January 26, 2022 • 41 mins
The brilliant minds that started it all, creators and executive producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage join Jessica to kick off XOXO right! They remember the fateful BBQ that brought them all together and put Jessica on the show, casting the rest of Manhattan’s elite, and how to turn bad press into great marketing.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
And I'm Stephanie Savage. You're the creators. Can you take
your producers off the Girl? Welcome back, listeners to your
one and only source and to all things Gossip Girl.
You know you love it. X O x O. Hi everyone,
(00:29):
and welcome to the very first episode of x O
x O. My name is Jessica's Door and I played
Vanessa Abrams on Gossip Girl. Gossip Girl changed my life,
you guys, and I know a lot of you feel
the same way, whether you came for the fashion or
the music, the friendships, the drama, the love triangles, or
just to get lost in the world of the Upper
east Side. So many of you have told us that
(00:51):
it was your favorite show. So after a long ten years,
I'm getting the crew back together with my brand new podcast,
XL x O. We're gonna take a walk down memory lane,
bringing you the Gossip Girl stories we never told and
reuniting the people that made it all happen and why today. Well,
ten years ago, the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg,
declared January Gossip Girl Day, So I thought this is
(01:13):
the perfect time to launch my podcast. Each week we'll
be bringing you a new member of the cast, the crew,
the creators, and even some fans. And I'm just so
excited for you guys to go on this journey with us.
Today's guests are the brilliant Gossip Girl creators and executive
producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. These two are a powerhouse.
Do oh you guys true television icons. They brought you
(01:35):
The o C Runaways, Nancy Drew, the Carrie Diaries, Sitting
on Fire, and of course gossip Girl. This episode, we
are bringing you back to the very beginning, how Gossip
Girl has pitched to a little network called the c W,
Why Penn Badgeley chopped his hair before the pilot, and
the moment when everyone knew Chuck and Blair were something special.
It was such an honor working with these two, and
(01:56):
even the way that happened is a crazy story in itself.
So without further ado, please let me welcome my very
first guests, the incredible Josh Sports and Stephanie Savage. Hi,
(02:22):
oh my gosh, this is lovely. First off, I want
to say, okay, I want to say thank you guys
for creating and putting a vision to a show that
that meant so much to so many people across the world,
but personally for me changed my life. I met some
(02:44):
of my friends that I'll have in my life forever.
I got to live in New York City. I got
to learn as an actor. Um, I got to work
with two of the best and most talented producers in
the business. And who is that ye working with you
guys and the cast that you put together in the
project that we all got to work on and bring
(03:06):
so much joy to so many people across the world.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you guys for that.
I know we had a lot of years together and
fun times and memories and things like that, but I
don't know if I ever really sat down and said, hey, guys,
like really, thank you so much, because the hard work
and everything that you put in wasn't just a TV
show for entertainment that it was like a life for
for a lot of us and and for and for
(03:28):
the fans and viewers as well. Um, so just thank
you for that. Thank you good thing. You came to
that pool party that day at my house. Yeah, actually,
can you tell your guys this side of the story,
Because David had his, I had mine. I'm like I'm
gonna ask Josh and very clear memory of death. So
we just jumping into the how you got cast on
the show story. Sure, yeah, I was having a party
(03:51):
at my house. Steph was over. Was it was like
Memorial Day or fourth of July or something must have
been four July. Yeah, I think you came with Adam
Roadie right with like a group of people. We were
in the process at beginning the casting process of Vanessa.
I opened the front door, you were standing there. It
(04:11):
was like Vanessa found Stephanie. I'm like, what did you
and She's like yeah, and we had the whole conversation
and it was it was like that, I mean, I
don't think we I don't think we presented it to you
you at the party. We probably let you enjoy yourself.
You guys did not mention a word because at first
I was just like, I don't even know she's an actress.
I'm not gonna like a cost r and be like, hey,
you would be a gossip girl. She like, you know,
(04:31):
I think And it was earlier to brain surgeon or like,
I think we're able to run to my desktop because
it was like, you know, pre yeah, I think we
like IMDb do and you like found your credit. We're like, god,
she's an actress. Okay, good? You like sweet? That is wild?
