‘Gossip Girl’ Reboot Has a New Star, Replacing Blake Lively and Leighton Meester Series’ Leads

A new group of Upper East Siders is set to dominate the world of Gossip Girl. As E! News reported, the HBO Max reboot of the series will star Emily Alyn Lind as one of the lead characters. Lind is set to star as Audrey, a teen in a long-term relationship who starts to think about what else could be out there. The series, which comes from original Gossip Girl creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, will be set eight years after the events in the original CW show.

The Gossip Girl reboot will introduce a new generation of characters including Lind’s Audrey. E! News also reported that several other actors have been added to the project including Whitney Peak, Eli Brown, Johnathan Fernandez, and Jason Gotay. Aside from a brief synopsis about Lind’s character, there haven’t been any details released about the characters that the other cast members will play.

Lind confirmed the news of her casting via Instagram by posting a screenshot from a Deadline article and writing, “seen u soon upper east side, xoxo ;).”

The Gossip Girl reboot will consist of 10 episodes and follow the lives of a new set of private school students as they navigate the world with Gossip Girl chronicling their every move. However, in the HBO Max version of the series, Gossip Girl will not be one individual. Instead, Gossip Girl will be everyone.

In July, Schwartz previously revealed some info about the reboot of the fan-favorite CW show during his appearance at the 2019 TV Critics Association summer press tour, per E! News.

“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,” Schwartz explained.

At the time, Schwartz also said that actors from the original series, such as Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, and Penn Badgley, will not appear in the reboot unless they wish to.

“I mean, if they want to be involved in some way, we reached out to all of them to let them know it was happening and that we would love for them to be involved if they want to be involved, but we certainly didn’t want to make it contingent upon them,” he said. “And you know, they played those characters for six years and if they felt like they’re good with that, we wanted to respect that but obviously any time anybody wants…it’d be great to see them again.”