Gossip Girl first aired back in 2007 and garnered a massive fan following in no time. Viewers of the show fell in love with the main characters including Serena, Dan, Blair Waldorf, Chuck Bass and Nate Archibald. While they waited patiently for the makers to announce a reboot, it seems like their prayers have finally been answered! While it has not been confirmed whether the original gang will reprise their roles, narrator Kristen Bell is back on board for the upcoming project. The first look of the Gossip Girl reboot was revealed today and showed seven new kids, dressed to the nines while striking a pose at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The news comes almost a decade after the Gossip Girl finale aired on TV screens and left fans wanting more! The Instagram image, uploaded by Harper’s Bazaar US shows a group of upper-class private school-going teenagers, seemingly hailing from different nationalities. The pictures were taken while filming at the all-time famous museum. “Hey, Upper East Siders, say hello to the new cast of @GossipGirl. Filming for the @HBOMax reboot has officially started in New York City and new paparazzi photos from set show the cast gathering on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art—an iconic setting from the original CW teen drama,” read the caption.
The HBO Max series, which will stream locally on Binge when it drops next year, is set eight years after the events of Gossip Girl – which ended with Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) and Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley) getting married, reported various American media outlets. Screenwriter Joshua Safran, who was an executive producer on Gossip Girl for its first five seasons, admitted there was a lack of diversity in the original which has been corrected. “There was not a lot of representation the first time around on the show,” he told Vulture in a 2019 interview. “I was the only gay writer I think the entire time I was there. Even when I went to private school in New York in the ’90s, the school didn’t necessarily reflect what was on Gossip Girl. So, 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. The thing I can’t say is there is a twist, and that all relates to the twist,” he shared at the time.