Speaker 1: And I'm Stephanie Savage. You're the creators. Can you take
Speaker 1: your producers off the Girl? Welcome back, listeners to your
Speaker 1: one and only source and to all things Gossip Girl.
Speaker 1: You know you love it. X O x O. Hi everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the very first episode of x O
Speaker 1: x O. My name is Jessica's Door and I played
Speaker 1: Vanessa Abrams on Gossip Girl. Gossip Girl changed my life,
Speaker 1: you guys, and I know a lot of you feel
Speaker 1: the same way, whether you came for the fashion or
Speaker 1: the music, the friendships, the drama, the love triangles, or
Speaker 1: just to get lost in the world of the Upper
Speaker 1: east Side. So many of you have told us that
Speaker 1: it was your favorite show. So after a long ten years,
Speaker 1: I'm getting the crew back together with my brand new podcast,
Speaker 1: XL x O. We're gonna take a walk down memory lane,
Speaker 1: bringing you the Gossip Girl stories we never told and
Speaker 1: reuniting the people that made it all happen and why today. Well,
Speaker 1: ten years ago, the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: declared January Gossip Girl Day, So I thought this is
Speaker 1: the perfect time to launch my podcast. Each week we'll
Speaker 1: be bringing you a new member of the cast, the crew,
Speaker 1: the creators, and even some fans. And I'm just so
Speaker 1: excited for you guys to go on this journey with us.
Speaker 1: Today's guests are the brilliant Gossip Girl creators and executive
Speaker 1: producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. These two are a powerhouse.
Speaker 1: Do oh you guys true television icons. They brought you
Speaker 1: The o C Runaways, Nancy Drew, the Carrie Diaries, Sitting
Speaker 1: on Fire, and of course gossip Girl. This episode, we
Speaker 1: are bringing you back to the very beginning, how Gossip
Speaker 1: Girl has pitched to a little network called the c W,
Speaker 1: Why Penn Badgeley chopped his hair before the pilot, and
Speaker 1: the moment when everyone knew Chuck and Blair were something special.
Speaker 1: It was such an honor working with these two, and
Speaker 1: even the way that happened is a crazy story in itself.
Speaker 1: So without further ado, please let me welcome my very
Speaker 1: first guests, the incredible Josh Sports and Stephanie Savage. Hi,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, this is lovely. First off, I want
Speaker 1: to say, okay, I want to say thank you guys
Speaker 1: for creating and putting a vision to a show that
Speaker 1: that meant so much to so many people across the world,
Speaker 1: but personally for me changed my life. I met some
Speaker 1: of my friends that I'll have in my life forever.
Speaker 1: I got to live in New York City. I got
Speaker 1: to learn as an actor. Um, I got to work
Speaker 1: with two of the best and most talented producers in
Speaker 1: the business. And who is that ye working with you
Speaker 1: guys and the cast that you put together in the
Speaker 1: project that we all got to work on and bring
Speaker 1: so much joy to so many people across the world.
Speaker 1: From the bottom of my heart, thank you guys for that.
Speaker 1: I know we had a lot of years together and
Speaker 1: fun times and memories and things like that, but I
Speaker 1: don't know if I ever really sat down and said, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: like really, thank you so much, because the hard work
Speaker 1: and everything that you put in wasn't just a TV
Speaker 1: show for entertainment that it was like a life for
Speaker 1: for a lot of us and and for and for
Speaker 1: the fans and viewers as well. Um, so just thank
Speaker 1: you for that. Thank you good thing. You came to
Speaker 1: that pool party that day at my house. Yeah, actually,
Speaker 1: can you tell your guys this side of the story,
Speaker 1: Because David had his, I had mine. I'm like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna ask Josh and very clear memory of death. So
Speaker 1: we just jumping into the how you got cast on
Speaker 1: the show story. Sure, yeah, I was having a party
Speaker 1: at my house. Steph was over. Was it was like
Speaker 1: Memorial Day or fourth of July or something must have
Speaker 1: been four July. Yeah, I think you came with Adam
Speaker 1: Roadie right with like a group of people. We were
Speaker 1: in the process at beginning the casting process of Vanessa.
Speaker 1: I opened the front door, you were standing there. It
Speaker 1: was like Vanessa found Stephanie. I'm like, what did you
Speaker 1: and She's like yeah, and we had the whole conversation
Speaker 1: and it was it was like that, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think we I don't think we presented it to you
Speaker 1: you at the party. We probably let you enjoy yourself.
Speaker 1: You guys did not mention a word because at first
Speaker 1: I was just like, I don't even know she's an actress.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna like a cost r and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: you would be a gossip girl. She like, you know,
Speaker 1: I think And it was earlier to brain surgeon or like,
Speaker 1: I think we're able to run to my desktop because
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, pre yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: like IMDb do and you like found your credit. We're like, god,
Speaker 1: she's an actress. Okay, good? You like sweet? That is wild?
Speaker 1: And I was there for a couple of hours. You
Speaker 1: guys never mentioned a thing, but at that point the
Speaker 1: pilot had not aired yet. No, no, there was just
Speaker 1: a lot of buzz around the producers who did the
Speaker 1: O C and have this new show coming out on
Speaker 1: the c W, which which was a new network. The
Speaker 1: CW was not a thing. We were the first show
Speaker 1: for the c W. They were a network that had
Speaker 1: fused together the w B and the u p N.
Speaker 1: And the way I recall it happening was alloy and
Speaker 1: my agents had sent me the Gossip Girl books, which
Speaker 1: were set up at the c W already with Don Ostruff.
