Gossip Girl

Gossip Girl: Kristen Bell Set to Return as Narrator for HBO Max Reboot

Spotted: A pajama-clad Kristen Bell inside a recording booth on the Warner Bros. lot.

TVLine has learned that the TV all-star (Veronica Mars, The Good Place) has signed on to reprise her role as Gossip Girl‘s omniscient narrator in HBO Max’s forthcoming reboot.

The original series’ creators, Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, are on board to EP the new version alongside former Gossip Girl EP Joshua Safran, who will serve as showrunner. “Kristen Bell has always been and will always be the voice of Gossip Girl,” the trio said in a statement.


News of Bell’s official return comes fourth months after HBO Max placed a 10-episode order for a new iteration of the former CW hit that will “introduce a fresh crop of gorgeous Manhattan private-schoolers to Gossip Girl’s all-seeing eye.” Per the streaming service, the reboot “will address just how much social media — and the landscape of New York itself — has changed in the intervening years.”

Schwartz recently described Gossip Girl 2.0 as more of a “continuation” as opposed to a “remake,” adding, “There aren’t, like, new actors playing Serena and Blair.” That said, the door is open for the original stars, which included leading ladies Blake Lively and Leighton Meester, to make an appearance. “We’ve reached out to all of them to let them know it was happening, and we would love for them to be involved if they want to be involved,” Schwartz said. “But [we] certainly didn’t want to make it contingent upon their [participation]. They played those characters for six years, and if they felt like they were good with that, we wanted to respect that. But obviously, it would be great to see them again.”

HBO Max is set to launch in May 2020 (pricing info. here). A premiere date for Gossip Girl, meanwhile, remains TBD.

Ho letto che Chace Crawford vuole esserci

Gossip Girl Reboot Update: Expect 'Non-White Leads,' a 'Lot of Queer Content' and... a Mysterious 'Twist'

HBO Max’s in-the-works Gossip Girl reboot may be set in the same universe as the CW original, but the new series will have a dramatically different (read: more diverse) worldview.

In an interview with Vulture, OG Gossip Girl EP Joshua Safran — who will serve as showrunner on the follow-up — acknowledges, “There was not a lot of representation the first time around on the show. I was the only gay writer I think the entire time I was there. Even when I went to private school in New York in the ’90s, the school didn’t necessarily reflect what was on Gossip Girl.”


The new series — which will once again be narrated by Kristen Bell — will right that wrong, Safran promises. “This time around the leads are nonwhite,” he maintains. “There [will also be] a lot of queer content on this show. It is very much dealing with the way the world looks now, where wealth and privilege come from, and how you handle that.”

Safran, meanwhile, teases that “there is a twist” at the center of the new series, while also confirming that Gossip Girl 2.0’s new crop of students will similarly attend Constance Billard School for Girls. And it will be set in present day. “It is 12 years, I guess 13 years after the original,” says Safran. “So we are in realtime from the original where we are in the show.”

Avevo visto che si erano pentiti di aver fatto un cast un po' troppo bianco (anche se secondo me sono solo opportunisti), quindi ben venga il cambiamento. Con le coppie omosessuali poi sono stati veramente orribili, l'unico bacio same sex era tra due donne e inserito in una scena porca quando avevano letteralmente due coppie gay che avrebbero potuto """normalizzare""" comodamente