Nina Dobrev Admits Embarrassing Fact About ‘Gossip Girl’ Prequel Audition

Nina Dobrev is best known for playing Elena Gilbert on The Vampire Diaries, but she could have gotten her to start on a different CW show. Dobrev auditioned for a planned (but eventually scrapped) Gossip Girl prequel that would have focused on Lily van der Woodsen, who was played by Kelly Rutherford in the original series. However, while promoting her directorial debut short film, The One, at the Mammoth Film Festival on Friday, she admitted to Us Weekly that she had completely forgotten that the audition had ever taken place. 

“To be honest with you, when I saw that headline and I clicked on it… I didn’t remember it,” Dobrev explained. “And then I read it in depth and remembered. [The articles] jogged my memory. And I was like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right. I did audition for that. That did happen.’”

“I fully understood it,” Dobrev told Us about the fact that she didn’t get the part. “And I think I even remember when they sent me the audition and I was like, ‘I’m never gonna get this. I don’t look like [Kelly Rutherford],’ but I did it anyway.” Brittany Snow portrayed Lily in the Gossip Girl season 2 episode “Valley Girls,” which functioned as a backdoor pilot but the show ultimately wasn’t picked up.

However, this audition did put her in the path of casting director David Rapaport, who shared her name with CW executives as one to watch. “I’m glad that I did that anyway because … I think probably a month later I got [cast on] Vampire Diaries,” Dobrev said. “Everything’s a stepping stone. One thing leads to the other and it always works out exactly like it’s supposed to.”

However, while Dobrev may have forgotten the audition, Rapaport never did. He recently expressed his admiration of her In an episode of Jessica Szohr’s XOXO podcast. “You know who did the best read for that? Nina Dobrev: that was one of the best auditions I had ever seen, and for that role specifically,” he explained.  “I just remember thinking, ‘I am going to think about this girl in a couple of years and be like, Oh god, I missed that opportunity.’ She was so incredible.”