Speaker 1: I immediately called Stephanie and said, if you like this,
Speaker 1: let's do this together, because we were trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what we were going to do together after the
Speaker 1: O C ended and there was nobody I wanted to
Speaker 1: work with more after that then then staff, and so
Speaker 1: it was already set up in the c W, and
Speaker 1: we were like, okay, great. We knew what they were
Speaker 1: trying to do. We knew what the w B was,
Speaker 1: and that was kind of the model that they were
Speaker 1: seemed to be following, and we were off to the races.
Speaker 1: And I remember very distinctly being on the set of
Speaker 1: the o C finale and there was like a crowd
Speaker 1: of teenagers in the street where we were shooting the episode,
Speaker 1: and somebody was like, what are you guys gonna do next,
Speaker 1: and said, oh, doing the uh this book series called
Speaker 1: gossip Girl, and everybody screamed. All these kids screamed. So
Speaker 1: my books already had a big built in fan base
Speaker 1: going into it that I think we were not fully
Speaker 1: aware how how big the fambase was, how passionate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had never really heard of them, and obviously you
Speaker 1: guys read the books, had an idea of what you
Speaker 1: want to do. Was it always going to be a
Speaker 1: TV show? For us? It was so the other Not
Speaker 1: only do we not know how popular the books were,
Speaker 1: No one told us that they had tried unsuccessfully to
Speaker 1: develop the books a couple of times prior to us,
Speaker 1: which may have made us suspicious. We just went in like,
Speaker 1: you know, well, good thing, good thing. You didn't know that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: very idealistic. So I think it was. I think it
Speaker 1: was they attempted it as a movie. I believe with
Speaker 1: Lindsay Lohan. Yeah, Lindsay Lohan is Blair. Amy Sherman Palladino
Speaker 1: I think was writing it, yeah, prior to us, so
Speaker 1: we were not aware of any of that. Lindsay as Blair,
Speaker 1: who has Serena. I'm not sure they got that far
Speaker 1: down the line. Dina Lohan her mother. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: guys knew you were going to go do that. By
Speaker 1: the way, how did you guys originally meet to do
Speaker 1: the O C? Are you going all the way back?
Speaker 1: We met prior to the O C pilot. We met
Speaker 1: on a general meeting and uh. Out of that meeting,
Speaker 1: the OC was born. And we just worked incredibly closely together.
Speaker 1: Stephanie was my boss on the pilot, is what we
Speaker 1: like to say, or I guess that is the truth.
Speaker 1: That's why we say truth. Um, and I was the
Speaker 1: writer and she was the producer. And but even though
Speaker 1: we had these different roles, we just worked very seamlessly
Speaker 1: together and it was just a real creative synergy and um,
Speaker 1: but she was Stephanie was extremely thorough as a boss
Speaker 1: and as a producer and with time my naps because
Speaker 1: we were working a lot of hours. I'd be very
Speaker 1: tired and I'd be like, please just take a nap,
Speaker 1: and she'd be like, you have two minutes ago. No,
Speaker 1: it was like twenty minutes. And I'd always give you
Speaker 1: like a couple of extra minutes. But we did joke.
Speaker 1: My credit on the first season of The o C
Speaker 1: was supervising producer and I literally be supervisor, just an
Speaker 1: okay shirt to wear word Stephanie Okay, thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was supervising. All that was part of the charm,
Speaker 1: and so very early on though, it was like clear like, oh,
Speaker 1: you are more than a producer or someone you know
Speaker 1: who in this traditional usually producers are non writing producers
Speaker 1: on a lot of these shows, and Stephanie was just
Speaker 1: clearly someone who was a writer but was also at
Speaker 1: that time acting more as a producer. So, you know,
Speaker 1: first opportunity was like you should write an episode of
Speaker 1: the show, um, and she did and it was the
Speaker 1: Chris mcka episode. And then we got to switch roles
Speaker 1: and I got to be her boss. She did not nap,
Speaker 1: I did not have to time anything else. But it
Speaker 1: was very uncomfortable for me to have to be now
Speaker 1: the baby writer handing my script into the show runner
Speaker 1: and like praying that you liked it and like that
Speaker 1: it didn't get a huge rewrite, that it wasn't a
Speaker 1: big whiff. She nailed it, shenailed it as you expect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think that really formed like the basis of
Speaker 1: our the foundation of our relationship, where we can wear
Speaker 1: different hats with each other. We can write things together
Speaker 1: as partners. One person can write something and the other
Speaker 1: person can be more of a producer. We can sort
Speaker 1: of like move back and forth pretty seamlessly, and I
Speaker 1: think that's quite unusual for people. And I think most importantly,
Speaker 1: we are okay being vulnerable with each other, which obviously
Speaker 1: if you're going to write something or create something, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of vulnerability required. So I always felt like
Speaker 1: I could go to Stephanie with the most embryonic seed
Speaker 1: of an idea or a pitch or what have you,
Speaker 1: and there would be no judgment about what was lacking,
Speaker 1: only excitement about what it could be. We were early
Speaker 1: adopters of vulnerability. Exactly who who did you guys cast
Speaker 1: furs or who did you know when they walked in
Speaker 1: the room. We're like, this is this person who walked
Speaker 1: in when you knew other than Vanessa. There was a
Speaker 1: big online push for Blake as Serena before we had
Speaker 1: even started. There was a lot of like emails and
Speaker 1: message boards, and we knew of Blake from the Traveling
Speaker 1: Pants movies that she had done with Alloy, which obviously
Speaker 1: were the producers of the Gossip Girl books and also
Speaker 1: the series. So she was definitely on our radar very
Speaker 1: early on. And did you guys see that, I'd say
Speaker 1: we definitely had curiosity of like, we need to meet
Speaker 1: this girl and like see what she's about. And then
Speaker 1: we had was a lunch with her at the one
Speaker 1: oh one Cafe and she was herself. She's really charming,
Speaker 1: m really funny, um, super open. Her personality, her natural
Speaker 1: personality is not really like Serena is probably a bit
Speaker 1: more aloof and a bit more like Oblivion is, you know,
Speaker 1: to what's going on around her, a little more self involved,
Speaker 1: which Blake is not, but part of I think we
Speaker 1: thought one of the reasons that the show is at
Speaker 1: this point we had figured out that they tried to
Speaker 1: develop it a couple of times it didn't work, is
Speaker 1: that the characters really needed to be imbued with warmth,
Speaker 1: um and kind of a rootability that the book characters
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily have, and so Blake's natural warmth and kind
Speaker 1: of her California sunniness was actually going to be a
Speaker 1: great quality to bring to Serena. That she loves her brother,
Speaker 1: that she cares about her friends, that she's trying to
Speaker 1: be a better person. Blake was going to bring all
Speaker 1: of that in spades versus some other actress who might
Speaker 1: be more a natural Serena, but who wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be able to like infuse Serena with those positive qualities
Speaker 1: that we needed her to have. When I watched the
Speaker 1: pilot back, I was saying, like, there's this mystery that
Speaker 1: Blake also brought to Serena, Like she comes act you
Speaker 1: don't know where she was. Was it bad? Was it alcohol?
