New TV Trailer: Gossip Girl Reboot on HBO Max
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Gossip Girl reboot trailer features love triangles, threesomes, and a scandalous 'big secret'
XOXO, a new generation.
By Andrea Towers
June 10, 2021 at 09:23 AM EDT
"Something's different... in the best way."
XOXO Gossip Girl - a new generation of New York's young elite is coming, and HBO has just released the first official trailer for the iconic show's reboot, premiering on July 8.
Set to the appropriate soundtrack of Frank Ocean's "Super Rich Kids," the trailer introduces us to Manhattan's private school mavens of today: a group of friends who have known each other since they were kids. "We have trust...we have history. We own this school," Jordan Alexandar's Julien Calloway intones as we're shown flashy glimpses of how the upper class really lives.
But with elitism comes drama - and when a high rolling friend group decides to invite a newcomer (Whitney Peak's Zoya Lott) into their esteemed circle, it doesn't take long for things to spiral out of control. Add in the ever-looming threat of "Gossip Girl" (taking the form of an Instagram account), and it's clear the teens will be dealing with a lot more than just social circle troubles.
Developed by original Gossip Girl writer and executive producer Joshua Safran, the new series "takes us back to the Upper East Side finding a new generation of New York private school teens being introduced to social surveillance nine years after the original blogger's website went dark," according to HBO's official synopsis. "Gossip Girl explores just how much social media - and the landscape of New York itself - has changed in the intervening years." Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who created the original series that ran for six seasons on The CW, also serve as executive producers on the reboot.
Along with Peak and Alexandar, who looks to be stepping in as the Blair Waldorf of 2021, the series stars Eli Brown, Thomas Doherty, Tavi Gevinson, Emily Alyn Lind, Evan Mock, Zion Moreno, and Savannah Lee Smith.
The original hit teen drama, which aired from 2007-2012, helped launch the careers of stars like Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley, and Chace Crawford. Kristen Bell, the voice of New York's original elite social scene, will reprise her role in the new series.
XOXO, a new generation.
By Andrea Towers
June 10, 2021 at 09:23 AM EDT
"Something's different... in the best way."
XOXO Gossip Girl - a new generation of New York's young elite is coming, and HBO has just released the first official trailer for the iconic show's reboot, premiering on July 8.
Set to the appropriate soundtrack of Frank Ocean's "Super Rich Kids," the trailer introduces us to Manhattan's private school mavens of today: a group of friends who have known each other since they were kids. "We have trust...we have history. We own this school," Jordan Alexandar's Julien Calloway intones as we're shown flashy glimpses of how the upper class really lives.
But with elitism comes drama - and when a high rolling friend group decides to invite a newcomer (Whitney Peak's Zoya Lott) into their esteemed circle, it doesn't take long for things to spiral out of control. Add in the ever-looming threat of "Gossip Girl" (taking the form of an Instagram account), and it's clear the teens will be dealing with a lot more than just social circle troubles.
Developed by original Gossip Girl writer and executive producer Joshua Safran, the new series "takes us back to the Upper East Side finding a new generation of New York private school teens being introduced to social surveillance nine years after the original blogger's website went dark," according to HBO's official synopsis. "Gossip Girl explores just how much social media - and the landscape of New York itself - has changed in the intervening years." Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who created the original series that ran for six seasons on The CW, also serve as executive producers on the reboot.
Along with Peak and Alexandar, who looks to be stepping in as the Blair Waldorf of 2021, the series stars Eli Brown, Thomas Doherty, Tavi Gevinson, Emily Alyn Lind, Evan Mock, Zion Moreno, and Savannah Lee Smith.
The original hit teen drama, which aired from 2007-2012, helped launch the careers of stars like Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley, and Chace Crawford. Kristen Bell, the voice of New York's original elite social scene, will reprise her role in the new series.
