Catch Up with the Scandalous 'Gossip Girl' Cast 12 Years Later
Hey there, Upper East Siders, Gossip Girl here, and I have the most shocking news of all: it has officially been 12 years since the show ended and let me tell you: B, S and the rest of Manhattan's elite have continued to live their scandalous lives away from my prying eyes. So keep reading if you want to know what this insider has learned about the Gossip Girl cast.
Gossip Girl aired on the CW from 2007 to 2012. It followed the lives of Serena Van Der Woodsen (Blake Lively) and Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) as they try to tackle the trials and challenges of being a teenager on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York while being taunted by the website Gossip Girl. The show was widely successful during its run and even has a short lived reboot from 2021.
Wanting to dive deep into the scandalous lives on Manhattans elite? Gossip Girl is available for streaming on Max.
Blake Lively: Gossip Girl cast
CHARACTER PLAYED: Serena van der Woodsen
BORN: August 25, 1987 in Los Angeles, California.
BEST KNOWN FOR: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005/2008), Green Lantern (2011), The Age of Adaline (2015), A Simple Favor (2018) and It Ends With Us (2024).
PERSONAL: Lively has been married to Ryan Reynolds since 2012. They have four children together.
THOUGHTS ON GOSSIP GIRL: “People loved it, but it always felt a little personally compromising — you want to be putting a better message out there, but it's a weird thing when people feel like they know you really well, and they don't. I would not be proud to be the person who gave someone the cocaine that made them overdose and then shot someone and slept with someone else's boyfriend."
FUN FACT: Much like their characters, Livley and Penn Badgley dated in real life from 2007 to 2020.
Leighton Meester
CHARACTER PLAYED: Blair Waldorf
BORN: April 9, 1986 in Fort Worth, Texas.
BEST KNOWN FOR: Surface (2005-2006), The Roommate (2011), Monte Carlo (2011), Of Mice and Men (2014), Single Parents (2018-2020), How I Met Your Father (2022-2023) and EXmas (2023).
PERSONAL: Meester has been married to Adam Brody since 2014. They have two children together.
THOUGHTS ON GOSSIP GIRL: “I was young when I started Gossip Girl. A lot more people were suddenly around and I was being looked at. If you don’t have the right perspective, you could definitely be confused by people being that nice to you or judging you for behavior that’s typical of a 20-, 21-year-old…making mistakes, but having to make them very publicly. I’m not haunted by that time, but it’s been interesting and helpful for me to look at it and examine it as an adult and go, ‘I don’t know if it was the healthiest environment.’”
FUN FACT: Meester had to dye her naturally blonde hair brown for the role of Blair.
Chace Crawford: Gossip Girl cast
CHARACTER PLAYED: Nate Archibald
BORN: July 18, 1985 in Lubbock, Texas
BEST KNOWN FOR: Loaded (2008), What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012), Blood & Oil (2015), All About Nina (2018) and The Boys (2019-2024).
PERSONAL: Crawford graduated from the Trinity Christian Academy in 2003.
THOUGHTS ON GOSSIP GIRL: Crawford recently appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast and shed some light on how living with Ed Westwick during filming went. “We lived in this little apartment. They call it a junior one [bedroom] where there was a real bedroom and then there was an office you could put in a closed wall, and I was, like, ‘We’ll just switch, and I’ll pay a little bit more.’ Of course, we never switched.”
“[In] Ed’s room there was a lunch pail with overflowing cigarettes. I mean, you thought the Joker lived there. It was insane. I’m not even kidding. I shouldn’t be calling him out like this, but I love him to death.”
FUN FACT: Crawford's character, Nate, didn't send in a tip to the Gossip Girl website until season 5.
Ed Westwick
CHARACTER PLAYED: Chuck Bass
BORN: June 27, 1987 in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England, UK
BEST KNOWN FOR: Children of Men (2006), Freaks of Nature (2015), Wicked City (2015), White Gold (2017-2019) and DarkGame (2024).
PERSONAL: Westwick is currently dating Amy Jackson.