Speaker 1: Was it drugs? What did you do? She brings you
Speaker 1: in where you care about her so much even though
Speaker 1: you don't know if what she just did was horrible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now we made one of the first moves that we
Speaker 1: made in adapting the book that Stephanie was alluding to
Speaker 1: was in uh in the books and in prior adaptations.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming um, the mystery of why Serena left and
Speaker 1: why she came back was kind of like a little bit.
Speaker 1: She was a party girl and she got in trouble
Speaker 1: and she left, and now she wanted to come back
Speaker 1: to you. There wasn't like a super concrete reason to
Speaker 1: her return or one that was engendering a lot of
Speaker 1: sympathy for her character. She seemed like somebody would do
Speaker 1: whatever she wanted. So the idea that she was back
Speaker 1: because her brother, you know, had attempted suicide and she
Speaker 1: wanted to keep that a secret and she had come
Speaker 1: back for her family. That was a move that we
Speaker 1: made early on in the adaptation to try to really
Speaker 1: root the audience's interests and like root for Serena and
Speaker 1: give this character who has the world on a string,
Speaker 1: has this reputation, is beautiful and you know, a socialite
Speaker 1: and all that. It gives people a lot of reason
Speaker 1: to not like her. It's slept with her best friend's boyfriend. Um,
Speaker 1: she had two strikes against her, But she was coming
Speaker 1: back for this thing that was obviously incredibly sympathetic and
Speaker 1: hopefully would get the audience to proof for her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the books, her brother Eric is older, he's not gay,
Speaker 1: he's not vulnerable, vulnerable little guy that Connor brought to life.
Speaker 1: And one of the funny things is Blake Frost was
Speaker 1: the second The second she started reading Serena, she just
Speaker 1: was Serena and we were like sold on her because
Speaker 1: the Stephanie was alluding to she was so Californian and
Speaker 1: bubbly and it required not imagination, well a little bit
Speaker 1: of imagination the part of the network just to kind
Speaker 1: of like see her as a New Yorker. So we
Speaker 1: did a screen test where luckily Stephanie has a very
Speaker 1: sophisticated closet and uh, she dressed Blake in her own
Speaker 1: clothing and so that fusion of Stephanie and Blake, you
Speaker 1: guys are like, listen, you're going to be Serena whether
Speaker 1: you like it or not. It made sense. Stephanie is
Speaker 1: gossip girl, so it made sense that her wardrobe is
Speaker 1: I had like like a good cashmere overcode and like
Speaker 1: a nice like land Vin satchel, and we just like
Speaker 1: we burned her up a bit. And when they saw
Speaker 1: the screen test, everybody got it. Because sometimes executives have
Speaker 1: to literally see it. You can be like hey, this,
Speaker 1: this and this, and they're like they don't get it sometimes,
Speaker 1: which is so funny to me, poor late Exactly, we
Speaker 1: have a couple of those on this show. Or Layton
Speaker 1: is blonde naturally, um, and she had to dye her hair.
Speaker 1: She came in blonde, right, and she came in blonde,
Speaker 1: and we're like, you know, Blair has brown hair. It's
Speaker 1: probably best if both the girls don't have blonde hair.
Speaker 1: She'll dye her hair brown. I thought the internet was
Speaker 1: very intense about that stuff, right, No, that the Internet
Speaker 1: was like very crazy about Like when Chase was cast,
Speaker 1: they were like, Nate Archibald has green eyes and like
Speaker 1: Chase Crawford has blue eyes, and like this show is ruined,
Speaker 1: and there was funny, Oh my god, oh the Internet.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so Layton, they just could not. They're like,
Speaker 1: we know what you're saying, that she'll color her hair,
Speaker 1: but we just capt it. So Layton truly during pilot season,
Speaker 1: got her hair dyed Blair waldor Brown to come in
Speaker 1: and read for the role. Gave exactly the same performance,
Speaker 1: just a different hair color, and they were like, oh
Speaker 1: get it now, Wow, did she WinCE her hair in
Speaker 1: the sink? Is there? He said in the bathroom, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure about the rinsing and the thing. We may
Speaker 1: we may have embellished that over time. Yeah, and when
Speaker 1: you guys were casting, I think David said, not a
Speaker 1: lot of chemistry reads were happening, which I was. I
Speaker 1: laughed because I'm like, that's maybe because they knew that
Speaker 1: everyone was going to somehow connect at some point, and
Speaker 1: so everyone just had to have chemil we need we
Speaker 1: needed to dial down to chemistry. Yeah, my memory as
Speaker 1: Blake was cast and then we had a big day
Speaker 1: of screen tests with Layton and Chase and maybe Taylor.