Behind the Scenes on the Glitzy New Gossip Girl
The “continuation” is more diverse, more self-aware, and far more lavishly produced.
www.vulture.com
Gossip Girl Is Having a Very Glamorous Identity Crisis
The new HBO Max sequel series wants to be a revolution, even though it hasn’t the foggiest idea of what that revolution should be.
www.vulture.com
Gossip Girl Is Having a Very Glamorous Identity Crisis
By Kathryn VanArendonk
Photo: Karolina Wojtasik/HBO Max
Four episodes into HBO Max’s new Gossip Girl reboot, the anonymous dirt-dishing gossip writer types a new Instagram caption. “You thought I was a person,” she writes, “but I never said I was. I’m a revolution.” It is a telling line, not just about how Gossip Girl sees herself in 2021, but about what Gossip Girl wants to be. Or at least, what it thinks it needs to be. So much of the new Gossip Girl is a familiar reworking of the first show’s tropes and interests. There’s the hot popular girl whose popularity is threatened, the disaffected boyfriend, the wealthy kids, the outsider family, the arch sexiness smirking at your shock that the teens (the teens!) are so worldly, so adult, so preternaturally hardened and knowing. And yet the currency of this incarnation’s references and cultural models comes with an equally current anxiety. Surely these hyper-privileged teens must be aware of their privilege? Surely Gossip Girl and Gossip Girl can’t only be Edith Wharton written for 2021, it must also be a Jeremy O. Harris play, a new season of the Nice White Parents podcast, a knife that punctures its subjects even while it whittles them into being. It has to be Gossip Girl and it also has to be a revolution.
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That anxiety is expressed in multiform ways. The teens, while flaunting their painfully expensive clothing and inviting pop stars to play at their birthday parties, are also perpetually aware of how things appear. Looking perfect is one thing, but they also have to look like they are perfect, that they’re aware of climate change and unionization drives and the authentic appeal of a clean, no-makeup look.
The new Gossip Girl is much the same. It has so much more money than the original CW iteration. It is flashier, fancier; its sets are sumptuous and its costumes immaculate; the cinematography screams “I had the money for every single camera set-up I asked for.” But it also has to appear as though it understands the difference between flashily flaunting wealth in 2007 and doing it in 2021. Gossip Girl knows it has to make its superrich characters reflect on their privilege, but it also knows it has to demonstrate that own reflection in the way the show is written and cast; its stars are less white and its love triangles and sexy taboos are less straight. The new It Girl, once played by Blake Lively, is now Julien Calloway (Jordan Alexander), whose Black mother left long ago and whose white music-producer-mogul father (Luke Kirby) indulges Julien in everything. Her friend cohort is perfectly diverse while also being perfectly identical to one another, in lockstep about the best clubs, the best restaurants, the best social platforms, the best of everything. Its new outsider character, Zoya (Whitney Peak), is Black, and unlike the dubiously disadvantaged Humphries of the original series, she is a scholarship student living with her father in her grandmother’s apartment. See? It’s a slick, winking, high-gloss depiction of a specific NYC upper crust, but it is also a revolution.
Nowhere is the show’s revolutionary instinct more present than in the biggest change from the original: The identity of its title character, which is established early in the first episode of the new series. (Warning: If you consider the very premise of this show to be a spoiler, stop reading now.) While Gossip Girl is still an anonymous tipster in the world of the show, a private-school Deuxmoi, viewers learn quickly that the newly resurrected Gossip Girl is an invention of the private-school teachers, most specifically Kate Keller (Tavi Gevinson). The trouble, the teachers have decided, is that these too-adult teens are, in fact, Too Adult. They have no regard for school etiquette and they flagrantly ignore the well-bred education the teachers are desperately trying to instill in them. The only possible recourse, Keller and her colleagues decide, is for the teachers to resurrect a decade-old gossip blog that spills personal secrets about all the most popular kids in school (??), which will then strike fear in the hearts of all the teens and inspire them to become better students (???).
