'Gossip Girl' Revival Creator Explains Why GG's Identity Was Revealed in Episode One
The creator of the Gossip Girl revival series is opening up about the decision to reveal the identity of the new Gossip Girl blogger in the first episode.
We’re not going to reveal the spoilers right here at the beginning of the post because we don’t want to spoil anyone who hasn’t watched the show yet. You can check out our spoiler-filled post for all the info if you want to see though!
“To me, that’s the only reason to do another version, to come up with something you hadn’t seen before,” Joshua Safran told E! News. “[The original show's creators] Josh [Schwartz] and Stephanie [Savage] were immediately on board, and so were Warner Bros and HBO Max, and that was that.”
Click inside to read the creator’s explanation of the decision…
So, who is Gossip Girl? It’s Tavi Gevinson‘s character Kate Keller, who is one of the teachers at the school.
Joshua says he originally said no to running the new show until he thought about the idea for the revival.
“Over that weekend, I realized there’s something we never did. We never saw how Dan being Gossip Girl actually happened in the moment,” he said. “If he was sitting next to Jenny at the breakfast table and sending in a tip about Jenny that would destroy Jenny, while watching it land and seeing it destroy Jenny…you could redo the entire series from the beginning and put that in everywhere, and it would be suddenly a new thing.”
While talking about the teachers being behind the Gossip Girl account, Joshua added, “On the first show, we only saw one teacher, and we never went into the classroom because that was a rule that Stephanie had, since there were enough high school shows. So I was like, okay, this time around, let’s look at the teachers.”
“The more the series goes on, and the more Kate gets both more connected to the students and more connected to Gossip Girl…it just gets more and more complicated,” he said. “And I think that there’s a—I don’t want to say thriller aspect, but it plays in those realms of a black comedy slash thriller, because you’re like, ‘Kate, don’t do that!’ But you’re also like, ‘I know why you’re doing that,’ and you become complicit. You’re now a part of Gossip Girl.”
Joshua recently revealed the character who was originally meant to be Gossip Girl in the original series.