Speaker 1: My memory is that like was not cast and we
Speaker 1: did a screen test of Blake, Layton, and Ed anyway,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember them being grouped together. But Ed
Speaker 1: was a whole situation. First, he read for Nate was
Speaker 1: definitely not innate, but we like both like wrote on
Speaker 1: a piece of paper during his audition, and like he
Speaker 1: showed each other that we each had written and Chuck.
Speaker 1: You know, he had a British accent, obviously Ed did,
Speaker 1: so we wanted to hear it both ways. And he
Speaker 1: was just so cool and so unique and there was
Speaker 1: like I've never seen a kid like this on a
Speaker 1: show like this before. We got to find a place
Speaker 1: for him so he got cast his Chuck and then
Speaker 1: couldn't get his visa to come shoot in the US
Speaker 1: and time because he was a citizens of the UK.
Speaker 1: And they were saying to us as we got closer
Speaker 1: and closer to sort of the pilot, guys, you need
Speaker 1: to figure out who your backup Chuck is going to
Speaker 1: be because we don't think this is going to work out,
Speaker 1: and we were just like, there is no backup Chuck. Instead,
Speaker 1: I don't wways tell you figure it out, so you
Speaker 1: could just telling the network listen, that's our guy, that's
Speaker 1: our yeah, And then they were like no, seriously, for
Speaker 1: like insurance purposes, like if he doesn't show what we know,
Speaker 1: we know we want him, we want him to but
Speaker 1: if he doesn't show up, like they're going to shut
Speaker 1: down the show, we can't shoot, Like we can't let
Speaker 1: that happen, so you need to act shut it down.
Speaker 1: He's our Chuck. You choose a backup choice, like we
Speaker 1: it's he's our choice. And Peter, to his credit, also
Speaker 1: refused a choice. He's like, no, it's it. So I
Speaker 1: think they were all very annoyed with us, but they
Speaker 1: just rolled with it. And is bes a cleared in time?
Speaker 1: I had worked with him on a previous show for
Speaker 1: the w B, and he was a serious regular, but
Speaker 1: he wasn't like one of the main main characters. But
Speaker 1: I just loved writing for him so much. I thought
Speaker 1: he was so funny and so smart. Um And when
Speaker 1: that show ended, I made Josh go over for a
Speaker 1: lunch with be in Pen because I wanted him to
Speaker 1: meet him. I think I ended up going one on
Speaker 1: one with him. It is my memory, but maybe you're like,
Speaker 1: you two need to go bond. And we went to
Speaker 1: the Alcove Bakery on Hillhurst and then um, I was
Speaker 1: giving Pen the advice that like every year he did
Speaker 1: a pilot for the w B, and like that's a
Speaker 1: great gig for him, and he knew he'd get something.
Speaker 1: And you know, when you're young. He was very young
Speaker 1: when he was on my show. I think he was seventeen. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of money and it's exciting, and I'm
Speaker 1: just like, you have to stop doing pilots and you
Speaker 1: have to like really just get focused on like larger goals.
Speaker 1: And then like nine months later called him and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you need to do Romper pilot the WB And it's
Speaker 1: not even the w B anymore. It's not like this
Speaker 1: new thing that people don't even know what it is.
Speaker 1: But fortunately I agree to that. Yeah. No, steph was
Speaker 1: always like this guy's great, you have to breakfast with him.
Speaker 1: That he and I went to brunch and we were like, Okay,
Speaker 1: Stephanie says, we need to bond, so like let's figure
Speaker 1: that out. Came out of there. It was like, guy
Speaker 1: seems great. Can I see a question about his hair?
Speaker 1: Because he had this like his hair was kind of
Speaker 1: long at the time and it was like curly and
Speaker 1: it was just you know, he was he was a
Speaker 1: snowboarder on on the other show. So he showed up
Speaker 1: on sat with like his his big hair. And that
Speaker 1: morning that he went on camera, the first thing we
Speaker 1: shot with him and Rufus putting up flyers um in
Speaker 1: Brooklyn for the Lincoln Hot concert, which I wore my
Speaker 1: shirt today. Oh that's so cool, And we just brought
Speaker 1: him into the trailer and they just like buzzed all
Speaker 1: of his hair off. Oh my god, that's funny. And
Speaker 1: which is, by the way, is a nightmare for the network,
Speaker 1: right because normally the network makes you do hair tests
Speaker 1: and the like, and they want to approve everything, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden was like pen shaved his head
Speaker 1: and now he's coming like what And then and like
Speaker 1: Peter Roth was freaking out, like everybody's like, what is happening?
Speaker 1: You shaved his head? And then everybody saw him and
Speaker 1: was like, oh damn, he looks good. Yeah, he's so
Speaker 1: good looking. He could pull off either well. And I
Speaker 1: think it actually kind of pushed him into being like
Speaker 1: it made him look like more of like a young man,
Speaker 1: like it was like a leading man kind of a
Speaker 1: It was good the Brad Pitt like head buzz kind
Speaker 1: of the day. Yeah, and then Taylor was and Taylor
Speaker 1: was so little. She was like Cindy Lou who, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's awesome and we're very proud of her. And but
Speaker 1: who knew remember her being like do you want to
Speaker 1: listen to my song? I've recorded like a little And
Speaker 1: it was like Gwen Stefani like super poppy, you know
Speaker 1: the music she's making the time. So the idea that
Speaker 1: she became pretty reckless and is what is she like
Speaker 1: set the record for like most number one singles by
Speaker 1: a female artist on the Hard Rocks charts or something insane? Well,
Speaker 1: we should talk. We should talk for a second though
Speaker 1: about Matthew Saddle and Kelly Rutherford, who were like the
Speaker 1: only two adults so to speak, Um, you know that
Speaker 1: I mean they were actual adults, but that we were
Speaker 1: allowed to that We were to have a series regulars
Speaker 1: in the show, and we really wanted actors who would
Speaker 1: feel real and legitimate and like obviously they needed to
Speaker 1: be attractive, but also be able to like hit all
Speaker 1: the levels and bring everything we would need because we're
Speaker 1: going to be leading on them a lot. You know,
Speaker 1: we didn't have a as big of an adult presence
Speaker 1: in the beginning on the show as we did say
Speaker 1: on the OC where it was much more kind of
Speaker 1: half adults half kids. This was really going to be
Speaker 1: kind So when we went to Rufus, we went to Lily,
Speaker 1: we needed to have two actors in those parts with presents,
Speaker 1: with charisma and with chops, and those guys were so
Speaker 1: good and brought brought a whole other level to the show.