It makes as much sense as turning on a hose to stop the rain, but Gossip Girl doesn’t care much about logic because it’s in the business of revolution. And however nonsensical the plan may be, it does have an undeniable sheen of, if not revolution, then at least revenge. The wealthy students are awful and the underpaid teachers are going to take them down a peg! Who better to discover and reveal the innermost hidden secrets of high-school students than the teachers they barely acknowledge as human beings?
It’s not that none of this makes for an enjoyable television show. At its heights, the new Gossip Girl is every bit as absurd and high drama as the original, and it has an even more wicked and accurate ear for references, parodies, and stinging asides. The teachers first launch the Gossip Girl account on Twitter, but when it gets no response they realize it needs to live on Instagram. “Twitter,” one of the teachers points out, “is a glorified chatroom for meme-sharing, conspiracy theorists, and Lin-Manuel Miranda.” One of the parent characters is a direct take-off of theater producer Jordan Roth. Julien’s It Girl status is undergirded by her Olivia Jade-esque makeup influencer brand. Even the casting of Gevinson, herself a former young fashion It Girl and generation-shaping writer, is a pitch-perfect Gossip Girl ouroborus of high-profile reality inspiring soapy fantasy, which filters back down into reality and spurs the cycle to continue. The show’s most appealing, fascinating, outright fun elements are the parts where it so clearly owns itself, enjoys itself, preens with one hand at the same time as it flips a casual bird with the other.
And yet it also wants to be a revolution, and thinks it has to be one, even though it hasn’t the foggiest idea of what that revolution should be, or even who it should be against. Does it love these characters or loathe them? Should we the viewers do one or the other? Do we root for a teacher to devastate these teenagers? Does she even want to devastate them? What does a revolution look like when its battleground is a private-school courtyard and its weapons are teen relationship drama and private shame?
It is fundamentally hollow at the core, frivolous and frothy, studded with sequins and infidelities and students who lust for their teachers (but gay!). It seems uneasy with that emptiness, but it lacks the desire or capability to backfill everything with earnestness or do-goodery, and some later scenes in the series where it attempts to suddenly find sincerity are among the worst, most cringeworthy parts of the four episodes provided to critics. “We’re supposed to send [the students] out of here as Barack Obamas, not Brett Kavanaughs,” Kate says in the premiere. The line is meant as an expression of fear for their moral souls, and there’s an immediate sense that this is what the new Gossip Girl thinks it must be. Or maybe what it thinks it needs to look like it’s trying to be. In practice, it’s just more name-dropping. It’d be a relief if the show could just admit it.
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Gossip Girl Week One Report Card: God, It’s Brutal Out Here
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Let’s Talk About That Big Gossip Girl Reveal
Which is really just the new Gossip Girl premise.
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EMERGENCY DISCUSSION AUG. 13, 2021
WTF Happened to Gossip Girl?
By Kathryn VanArendonk and Jackson McHenry
Photo: Karolina Wojtasik/HBO Max
Occasionally it is necessary to convene a conversation between Vulture writers to discuss an important and timely issue in culture. This time, Kathryn VanArendonk and Jackson McHenry sit down together to consider one of the most baffling, bizarre, and strangely uninteresting television shows of the past several weeks.
Kathryn VanArendonk: We are gathered here today to discuss WTF happened to Gossip Girl.
Jackson McHenry: Indeed, gathered in a swanky New York restaurant in our finest designer clothes with no one in the background because of COVID, trying to make sense of the HBO Max reboot series’s unfortunately quite dull half-season finale, and really, the dull streak of episodes that preceded it.
KV: There was a sense of cautious optimism about this Gossip Girl reboot, which I absolutely shared based on the first couple of episodes. Although it’s wildly messy, the decision to unveil Gossip Girl’s identity right up front was interesting, and the choice to make Gossip Girl none other than a vengeful teacher played by Tavi Gevinson was … well, it’s the kind of thing that makes Kombucha Girls of us all. Sure it seemed like a terrible idea, but maybe it was actually brilliant? At least it wasn’t instantly boring! But over the remaining episodes of the first season’s initial six-episode release, everything started to spiral downward, or at least that’s been my impression. Dear Gossip Girl — am I alone?
