‘Ever heard of the guilty rich?’ Dark new reality of Gossip Girl reboot
It’s the much-anticipated TV reboot that has everyone talking. And the new Gossip Girl is tackling serious issues never explored in the original.
It’s been a turbulent year in the United States with political upheaval, civil unrest, and more coronavirus cases than any other country. It’s therefore amazing that a show about rich and privileged teenagers addresses these issues – while still having fun.
Yet the Gossip Girl reboot does all this and more, adding zeitgeisty topics like gender fluidity, sexual orientation and woke culture into the mix.
“Part of the DNA of the show is that it’s engaging in public conversations and things that are going on in the real world,” said executive producer Stephanie Savage, one of the co-creators of the original 2007-2013 series. “We definitely want to feel like everything that’s happened in the last couple of years is reflected in the material.”
With the first episode dropping on BINGE last week, viewers can already spot some hot button topics emerging. Here the cast and production heads take us through what else to expect.
The pandemic
Queen Bee Julien Calloway is getting ready for her first day at Constance Billard School for Girls on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. “You’re normally not this excited for the first day of school,” says her dad.
“It’s better than being stuck in here another year,” quips Julien, a nod to the Covid-19 state of emergency which kept New Yorkers in lockdown from March 2020 to May 2021.
Perhaps the biggest role coronavirus plays in the series is behind the scenes, with the show’s producers adhering to strict Covid-19 protocols in a series that has high levels of physical intimacy.
“We never shut down once. We really have an incredible Covid team that work really hard to protect everybody, and we have a really great intimacy co-ordinator who helped with that,” revealed producer-writer Joshua Safran.
The super-rich
When the original Gossip Girl aired in 2007 the phrase “the one per cent” hadn’t yet been coined, no one knew how to “check their privilege,” and the series was in season four when the Global Financial Crisis hit.
The reboot is more self-aware of the wealth gap.
“Ever heard of the guilty rich? This one’s the guiltiest and the richest,” says Julien of her property developer heir boyfriend Obie (Eli Brown). These characters wrestle with their privilege, and Obie initially bonds with new girl and Julien’s half-sister Zoya (Whitney Peak) over their shared interest in an anti-gentrification charity. While Julien might be Queen she genuinely cares about her much poorer sibling, and ships Zoya pricey merch on the sly to give her some fashion cred at school.
“We’re high school students and whether we’re well-off or not, these kids are still going through things and figuring things out as they grow up,” says Evan Mock, who plays Aki. “So I feel like no matter how well-off you are, you still go through everyday problems.”
Gender fluidity and sexual orientation
Generation Z is far less likely than previous generations to identify as heterosexual, with one in six identifying as LGBT, according to Gallup.
Gossip Girl reflects this with gay, bi, pan, and trans characters — and plenty of experimentation in-between.
“I’m a queer man and my experiences of being gay and the way I relate to that have changed over time,” said writer and producer Joshua Safran. “I understand the non-binary world. I’m not 17, my friend’s kid is 17, so I’m going to ask her questions and I’m going to listen to what she tells me, and I’m not going to tell her that she’s wrong.”
Maximus, the “new Chuck” (Thomas Doherty), identifies as pansexual and is intent on seducing his male teacher. “That’s been really interesting for me,” said Doherty. “Gossip Girl is a reflection of society right now, which I really have a lot of respect for, and I’ve learnt so much from it.”
He hopes viewers will be “a lot more open and investigative, sexually, in terms of questioning their own preconceived notions of sexuality and what that means. I think that that’ll definitely broaden people’s minds and make for a much more tolerant, accepting society.”
Zion Moreno (Luna) is among the cast seeing an increasing tendency for youngsters to not define as straight or gay. “There’s no need to label yourself,” she said. “You just live. You just experience. You just exist and you try to help others along the way. Gossip Girl really does showcase that because pretty much everyone is queer on the show.”
Black Lives Matter and woke culture
When Zoya wins a scholarship to Constance Billard she swaps daggy Buffalo for fancy Manhattan. It’s a fish-out-of-water fairytale mirrored in the casting because no one was more surprised about landing the role of a 14-year-old freshman than Peak.
“I watched Gossip Girl maybe three years ago for the first time and I guess I didn’t really think about how much it lacked diversity, because that was kind of what was always put in my face,” said Peak. “Every sitcom that everybody was watching was always just predominantly white people. And so I never even thought about it until I got the audition. I was like, Wow, this is weird, OK. Sure. I didn’t think I was going to get it because I was young and I did not fit in with the original cast.”
With four of the female leads women of colour, the show embraces diversity and inclusion.
In Peak’s view, while it “isn’t the pinnacle of diversity entertainment,” it is “a step in the right direction”.
Social media and mean girls
Showrunner Safran said the biggest shift has come with how social media has changed the way the invisible narrator, the titular Gossip Girl, works.
“Back then, Gossip Girl was the disrupter. Serena (played by Blake Lively in the original show) thought she was going around her daily life being Serena and Gossip Girl’s like, ‘I’m going to show what you’re really doing.’ Now we all curate ourselves so much that we present a false front and we know who we really are. Gossip Girl isn’t disrupting one thing. She’s actually showing both things and throwing them into context. Julien isn’t who she’s showing you she is, and what’s worse is she knows the truth and she’s choosing not to show you.”
While the mean girl trope is not new, social media has inflamed this stereotype. Julien and Zoya might be blood relations and sport matching neck tattoos but they go from reunited to rivals in one click of an Instagram post. But it’s fun to watch.
“We can all relate to being bullied in one way or another, so it’s fun to put ourselves in positions of silly power,” said Savannah Smith. “In this show that power is taken a little too far, but all in a fictional, mean girl, exciting, dramatic, fun way.”
The new Gossip Girl reboot and all seasons of the original are now streaming on BINGE.
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