Speaker 1: And obviously Rufus was a big crush for a Matthew
Speaker 1: for the female audience that was more on the thirty
Speaker 1: five side of the of the Ledger totally. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: were great. They were so great to work with, and
Speaker 1: even all their storylines, what Lily All went through, she
Speaker 1: just played it so well. And Kelly was all in.
Speaker 1: She was all in. She was to throw at her
Speaker 1: that she would she would balk at you know, absolutely.
Speaker 1: She was on Melrose Place, so she had been trained.
Speaker 1: I know. I love it if you were either on
Speaker 1: vl Rose Places or in a David Lynch movie, you
Speaker 1: had like a good understanding of what was going to
Speaker 1: happen and like you could roll with the punches on
Speaker 1: our home. Nothing would be too bird for you. But Margaret,
Speaker 1: Colin Wallace, Shawn, so many great you know, powder familias
Speaker 1: came into the show adult so many totally. But I
Speaker 1: also realized we haven't talked about Ristin Bell at all,
Speaker 1: which may have been one of the most critical pieces
Speaker 1: of casting and the whole dang thing. Yeah, how did
Speaker 1: that come about? Because I mean, she's she's the voice
Speaker 1: of the show. She is. And when we did the
Speaker 1: new When we did the new show, which we knew
Speaker 1: would be a new generation and a new cast and
Speaker 1: what have you, the one piece we needed to have
Speaker 1: was Kristen. That was the one piece that was going
Speaker 1: to make it. I feel like gossip Girl because she's
Speaker 1: so just that is, she's the tone. She set the tone,
Speaker 1: and she had been on Veronica Mars for Dawn for
Speaker 1: the up n and we had a list of names.
Speaker 1: Steph probably remembers all of them. Um, I don't remember
Speaker 1: all of them, but I do remember a lot of them.
Speaker 1: But Veronica Mars also had voice over, and Veronica Mars
Speaker 1: was not canceled when we were doing our pilot, so
Speaker 1: we had some reluctant of because it was like, she
Speaker 1: could do the voice over. I wouldn't be like, it
Speaker 1: doesn't take that much time. She could do both shows,
Speaker 1: but we did. We feel comfortable having two shows on
Speaker 1: the same network with the same voice over. Voice over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we also we love Veronica Mars. We had friends
Speaker 1: at worked on that show. We didn't want to like
Speaker 1: cannibalize it in any way, so we were sort of like,
Speaker 1: but then Veronica Mars was not coming back, and it
Speaker 1: was like, yes, let's scatter as fast as we can.
Speaker 1: And then when she recorded it, it was she created
Speaker 1: an entirely different character with just her voice than how
Speaker 1: she read Veronica Mars. Completely different, totally different. She had said,
Speaker 1: I think she was like I'm a trained voice over actress.
Speaker 1: I can make it sound different. And we were just like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: Christen is like a chameleon. You know, she can do
Speaker 1: so many different things. So did you guys have anyone
Speaker 1: else lined up? Or was it like she was it?
Speaker 1: We never recorded anybody else. Yeah, but I'll tell you,
Speaker 1: like Christina Ricci read the UM audio books, so she
Speaker 1: was in the mix. I think Selma Blair was in
Speaker 1: the mix. She had like cruel intentions. Uh yeah, But
Speaker 1: all the cuts that would go to the network, you
Speaker 1: know that we would always record Christian's voice over last
Speaker 1: because that's the easiest piece to rewrite to match picture,
Speaker 1: and she would kind of come in later in the process.
Speaker 1: So in my mind, Stephanie is I've said Stephanie's gospel
Speaker 1: several times, but she was literally gossip girl in that
Speaker 1: she would read the gossip girl parts that would go
Speaker 1: into the cuts, at least at first, and then I
Speaker 1: think she was like, I don't ever want to do
Speaker 1: this again. But yeah, then I think just the editors
Speaker 1: did it. UM. But for the for the first episode UM,
Speaker 1: when we had to hand the pilot and we rewrote
Speaker 1: that voice over at the beginning probably twenty times, and
Speaker 1: we made Christian record it like she was a good
Speaker 1: sport about it, a really good sport about it. You also,
Speaker 1: when you when you have a pilot, you have to
Speaker 1: go test it, which is this terrible process where you
Speaker 1: sit in a room. Helpful process sometimes, but you sit
Speaker 1: in a room and you're watching on television and people
Speaker 1: in another room watch your show, Oh my god, and
Speaker 1: they have a dial. I don't know if they still
Speaker 1: do it this way, but this is how they did
Speaker 1: it then, and they have a dial and when they're interested,
Speaker 1: they turned the dial up, and when they're not interested,
Speaker 1: they turned the dial down. So you're watching this like
Speaker 1: you know, like e k G. Monitor of your show,
Speaker 1: like is it flat lighting or we're dead? And interestingly
Speaker 1: and it went up with Gossip Girl. Well, every time
Speaker 1: the Gossip Girl voiceover would kick in, it would drop
Speaker 1: and people because people are like into it, and then
Speaker 1: who's this voice that's coming in and like distracting me?