JM: I’m a valiant, probably quixotic defender of the whole idea of Tavi as Gossip Girl slash stand-in for a millennial watching the show slash digital media Instagram strategist slash avatar of the show’s writers, because it’s so bonkers. But the show itself has really veered away from what’s most compelling about that idea (her character’s implied need to be accepted by, or at least influential over, teens who don’t care about her) into various light shenanigans, and occasionally not-so-light ones — whose idea was it to have Gossip Girl lead to a kid bringing a gun to school? And then not have the show follow up on that at all?
You mentioned it in your review, but what I’ve found frustrating about the later episodes of this reboot/revival/necromancy is that it can’t quite figure out whether it wants to upend the conventions of the original with some kind of Gen-Z revolution, or just carry on with the parties and glamour. That makes both of those things ultimately feel half-hearted, and leaves the teen characters feeling so unmoored. I care about pretty much none of them, even Actually Bi This Time Chuck Bass, who is caught in a deeply confused plot with his predatory teacher that the show alternately remembers and then forgets is real creepy.
KV: It has been fascinating to watch this series occasionally remember that its original conceit is actually pretty dark and thorny, and to highlight that in aggressively alarming ways. What if a teacher’s gossipy observations about students became public? What if a teacher with much less financial privilege decided to actually teach some rich kids a lesson? What if that lesson caused real violence?! But it’s been fascinating largely because every time those ideas do actually show up in these six episodes, it’s so jarring that you’re immediately pulled out of the show. There is so little effort to integrate any of the cultural criticism into the show itself — the teacher-versus-students thing, all the broader generational tension. It’s not connected to anything the characters care about or act upon.
By the midseason finale, all the kids end up at a protest (for … affordable housing? I guess? Sort of, maybe?) and they’ve got signs and they’re yelling, and eventually things get more violent and the whole scene turns into a Broadway musical version of a protest with bright-colored lights and smoke machines. But Gossip Girl can only imagine using the protest as a backdrop for personal conflicts. It can’t even begin to fathom how the protest could be present in the show as, you know, actually a protest about an important issue. This is one huge, ever-present problem with this Gossip Girl, but I feel like even that is only just part of the issue, because the other looming disaster is that it’s just really boring?
JM: So boring! It should be criminal to introduce a character based off of Wendi Deng, one of the world’s most inherently dramatic people, and then make her just be Evan Mock’s slightly concerned mom.
This show is bait for a lot of “can you write a woke teen drama” think pieces, but looking at it that way skates over its unrelated but fundamental storytelling flaws. Often, it’s easy to forget what any of the teens want in any given episode — aside from maybe the fact that Julien wants a Sephora deal or Not Chuck wants to get off. They’re mostly reactive characters, to their parents’ drama or to whatever Tavi gins up. I would kill for a basic OG GG seasons one or two plot like “they all want to impress an Ivy League recruitment officer!” or “they need to get their parents’ money back from a scammer!” Part of the essential witch’s brew of the original run was that you always knew whatever Blair or Serena wanted, which was usually some form of power or access or status. That could be easily transmuted into a plot point about a deb ball or getting into Yale. Here, they seem to work backward from “cool event” to “why everyone wants to go there.” I was shocked when Dad Luke Kirby (sans hat, also a shock) mentioned Julien’s PSAT scores in this most recent episode, because I had forgotten that they even were still going to school.
KV: There are no stakes! Sure, blonde girl wants her mom, Laura Benanti, to live. And Tavi apparently wants to hook up with Zoya’s dad. But beyond that, even when there is some event for the characters to react to, none of the bad consequences ever stick around. Photo shoot gone awry — fixed! Boyfriend’s mom hates you — whatever! For all the show’s supposed political consciousness, it has also lost track of any grounding in the real world. It’s not that I mind that as a character note; I’m sure that’s realistic for what some of these kids’ real lives would be like. As a storytelling problem, though, it means we now lack even the small, silly pressure of the OG series’s characters who had some (relative) financial hardship. It was an obstacle! It really mattered when someone didn’t have enough money to buy a ticket to a concert, or something. Zoya and her dad were supposed to fulfill that, but it disappeared almost instantly.
