashion phenomenon
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One of the reasons why Gossip Girl is never forgotten is because of fashion. Everyone wanted to know what the Upper East Side’s elite was wearing to go running for inspiration. At the peak of success, major brands were begging to see Serena or Blair wearing their clothes. The show was responsible for bringing popularity to trench coats and high school style, as well as hair accessories.
Gossip Girl was synonymous of power when it came to fashion. The costume designer Eric Daman already explained to Vanity Fair that “It was very clear from the beginning that we wanted to editorialize television and give it this high-fashion, international flair.”
For the reboot, we can expect a lot of fashion inspirations, in the photos released on the series’ official profiles and also from behind the scenes, it’s already possible to find items such as sneakers, metallic clothes, white boots, oversized style, colorful make-up, and much more of what reigns in New York nowadays. This is only possible with this new cast, have you ever imagined Blair Waldorf wearing chunky sneakers? That’s impossible!
Thomas Doherty already revealed to Man About Town Magazine that the new costumes are better than those of the original series. Meanwhile, Zion Moreno is super excited about the fashion world in Gossip Girl: “I get to wear the most glamorous clothes and hang out with super-cool people and play out this fantasy of these crazy elitist, deluded kids”, admitted to Cosmopolitan.
It’s impossible not to feel excited after knowing all the news about the Gossip Girl return, the show’s legacy has all the means to be honored the way it deserves. We can’t wait until July to arrive so we can find out more and more about the new characters, but one thing is already clear, we already know we will love them.