Speaker 1: And you know, and so it was like, well, do
Speaker 1: you lose the voice over? And it was like, I can't.
Speaker 1: That's part of the show and we're just gonna ride
Speaker 1: with it. And so sometimes testing is helpful and sometimes
Speaker 1: you just go, thank you for the feedback, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna keep making the show we're making. Yeah, and once
Speaker 1: people figure out how it works. I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: watching it for the first time, you're like, it's not
Speaker 1: even the character in the show. You're like, who is
Speaker 1: talking so right? But once you get it, you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's Gossip Girl. Yeah, I mean it's no show without it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, No, Kristen was that Christie did an amazing jump. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's so funny because people still to this day
Speaker 1: will be like, how was it working with Chris. I'm like,
Speaker 1: we never had a scene together. I never saw her,
Speaker 1: you know. With with Rachel Milson, they're like auditioning for
Speaker 1: a scene when she her voice over is her audition
Speaker 1: for the Gossip Rol movie and that's her one on
Speaker 1: camera appearance, although she was on Lucian Fallon recently and
Speaker 1: he made her a bunch of headlines. Is the voice
Speaker 1: of Gossip Rol, which is such a good sport about
Speaker 1: it all. Oh my god, I gotta go look that up.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Who was the easiest to write for and
Speaker 1: the hardest? Steph you wrote or rewrote everything, so you
Speaker 1: you take this one, Well, I don't know that anything
Speaker 1: was actually like super hard. I think I think that, Um,
Speaker 1: I will, I will say to all the aspiring actors
Speaker 1: out there, the actors that actually say their dialogue as
Speaker 1: written get better dialogue written for them. I don't think
Speaker 1: Adam Brody would agree with that, but yet, UM watching
Speaker 1: the pilot last night, really loving the Humphries like I
Speaker 1: had actually forgotten. Like Taylor is amazing. She's just like
Speaker 1: rat a tat tat all. This dialogue coming out of
Speaker 1: her mouth perfect. And when we were shooting, Taylor also
Speaker 1: would know all of Matthew's dialogue, which they didn't always um,
Speaker 1: and she'd be able to like give them their lines
Speaker 1: when they needed them. But that was a really charming
Speaker 1: family to write for. Ed and Layton were super fun
Speaker 1: to write for. And one of the best things about
Speaker 1: writing for television is you really get to know your
Speaker 1: actors over time. If you're doing a feature, the script
Speaker 1: is kind of written, you cast it, maybe you might
Speaker 1: make a few changes, but you don't get to live
Speaker 1: with your actors and know their voices and know like
Speaker 1: with Layton, you know, I don't need to write any
Speaker 1: parentheticals anymore. She's just you know that says like emotional
Speaker 1: or looks away how to be Blair And I don't
Speaker 1: need to tell her how to do that. And I
Speaker 1: loved having an outlet for that very elevated, articulate person
Speaker 1: who seems like they're they've kind of scripted their dialogue before.
Speaker 1: It's the characters a little written as they as they
Speaker 1: might say. But Blair did practice her dialogue in the
Speaker 1: mirror before she went to school that day. You know,
Speaker 1: she had like bonn mos like ready to go for people,
Speaker 1: and so that was just always super fun to write.
Speaker 1: But you love all your children equally. I love all
Speaker 1: my children equally, but also Blair. What Layton did with Blair,
Speaker 1: I'm shocked that someone wasn't nominated for for some things,
Speaker 1: Like there was a scene with Layton where I'm like,
Speaker 1: you literally just brought every emotion within two pages where
Speaker 1: you had me laughing, You're crying, You're vulnerable, you were
Speaker 1: a little brat. We felt bad for you, the vulnerability
Speaker 1: that Lair had. And did you guys know that that
Speaker 1: that was going to happen Chuck and Blair or maybe
Speaker 1: was their chemistry? No, I mean we were I mean
Speaker 1: yes to everything you just said about Layton's performance, and
Speaker 1: on the award front, I would like to point out
Speaker 1: we have several teen choice surfboards that we polish, and
Speaker 1: by the way, I don't overlook that. I think those
Speaker 1: are amazing. Don't overlook those surfboards. I would never but
Speaker 1: I will go on the record and say, like the
Speaker 1: the Emmy's do not embrace the teen shows in the
Speaker 1: way that I think they deserved. Yeah, Emmy's Golden Globe.
Speaker 1: I just and and again, I really those surfboards like
Speaker 1: mean everything to me. There they're my sisters, my high school,
Speaker 1: my sister would just graduated high school, her room, and
Speaker 1: I love them. They mean so much to you. You
Speaker 1: gave them to your sister, got it. Okay, it's my
Speaker 1: my old room from high school. But um yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like maybe because it is a teen teen shower
Speaker 1: back then, c W wasn't looked at. I know. Jane
Speaker 1: the Virgin was one of the first. I just feel
Speaker 1: like there was a lot of scenes and performances throughout
Speaker 1: the show that I was like, Wow, that's like really good.