Plus, characters without infinite buckets of money were useful benchmarks in the original series because they helped register the strangeness of the ultra-rich. It felt novel to see all these mega-monied teens slouching around New York. They were compelling because they got into all kinds of drama, but also because the show was able to retain some impression of them as outside the norm. In the reboot, the only characters who register the oddity of wildly wealthy teenagers are their teachers. And we can’t trust the teachers or sympathize with their perspectives, because all they do is hang around typing mean Instagram posts about their minor-aged students!
JM: I think the absence of that grounding is all the more glaring in a show that clearly has a much larger budget per episode than the original, and is almost choked with visual signifiers of New York wealth: designer clothes from brands I’m only barely aware of, trips to the Public Theater for a Jeremy O. Harris play and inevitable Jeremy O. Harris cameo, cinematography from the A24 school of “maybe we make this look smokey.” The dialogue is stuffed with references to everything from pigs on Scruff to misconceived Ivo Van Hove Broadway revivals. It’s designed, seemingly, to make annoying gay millennials screen-cap it on Twitter, which, speaking as exactly that demographic, is so pandering it feels claustrophobic. To talk like a Gossip Girl 2.0 teen: Gossip Girl 2.0 is in the group chat constantly sending memes and not getting why people have resorted to hitting the “haha” react and ignoring them.
KV: Look, I am a human. I am not above seeing a glib, insider-y Twitter joke and then typing “lmao” in my mind’s eye. But it’s yet another way in which there was clearly a lot of thought put into the superficial stuff — the costumes, the lights, the references, the brand partnerships, the obligatory representation of various races and sexual orientations among the cast — without any accompanying thought about what this show wants to be or who it’s actually for. And yes, if you just look at any single frame of this show, it’s convincing! (That’s a lie — Julien is so prematurely adult that when she walks along next to her father Luke Kirby, it 100 percent looks like they’re on a date.) But if you have three teenagers whose only job is to eventually have a threesome, and they finally get to the scene where they’re having a threesome, and the primary reaction is, “how did it possibly take them this long, and why does this threesome look so boring,” the problem with the show is not how it looks, it’s how the show is built.
I suppose at this point the question is, can it be saved? Do we want it to be saved?
JM: I would really like it to be saved, because out of both professional obligation and welp this was programmed into my genes as a teen obligation, I’m going to have to keep watching. Well, at least until they do a Thanksgiving episode — if they mess up the Thanksgiving episode, a hallowed Gossip Girl tradition, then I might be out.
As for how to fix it? First off, the teens need to drive the drama again; let the teachers be more of a Greek chorus. But more importantly, they need to get into some real conflict. Julien and Zoya were close to some blow-up, but the show pulled away. Give us some reason for them to actually betray each other — and sure, maybe they’ll become friends again slowly like Blair and Serena, but linger in the wound for a bit. Linger in any wound! You’ve got all this glamour, trust the audience to follow you to something nasty for a change. I still can’t believe Julien gave that whole speech about not being a bully in episode four and didn’t walk offstage and turn to someone to say, like, “well, that gambit worked.” These kids can talk about doing the right thing and even believe themselves, but as we know from both The White Lotus and real life, people say a lot of shit and then act in their own self interest. Show us that!
KV: Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. It’s a weirdly cowardly show! It’s as though it’s operating out of a fear that if any character is unhappy for more than two scenes, the entire audience will revolt. (See, for instance, Obie feeling annoyed by Zoya for the briefest period of time and then immediately making out with Julien.) I would also, out of pure self-interest but also critical confidence, love it if they could shave those episode times down by about 15 minutes. Make everyone sad for a while, but make it snappy!
JM: Okay, one final request: More Donna Murphy. I just like when she has to be the stern headmaster, and she pronounces the phrase “Gossip Girl” well. That’s all.