THOUGHTS ON GOSSIP GIRL: “I think there’s a new story to tell around the Chuck Bass character. I’ve actually got a storyline in mind that could work. You know what made me think about this? I get stopped quite a lot on the street for pictures and people want to talk about Gossip Girl, there’s Gossip Girl fanpages and I’m, like, ‘Why wouldn’t we give the fans what they want?’ If this was boxing, or if this was something else, we’d make the fight. We’d give the fans what they want, and I think there’s an argument that that could be applied here.”
FUN FACT: Westwick originally auditioned for the role of Nate.
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Penn Badgley: Gossip Girl cast
CHARACTER PLAYED: Dan Humphrey
BORN: November 1, 1986 in Baltimore, Maryland
BEST KNOWN FOR: The Young and the Restless (2000), Do Over (2002-2003), Easy A (2010) and You (2018-2024).
PERSONAL: Badgley has been married to Domino Kirke since 2017. They have one child.
THOUGHTS ON GOSSIP GIRL: “I didn’t want to be in television. I was biding time a lot with Dan — I was not invested. And I’m not saying it’s a good thing! I’m saying it’s just what it was.”
FUN FACT: Badgley, Meester and Livley were the only cast members to appear in every single episode.
Taylor Momsen
CHARACTER PLAYED: Jenny Humphrey
BORN: July 26, 1993 in St. Louis, Missouri
BEST KNOWN FOR: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams (2002) and Spy School (2008).
PERSONAL: Momsen quit acting in 2012 to pursue her music.
THOUGHTS ON GOSSIP GIRL: Momsen left the show at the end of season 3 to go on tour with her band, and recently recalled in Badgley’s podcast, Podcrushed, that, “They [the producers] went, 'Well we can't let you out of your deal, but we can write you out of the show so you can go on tour. You can't act in anything else, though.' I went, 'That's fine, that's not what I'm trying to do.'”
FUN FACT: Momsen was only 14 when they shot the pilot.
Jessica Szohr: Gossip Girl cast
CHARACTER PLAYED: Vanessa Abrams
BORN: March 31, 1985 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
BEST KNOWN FOR: Fired Up! (2009), Piranha 3D (2010), Tower Heist (2011), The Internship (2013), Two Night Stand (2014) Ted 2 (2015) and The Orville (2019-2022).
PERSONAL: Szohr has one daughter.
THOUGHTS ON GOSSIP GIRL: Szhor's character, Vanessa, isn’t exactly a fan favorite and the actress knows it, saying “If I annoyed you and you cringed at Vanessa, then I was doing my job, because some of the stuff was that way. On the other end, Vanessa was also a relatable character in the sense of there's a very small percentage of people that live on the Upper East Side and have these thousand dollar bags and drive limos to school. Most of the world can't relate to that.”
FUN FACT: Szohr and Westwick also dated while filming Gossip Girl.
Kelly Rutherford
CHARACTER PLAYED: Lily van der Woodsen
BORN: November 6, 1968 in Elizabethtown, Kentucky
BEST KNOWN FOR: Generations (1989-1991), Melrose Place (1996-1990), Christmas Wedding Planner (2017), Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists (2019) and Dynasty (2018-2019),
PERSONAL: Rutherford was married to Carlos Tarajano from 2001 to 2002. Then she married Daniel Giersch from 2006 to 2010. They had two children together.
THOUGHTS ON GOSSIP GIRL: “Lily was a fierce mom, but when you are young, you don’t realize all the things your parents are dealing with. They have their own issues, they make mistakes. [In Gossip Girl] you got to see that parents aren’t perfect. That’s what’s so cool about it.”
FUN FACT: Rutherford and Matthew Settle were the only main cast members that weren't in high school.
Matthew Settle: Gossip Girl cast
CHARACTER PLAYED: Rufas Humphrey
BORN: September 17, 1969 in Hickory, North Carolina.
BEST KNOWN FOR: I know What You Did Last Summer (1998), Until the Night (2004), Ouija (2014) and Valentine (2017).
PERSONAL: Settle was married to Naama Nativ from 2006-2011. They had one child.
FUN FACT: The band Rufas (Settle) plays in — Lincoln Hawk — is the name of Sylvester Stallone's character in the 1987 movie Over The Top.
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