Speaker 1: I mean, the stealth thing with her was just how
Speaker 1: funny she could be. Yeah, you know, but oh, sorry
Speaker 1: to answer your question. To answer your chemistry question, it
Speaker 1: was the end of the pilot and those two are
Speaker 1: standing outside the party watching, you know, Dan and Serena
Speaker 1: and Jenny leave the party, and there was just like
Speaker 1: a connection between them, Ed and Layton and Chuck and
Speaker 1: Blair watching, you know, as the kind of at that
Speaker 1: moment the villains of the story. Obviously that would evolve
Speaker 1: over the course of the series. That was immediately just
Speaker 1: so palpable and fun um. They're dynamic, and it really
Speaker 1: kind of that was where it kind of really first
Speaker 1: landed in my memory, was the ended up pilot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was like a revelation to watch the end
Speaker 1: of the first episode and feel like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's like dangerous liaisons. It's like Velmont and Murty, like
Speaker 1: the characters that like they love each other but they
Speaker 1: hate each other, but they're going to like do schemes together,
Speaker 1: and like that you see story to want to lean
Speaker 1: into because the check care after in the pilot is
Speaker 1: very much a villain totally to a point that it
Speaker 1: felt problematic to make him not just a villain as
Speaker 1: we moved the story forward. But it was a question
Speaker 1: of do we do that or do we not do that,
Speaker 1: and you guys went with it, and it was everyone's
Speaker 1: like favorite relationship. It really really was. I mean, you like,
Speaker 1: you fight for them, you cry for them, you love them,
Speaker 1: you hate some of the things they do. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was just such a great relationship. And I think that
Speaker 1: they respected each other and had so much fun playing
Speaker 1: it that that really bled into their performances when you
Speaker 1: watch it. Yeah, and it's also part of the fun
Speaker 1: of making you know, long form serious television where it's
Speaker 1: an evolving, breathing, living thing and you can react to
Speaker 1: the actors and start writing towards everybody you know as
Speaker 1: you get to know them more um and their voices,
Speaker 1: and also as the audience is responding to stuff, so
Speaker 1: you we have that opportunity to adjust totally. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's so funny. Twenty two episodes a year that the
Speaker 1: first season because we got cut short by the writer strikes,
Speaker 1: so we had to do a little bit less, right,
Speaker 1: But then back to it, it was twenty two. That
Speaker 1: was like a normal thing, which when I think about that,
Speaker 1: I think that's crazy. I think we did more than
Speaker 1: twenty two the second year to make up for that.
Speaker 1: I think we did twenty four the second year to
Speaker 1: make up for some of the lost episodes and fun fact,
Speaker 1: we were one of only two dramas that launched in
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven that came back for a second season,
Speaker 1: the other one being Josh's other show, Chuck, and we
Speaker 1: were the only show that came back directly after the
Speaker 1: writer's strike in two thousand or the only drama. There
Speaker 1: might have been a half hour other shows came back
Speaker 1: for season two from the writer strike, but we were
Speaker 1: the only ones that made it to season three. There's
Speaker 1: three shows that premier in two thousand seven that were
Speaker 1: impacted by the writers strike that survived past the into
Speaker 1: Gossip Girl, Chuck, and then this little show very obscurity,
Speaker 1: you probably haven't heard of it called the Big Bang Theory.
Speaker 1: Those are the three. Oh my god, I never knew that.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. I mean I knew it about obviously for
Speaker 1: gossip What. We can get into this as we go along,
Speaker 1: but we'll stay with the pilot for now. No. I
Speaker 1: was going to ask, at what point in season one
Speaker 1: did you guys know not only that the show was special,
Speaker 1: but that it was going to hit the way it did,
Speaker 1: Because it felt like it blew up so quickly, so
Speaker 1: this will take us to this will bring us to
Speaker 1: the writer strike then, because that's not actually what happened, okay,
Speaker 1: And it was like, okay, And I remember we went
Speaker 1: down to the CW with Warner Brothers and Peter Roth,
Speaker 1: who was the head of Warner Brothers at the time
Speaker 1: and a passionate advocate for the show, and he loved
Speaker 1: the show right away, and and uh and Susan Rodner
Speaker 1: and and so we went to the c W to
Speaker 1: talk about stuff, and everybody was it was like the
Speaker 1: elephant in the room of like everybody really believed in
Speaker 1: the show. Everybody really loved the show, like dawns from
Speaker 1: New York and grew up in this world, like really
Speaker 1: connected to the show, but it was not happening ratings
Speaker 1: wise when we first premiered, And part of that was
Speaker 1: the newness of the c W and like, you know,
Speaker 1: people not knowing that that was a thing, um that
Speaker 1: was an actual network at that time. It was all new.
Speaker 1: But it was kind of like the elephant in the
Speaker 1: room of like, what are we gonna do? Guys? We
Speaker 1: have this show and we think it should be successful,
Speaker 1: but it's not really materialized yet. And then the writer
Speaker 1: strike happened, and obviously we were saying for a lot
Speaker 1: of shows, it was not a ptuitous event. It was
Speaker 1: actually quite um a disastrous I don't mean to laugh
Speaker 1: when I say that, But so everything went off the
Speaker 1: air because once all the new episodes were done, there
Speaker 1: was nothing to put on. And the c W, because
Speaker 1: they did not unlike NBC where Chuck was, they could
Speaker 1: put on like American Gladiators and all this reality show
Speaker 1: and just fill the air. CW had nothing else, so
Speaker 1: they had to put Gossip Girl back on because there
Speaker 1: was nothing else to put on. And slowly, over time
Speaker 1: time when all the other networks were kind of down,
Speaker 1: the audience kept growing and growing. And then when we
Speaker 1: were able to come back and do how many stuff
Speaker 1: was it six episodes or five? So we the c
Speaker 1: W shows again. Because they every other network, including NBC,
Speaker 1: we all had to wait until the following year to
Speaker 1: come back for fall season two, and the c W
Speaker 1: just had to have shows. So they're like, we need
Speaker 1: five more episodes whatever, we can shoot to launch in
Speaker 1: February or March whenever the show came back. And that's
Speaker 1: when they did their whole o MFG campaign that whole
Speaker 1: like outdoor marketing campaign um which was all over l A,
Speaker 1: all over New York. People were like scandalized, like it
Speaker 1: says O m f G. That's like that says fuck
Speaker 1: on my billboard Sunset Boulevard right now, and it's like no,
Speaker 1: it just says f We don't know. They had to
Speaker 1: do like ten down O MG ones that weren't O MFG.