KV: Excellent. Emergency meeting adjourned.
WTF Happened to Gossip Girl?
By Kathryn VanArendonk and Jackson McHenry
Photo: Karolina Wojtasik/HBO Max
Occasionally it is necessary to convene a conversation between Vulture writers to discuss an important and timely issue in culture. This time, Kathryn VanArendonk and Jackson McHenry sit down together to consider one of the most baffling, bizarre, and strangely uninteresting television shows of the past several weeks.
Kathryn VanArendonk: We are gathered here today to discuss WTF happened to Gossip Girl.
Jackson McHenry: Indeed, gathered in a swanky New York restaurant in our finest designer clothes with no one in the background because of COVID, trying to make sense of the HBO Max reboot series’s unfortunately quite dull half-season finale, and really, the dull streak of episodes that preceded it.
KV: There was a sense of cautious optimism about this Gossip Girl reboot, which I absolutely shared based on the first couple of episodes. Although it’s wildly messy, the decision to unveil Gossip Girl’s identity right up front was interesting, and the choice to make Gossip Girl none other than a vengeful teacher played by Tavi Gevinson was … well, it’s the kind of thing that makes Kombucha Girls of us all. Sure it seemed like a terrible idea, but maybe it was actually brilliant? At least it wasn’t instantly boring! But over the remaining episodes of the first season’s initial six-episode release, everything started to spiral downward, or at least that’s been my impression. Dear Gossip Girl — am I alone?
JM: I’m a valiant, probably quixotic defender of the whole idea of Tavi as Gossip Girl slash stand-in for a millennial watching the show slash digital media Instagram strategist slash avatar of the show’s writers, because it’s so bonkers. But the show itself has really veered away from what’s most compelling about that idea (her character’s implied need to be accepted by, or at least influential over, teens who don’t care about her) into various light shenanigans, and occasionally not-so-light ones — whose idea was it to have Gossip Girl lead to a kid bringing a gun to school? And then not have the show follow up on that at all?
You mentioned it in your review, but what I’ve found frustrating about the later episodes of this reboot/revival/necromancy is that it can’t quite figure out whether it wants to upend the conventions of the original with some kind of Gen-Z revolution, or just carry on with the parties and glamour. That makes both of those things ultimately feel half-hearted, and leaves the teen characters feeling so unmoored. I care about pretty much none of them, even Actually Bi This Time Chuck Bass, who is caught in a deeply confused plot with his predatory teacher that the show alternately remembers and then forgets is real creepy.
KV: It has been fascinating to watch this series occasionally remember that its original conceit is actually pretty dark and thorny, and to highlight that in aggressively alarming ways. What if a teacher’s gossipy observations about students became public? What if a teacher with much less financial privilege decided to actually teach some rich kids a lesson? What if that lesson caused real violence?! But it’s been fascinating largely because every time those ideas do actually show up in these six episodes, it’s so jarring that you’re immediately pulled out of the show. There is so little effort to integrate any of the cultural criticism into the show itself — the teacher-versus-students thing, all the broader generational tension. It’s not connected to anything the characters care about or act upon.
By the midseason finale, all the kids end up at a protest (for … affordable housing? I guess? Sort of, maybe?) and they’ve got signs and they’re yelling, and eventually things get more violent and the whole scene turns into a Broadway musical version of a protest with bright-colored lights and smoke machines. But Gossip Girl can only imagine using the protest as a backdrop for personal conflicts. It can’t even begin to fathom how the protest could be present in the show as, you know, actually a protest about an important issue. This is one huge, ever-present problem with this Gossip Girl, but I feel like even that is only just part of the issue, because the other looming disaster is that it’s just really boring?
JM: So boring! It should be criminal to introduce a character based off of Wendi Deng, one of the world’s most inherently dramatic people, and then make her just be Evan Mock’s slightly concerned mom.
