Gossip Girl

TV Show
STUDIOWarner Bros
RELEASED2007

Welcome to New York's Upper East Side, where the wealthy and connected mingle at benefits and try to deal with their always-dramatic love lives, not to mention picking colleges. Blair Waldorf is the so-called toast of adolescence in her world; she and her friends, Kati Farkas and Isabel Coates, go to a prep school and fancy parties with their rich parents. Blair is envied by her adversaries because she is thought to have the perfect life, not just because of her gorgeous boyfriend, Nate Archibald, but because she's also planning on getting into her dream college, Yale. With everyone worried about college(or procrastinating on worrying, which everyone seems to be doing), and junior year dragging along, her seemingly perfect life is interrupted by her ex-best friend, the beautiful Serena van der Woodsen, coming back into town after getting kicked out of boarding school. Serena comes back into her life, and into the eyes of Blair's boy friend. When everything Blair knows starts to fall apart, everyone will realize that her life is far from perfect. Will life in the the Upper East Side redeem itself of what it's really supposed to be? Or will the false facade reveal that the rich have the same problems as the not so rich (Jenny and Dan Humphrey), if not more. And just maybe Jenny and Dan are all the more happy with their simple, not-so-expectant lives.

Knowledge

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Gossip GirlSource

COVID Actually Made the Reboot's First Season Longer

HBO Max originally ordered ten episodes for the reboot's first season, but ended up extending it to twelve partway through, even with pandemic shutdowns slowing production down.

Gossip GirlSource

The Reboot Couldn't Film Where the Original Did

Showrunner Joshua Safran has said the 2021 series never got to shoot a single scene on the Lower East Side, since so many other productions were competing for the same New York City blocks. He called it a 'production nightmare' compared to how much freer filming was for the original show.

Gossip GirlSource

The Original Run Added Up to 121 Episodes

Across its full six-season run on The CW from 2007 to 2012, the original Gossip Girl racked up a total of 121 episodes before the finale finally closed the book on the Upper East Side.

Gossip GirlSource

Mexico Got Its Own Gossip Girl Set in Acapulco

In 2013, Warner Bros. teamed up with Televisa to make a Mexican version called Gossip Girl: Acapulco, keeping the same core storylines but renaming the cast, so Blair became Bárbara Fuenmayor, Serena became Sofía López-Haro, and Chuck Bass turned into Max Zaga.

Gossip GirlSource

Thailand Made Its Own Local Version Too

Not long after the Acapulco remake aired, Thailand's Kantana Public Company put together its own 18-part local adaptation of Gossip Girl, part of a bigger wave of Warner Bros. formats being reworked for different countries around that time.

Gossip GirlSource

There Were Even Talks of a Chinese and Turkish Version

Before the Mexican remake actually got made, there was chatter about a Chinese adaptation nicknamed 'China Girl' and a Turkish version too. Neither one ended up resembling the original as closely as Gossip Girl: Acapulco did once it went into production.

Gossip GirlSource

Acapulco Traded Headbands for Beaches

The Mexican remake kept the scheming and the scandal but ditched the Manhattan penthouses for beachfront mansions and infinity pools, with the gossip itself moving from a blog to Twitter and the whole cast cruising around in convertible BMWs.

Gossip GirlSource

The Original Show's Wardrobe Reportedly Cost $19 Million

Between the designer labels and the sheer volume of outfits needed every week, the original Gossip Girl's costume budget reportedly added up to around $19 million across its run, according to reporting at the time.

Gossip GirlSource

500 Outfits Got Narrowed Down to 80 Every Episode

Costume designer Eric Daman has said his team would pull together roughly 500 possible pieces for any given episode and whittle that down to about 80 outfits that actually made it to air, averaging five or six looks per character.

Gossip GirlSource

The Reboot Doubled Down on the Costume Count

The HBO Max reboot pushed the wardrobe even further than the original, averaging around 200 costumes per episode and leaning hard on labels like Chanel, Fendi, Saint Laurent, and Dior to fit the new cast's social-media-driven sense of style.