Speaker 1: So the marketing really caught on and caught people's The
Speaker 1: show had been rerun and rerun during the strike, and
Speaker 1: suddenly it was the only thing launching with new episodes,
Speaker 1: and that convergence is what really put the show over
Speaker 1: the top. And we actually did like a one hour
Speaker 1: it's so old fashioned they never do it anymore, but
Speaker 1: like a one hour celebration of gossip Girl before the
Speaker 1: show came back, where it with like an editorial shoot
Speaker 1: and like interviews with the cast and like the Gossip
Speaker 1: Girl Guide to New York, a really crazy thing that
Speaker 1: would never happen anymore to like relaunched the show when
Speaker 1: it came back, and that was kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be celebrating it if it wasn't successful. So
Speaker 1: by then it felt like it was a thing and
Speaker 1: it was solid, but it was very scary when it
Speaker 1: launched because the CW was a new thing in New
Speaker 1: York City. Like on your TV, it didn't even say
Speaker 1: the CW, it said Picks whatever that Picks used to
Speaker 1: broadcast the Yankee Games. So Picks was very big in
Speaker 1: my house with my dad. Yeah, okay, yes, but don
Speaker 1: Ostroff when she took over the c W and she
Speaker 1: she merged the w B and um u pan is
Speaker 1: Josh that and then she made kind of a bold
Speaker 1: move which was like this show is going to focus
Speaker 1: on women eighteen to thirty five, um and that there
Speaker 1: were no networks that were for women eighteen to thirty five.
Speaker 1: So to us, she was just like, it's probably bad
Speaker 1: now to say make Crack for girls, Cracked for girls,
Speaker 1: But the idea was make something that is only for
Speaker 1: this audience. You don't have to worry about anybody else
Speaker 1: liking it. And you guys nailed that and did it.
Speaker 1: We were very lucky that we had Don in our
Speaker 1: corner at the network, computer in our corner at the studio.
Speaker 1: And because people don't even the show and it doesn't
Speaker 1: perform right away people, no one has any problem cutting
Speaker 1: baide and running at the first sign of trouble in Hollywood. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But I remember also there was an l A Times article.
Speaker 1: We did a whole photo shoot the cast, a whole
Speaker 1: photo shoot for the La Times. The headline was the
Speaker 1: hit it isn't well. But that's also like a really
Speaker 1: important like milestone for the show is it was one
Speaker 1: of the first shows that people were watching online. It
Speaker 1: was truly like the moment where people started talking about
Speaker 1: young people are going to want to watch shows on
Speaker 1: iPads and phones, and other people were like, what are
Speaker 1: you crazy, Like this is still broadcast television. Streaming doesn't
Speaker 1: really exist. So that was a huge thing that our
Speaker 1: fans were early adopters of, you know what we now
Speaker 1: consider like how people. And what's also crazy is the
Speaker 1: entire show being about a blog that none of that existed.
Speaker 1: We didn't have any of the platforms, and that's a
Speaker 1: credit to that's a credit too. And we haven't mentioned
Speaker 1: her yet We should have earlier. Cecily but Zigazar, who
Speaker 1: wrote the books, was very prescient in her writing about
Speaker 1: blogs and blog culture and this kind of the power
Speaker 1: of the internet and the warping of one self esteem
Speaker 1: based on social media. You know a lot of that
Speaker 1: stuff Cecily very smartly and presently put in into the books. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because she was writing before the time of There was
Speaker 1: before Perez Hilton, before anything that was even like that.
Speaker 1: And then obviously the show started, Facebook existed, but Instagram
Speaker 1: didn't exist yet. There's a MySpace reference in the in
Speaker 1: the pilot on sidekicks. When we actually shot the final
Speaker 1: episode of the show, there's a flashback to the party
Speaker 1: that Dan goes to where he meets Serena, and so
Speaker 1: we needed to get sidekicks. So our prop guy like
Speaker 1: located some sidekicks. They were Paris and Nicole's sidekicks. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: That's a fun fact. Yeah. Wow, I almost forgot about sidekicks.
Speaker 1: Those were the hottest things back in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: you guys. I mean, I'm like transported back to that time.
Speaker 1: This this this is fun. Also, I was there and
Speaker 1: didn't even know some of this stuff. It's kind of
Speaker 1: cool to be a part of a show for so
Speaker 1: many years and I'm still learning about it. Okay, So
Speaker 1: obviously this conversation isn't over, but I'm actually just going
Speaker 1: to stop it here for now because we just got
Speaker 1: so into it and talked for so long that it's
Speaker 1: too much good stuff for one episode. So I won't
Speaker 1: make you wait too long, and I promise I have
Speaker 1: some very exciting guests coming up in the meantime. I
Speaker 1: want to thank Josh and Stephanie for kicking off this
Speaker 1: podcast with me. It's incredible what they put into motion
Speaker 1: with this show, and it just took a life of
Speaker 1: its own and it's still here fifteen years later. That's wild.
Speaker 1: Thank you all for listening. Until next time. X O
Speaker 1: x O x O XO is produced by Propagate Content
Speaker 1: and Me Jessica's Or. Our show is executive produced by Lnley.
Speaker 1: Our producers are Diego Tapia, Emily Carr, and Hannah Harris.
Speaker 1: Original music by Maxi and Luon, and the episode was
Speaker 1: mixed by steth O Landski