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‘Gossip Girl’ reboot is a fresh take with its storyline, representation and fashion

By Brooke Villanueva Published Nov 12, 2020 10:32 pm Updated Nov 13, 2020 12:00 am

Hey Upper East Siders! Gossip Girl is set to return for a reboot—it will be quite different from the original series, but it looks really promising.

Many easily became fans of the six-season show that ran from 2007 to 2012 on The CW, with Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley, Chace Crawford, and Ed Westwick as part of its cast. If you’re one of them, you are in for a treat again with a reboot that “will take a look at the lives of the privileged Upper East Side teens in New York City and the role that social media plays in their lives,” according to Digital Spy. 

Eric Eidelstein, a writer on the new spin-off, recently teased about it on Twitter.

While Kristen Bell will still be the voice of Gossip Girl with the involvement of its original creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, it will be a fresh take on the masterpiece. How? First, showrunner Joshua Safran said at the Vulture Festival last year, that it will feature more diverse leads. “This time around the leads are non-white. There’s a lot of queer content on this show. It is very much dealing with the way the world looks now, where wealth and privilege come from, and how you handle that,” he said, prior to confessing that the original version was quite lacking in terms of representation. “I was the only gay writer I think the entire time I was there,” he recalled.

As reported by Entertainment Weekly, its cast—a “dream come true” for Safran—includes Emily Alyn Lind (Doctor Sleep), Whitney Peak (The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), Johnathan Fernandez (Lethal Weapon), Eli Brown (Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists), Jason Gotay (NY City Center's revival of Evita), among others.

Saying "so this is what it's like to feel old," queer culture writer Joseph Longo posted about some of the actors on Twitter, giving netizens a look at the characters they will be portraying in the reboot.

They were seen filming on the famous steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art or MET, as shared by V Magazine.

Tony award-winning star Laura Benanti also announced on social media that she has joined the cast.

Another thing that has been noticed by fans is the stark difference in their fashion style, particularly “less headbands, more knee-high boots with bike shorts,” as analyzed by the Editor-in-Chief of Fashionista Tyler McCall, who is also a huge Gossip Girl fan. In an interview with Harper's Bazaar, she declared, “What the original did so well was mix in these high high-fashion moments with more contemporary brands, and I'm already seeing that here—a Cartier pin and Fendi bag with Schutz boots. And one of the characters is wearing Ivy Park sneakers! It's so brilliant.” In a tweet, she even expressed her excitement over the new show.

What’s making it even more exciting for some is the twist that Safran previously talked about, according to Vulture. “The thing I can’t say is there is a twist, and that all relates to the twist.”

After all, he earlier clarified that it will not be a remake, but “a continuation of that world,” as stated in a Bustle article. “We felt like a version that was just our cast grown up—regardless of what the challenges would be of assembling those actors again—it didn’t really feel like a group of adults who were being controlled by Gossip Girl would make a lot of sense.”

The Gossip Girl reboot is set to air in 2021 on HBO Max.

Article thumbnails taken from E! News' Twitter account

TAGS: penn badgley gossip girl gossip girl reboot blake lively kristen bell leighton meester Chace Crawford ed westwick Laura Benanti

About the author

Brooke Villanueva

Deputy Editor

Brooke Villanueva is the deputy editor of PhilSTAR L!fe, covering everything lifestyle—with a focus on food and travel. Apart from her responsibilities as a lifestyle journalist, she is also taking her MBA at the Ateneo Graduate School of Business. She has completed a certificate program on the fundamentals of business developed by top faculty at Harvard Business School. Follow her on Instagram at @itsbrookevillanueva.