This show is bait for a lot of “can you write a woke teen drama” think pieces, but looking at it that way skates over its unrelated but fundamental storytelling flaws. Often, it’s easy to forget what any of the teens want in any given episode — aside from maybe the fact that Julien wants a Sephora deal or Not Chuck wants to get off. They’re mostly reactive characters, to their parents’ drama or to whatever Tavi gins up. I would kill for a basic OG GG seasons one or two plot like “they all want to impress an Ivy League recruitment officer!” or “they need to get their parents’ money back from a scammer!” Part of the essential witch’s brew of the original run was that you always knew whatever Blair or Serena wanted, which was usually some form of power or access or status. That could be easily transmuted into a plot point about a deb ball or getting into Yale. Here, they seem to work backward from “cool event” to “why everyone wants to go there.” I was shocked when Dad Luke Kirby (sans hat, also a shock) mentioned Julien’s PSAT scores in this most recent episode, because I had forgotten that they even were still going to school.
KV: There are no stakes! Sure, blonde girl wants her mom, Laura Benanti, to live. And Tavi apparently wants to hook up with Zoya’s dad. But beyond that, even when there is some event for the characters to react to, none of the bad consequences ever stick around. Photo shoot gone awry — fixed! Boyfriend’s mom hates you — whatever! For all the show’s supposed political consciousness, it has also lost track of any grounding in the real world. It’s not that I mind that as a character note; I’m sure that’s realistic for what some of these kids’ real lives would be like. As a storytelling problem, though, it means we now lack even the small, silly pressure of the OG series’s characters who had some (relative) financial hardship. It was an obstacle! It really mattered when someone didn’t have enough money to buy a ticket to a concert, or something. Zoya and her dad were supposed to fulfill that, but it disappeared almost instantly.
Plus, characters without infinite buckets of money were useful benchmarks in the original series because they helped register the strangeness of the ultra-rich. It felt novel to see all these mega-monied teens slouching around New York. They were compelling because they got into all kinds of drama, but also because the show was able to retain some impression of them as outside the norm. In the reboot, the only characters who register the oddity of wildly wealthy teenagers are their teachers. And we can’t trust the teachers or sympathize with their perspectives, because all they do is hang around typing mean Instagram posts about their minor-aged students!
JM: I think the absence of that grounding is all the more glaring in a show that clearly has a much larger budget per episode than the original, and is almost choked with visual signifiers of New York wealth: designer clothes from brands I’m only barely aware of, trips to the Public Theater for a Jeremy O. Harris play and inevitable Jeremy O. Harris cameo, cinematography from the A24 school of “maybe we make this look smokey.” The dialogue is stuffed with references to everything from pigs on Scruff to misconceived Ivo Van Hove Broadway revivals. It’s designed, seemingly, to make annoying gay millennials screen-cap it on Twitter, which, speaking as exactly that demographic, is so pandering it feels claustrophobic. To talk like a Gossip Girl 2.0 teen: Gossip Girl 2.0 is in the group chat constantly sending memes and not getting why people have resorted to hitting the “haha” react and ignoring them.
KV: Look, I am a human. I am not above seeing a glib, insider-y Twitter joke and then typing “lmao” in my mind’s eye. But it’s yet another way in which there was clearly a lot of thought put into the superficial stuff — the costumes, the lights, the references, the brand partnerships, the obligatory representation of various races and sexual orientations among the cast — without any accompanying thought about what this show wants to be or who it’s actually for. And yes, if you just look at any single frame of this show, it’s convincing! (That’s a lie — Julien is so prematurely adult that when she walks along next to her father Luke Kirby, it 100 percent looks like they’re on a date.) But if you have three teenagers whose only job is to eventually have a threesome, and they finally get to the scene where they’re having a threesome, and the primary reaction is, “how did it possibly take them this long, and why does this threesome look so boring,” the problem with the show is not how it looks, it’s how the show is built.
I suppose at this point the question is, can it be saved? Do we want it to be saved?
JM: I would really like it to be saved, because out of both professional obligation and welp this was programmed into my genes as a teen obligation, I’m going to have to keep watching. Well, at least until they do a Thanksgiving episode — if they mess up the Thanksgiving episode, a hallowed Gossip Girl tradition, then I might be out.
