It’s the 10th anniversary of Gossip Girl. But Ed Westwick, who played lovable bad boy Chuck Bass, doesn’t actually know Gossip Girl’s secret identity.
Gossip Girl holds a special place in pop culture. It marks the end of an era — the teen drama series of the aughts that people actually watched in real time and which hasn’t really been replicated by the newest iterations of today, such as Riverdale and Arrow (or, really, anything on The CW).
As executive producer Joshua Safran put it, per the Vanity Fair feature by Josh Duboff, “We were working feeling like, ‘O.K., this is the beginning of something,’ and when I look back on it, it was almost like the end of something, actually.”
10 years later, fans are still pondering Gossip Girl‘s big series-finale reveal — that ya girl GG was really “Lonely Boy” Dan Humphrey all along.
But apparently, nobody ever told Westwick.
From the feature:
"“Someone should let Ed Westwick know about the Dan reveal, though. The actor e-mailed me, in response to a question about favorite plotlines or memories from filming: “I still am not sure who GG was lol.”"
Wait, what?
Should we take this to mean that maybe Westwick never watched the season finale? The later seasons? The whole show?
Lol, indeed.
To this day, you can’t think too hard about the logistics of the fact that Dan was the anonymous blogger dropping hot truths about everyone in New York — often including himself, often to his great detriment.
For the record, you’re not alone. Dan Humphrey himself, aka Penn Badgley, was also left scratching his head about the reveal.
“It doesn’t make sense at all,” the actor told People in 2015. “It wouldn’t have made sense for anybody. Gossip Girl doesn’t make sense!”
He then added, “But no, it made enough sense. He was a writer.”
Whatever you say, Dan.
As if one needs to have the gift of glibness to fire off such missives as the following, after Gossip Girl blasted Serena van der Woodsen for buying a pregnancy test in season 1:
"“Looks like the Virgin Queen isn’t as pure as she pretended to be. Who’s your Daddy, B? Baby Daddy, that is? Two guys in one week? Talk about doing the nasty, or should I say being nasty?”"
That’s an obviously charming thing to write about the woman you’re supposedly in love with, Lonely Boy.
Despite its major plot holes and over-the-top drama, especially in the later seasons, Gossip Girl is pretty much the pinnacle of teen dramas.
Celebrate its 10th anniversary by checking out the oral history in Vanity Fair and, if you have the time, why not rewatch?
Next: Meet the cast of Scared Famous
xoxo,
GG