As for how to fix it? First off, the teens need to drive the drama again; let the teachers be more of a Greek chorus. But more importantly, they need to get into some real conflict. Julien and Zoya were close to some blow-up, but the show pulled away. Give us some reason for them to actually betray each other — and sure, maybe they’ll become friends again slowly like Blair and Serena, but linger in the wound for a bit. Linger in any wound! You’ve got all this glamour, trust the audience to follow you to something nasty for a change. I still can’t believe Julien gave that whole speech about not being a bully in episode four and didn’t walk offstage and turn to someone to say, like, “well, that gambit worked.” These kids can talk about doing the right thing and even believe themselves, but as we know from both The White Lotus and real life, people say a lot of shit and then act in their own self interest. Show us that!
KV: Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. It’s a weirdly cowardly show! It’s as though it’s operating out of a fear that if any character is unhappy for more than two scenes, the entire audience will revolt. (See, for instance, Obie feeling annoyed by Zoya for the briefest period of time and then immediately making out with Julien.) I would also, out of pure self-interest but also critical confidence, love it if they could shave those episode times down by about 15 minutes. Make everyone sad for a while, but make it snappy!
JM: Okay, one final request: More Donna Murphy. I just like when she has to be the stern headmaster, and she pronounces the phrase “Gossip Girl” well. That’s all.
KV: Excellent. Emergency meeting adjourned.
Joe and Love's marriage takes a deadly turn in 'You' season 3 trailer
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'Gossip Girl' almost cut Kristen Bell's voice-over in the original series due to test audiences
You know you love her — but 'Gossip Girl' almost cut Kristen Bell's voice-over in the original series.
Gossip Girl almost cut Kristen Bell's voice-over in the original series due to test audiences
You know you love her.
By Jessica WangJanuary 27, 2022 at 07:16 PM EST
HBO MAX, Google Play, Prime Video, and more options
Spotted: Test audiences' wariness of Kristen Bell's narration in the original Gossip Girl series.
According to the premiere episode of the Gossip Girl-centered podcast XOXO With Jessica Szohr, early feedback on the pilot of the 2000s CW series apparently made creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage consider scrapping Bell's signature voice-over work as the elusive title character.
Schwartz and Savage told Szohr — who hosts XOXO and played Vanessa Abrams on Gossip Girl — that among test audiences, interest would "drop" whenever Bell's narration kicked in.
"People were into [the show] and like, 'Who's this voice that's coming in and distracting me?'" Schwartz recalled. "Do you lose the voice-over? We can't. That's part of the show, and we just have to ride with it."
Bell narrated the original series for its entire six-season run between 2007 and 2012. She returned to Manhattan's Upper East Side once again for the HBO Max reboot last year, providing antagonizing narration for a new generation of private-school teens.
Savage revealed that Bell was the only voice actress to read for the role, and said her concurrent stint on another CW series, Veronica Mars, initially caused some concern.
"We had some reluctance of, 'Did we feel comfortable having two shows on the same network with the same voice-over?'" Savage said. But, she added, "When [Bell] recorded it, she created an entirely different character with just her voice than how she read Veronica Mars."
Veronica Mars' eventual cancellation, however, proved to be fortuitous for the Gossip Girl team. Another salacious tidbit from Savage? Christina Ricci and Selma Blair were also in the mix to voice Gossip Girl.
Listen to the first episode of XOXO With Jessica Szohr below.
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Ed Westwick Says There’s More Life To His ‘Gossip Girl’ Character Chuck Bass, Talks Upcoming Thriller ‘DarkGame’ — Red Sea Studio
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deadline.com
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The season finale of the 'Gossip Girl' reboot will instead serve as a series finale after HBO Max announced that it has canceled the series.
www.rollingstone.com
They Accused Him of Rape. Now He’s Going Viral on TikTok.
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www.thedailybeast.com
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