And I was there for a couple of hours. You
guys never mentioned a thing, but at that point the
pilot had not aired yet. No, no, there was just
(04:54):
a lot of buzz around the producers who did the
O C and have this new show coming out on
the c W, which which was a new network. The
CW was not a thing. We were the first show
for the c W. They were a network that had
fused together the w B and the u p N.
And the way I recall it happening was alloy and
(05:17):
my agents had sent me the Gossip Girl books, which
were set up at the c W already with Don Ostruff.
I immediately called Stephanie and said, if you like this,
let's do this together, because we were trying to figure
out what we were going to do together after the
O C ended and there was nobody I wanted to
work with more after that then then staff, and so
it was already set up in the c W, and
(05:38):
we were like, okay, great. We knew what they were
trying to do. We knew what the w B was,
and that was kind of the model that they were
seemed to be following, and we were off to the races.
And I remember very distinctly being on the set of
the o C finale and there was like a crowd
of teenagers in the street where we were shooting the episode,
and somebody was like, what are you guys gonna do next,
and said, oh, doing the uh this book series called
(06:01):
gossip Girl, and everybody screamed. All these kids screamed. So
my books already had a big built in fan base
going into it that I think we were not fully
aware how how big the fambase was, how passionate. Yeah,
we had never really heard of them, and obviously you
guys read the books, had an idea of what you
want to do. Was it always going to be a
TV show? For us? It was so the other Not
(06:24):
only do we not know how popular the books were,
No one told us that they had tried unsuccessfully to
develop the books a couple of times prior to us,
which may have made us suspicious. We just went in like,
you know, well, good thing, good thing. You didn't know that, Yeah,
very idealistic. So I think it was. I think it
was they attempted it as a movie. I believe with
Lindsay Lohan. Yeah, Lindsay Lohan is Blair. Amy Sherman Palladino
(06:49):
I think was writing it, yeah, prior to us, so
we were not aware of any of that. Lindsay as Blair,
who has Serena. I'm not sure they got that far
down the line. Dina Lohan her mother. Okay, so you
guys knew you were going to go do that. By
the way, how did you guys originally meet to do
the O C? Are you going all the way back?
(07:12):
We met prior to the O C pilot. We met
on a general meeting and uh. Out of that meeting,
the OC was born. And we just worked incredibly closely together.
Stephanie was my boss on the pilot, is what we
like to say, or I guess that is the truth.
That's why we say truth. Um, and I was the
writer and she was the producer. And but even though
(07:32):
we had these different roles, we just worked very seamlessly
together and it was just a real creative synergy and um,
but she was Stephanie was extremely thorough as a boss
and as a producer and with time my naps because
we were working a lot of hours. I'd be very
tired and I'd be like, please just take a nap,
and she'd be like, you have two minutes ago. No,
it was like twenty minutes. And I'd always give you
(07:53):
like a couple of extra minutes. But we did joke.
My credit on the first season of The o C
was supervising producer and I literally be supervisor, just an
okay shirt to wear word Stephanie Okay, thank you. Yeah,
she was supervising. All that was part of the charm,
and so very early on though, it was like clear like, oh,
(08:14):
you are more than a producer or someone you know
who in this traditional usually producers are non writing producers
on a lot of these shows, and Stephanie was just
clearly someone who was a writer but was also at
that time acting more as a producer. So, you know,
first opportunity was like you should write an episode of
the show, um, and she did and it was the
Chris mcka episode. And then we got to switch roles
(08:36):
and I got to be her boss. She did not nap,
I did not have to time anything else. But it
was very uncomfortable for me to have to be now
the baby writer handing my script into the show runner
and like praying that you liked it and like that
it didn't get a huge rewrite, that it wasn't a
big whiff. She nailed it, shenailed it as you expect. Yeah,
(09:00):
but I think that really formed like the basis of
our the foundation of our relationship, where we can wear
different hats with each other. We can write things together
as partners. One person can write something and the other
person can be more of a producer. We can sort
of like move back and forth pretty seamlessly, and I
think that's quite unusual for people. And I think most importantly,
(09:20):
we are okay being vulnerable with each other, which obviously
if you're going to write something or create something, there's
a lot of vulnerability required. So I always felt like
I could go to Stephanie with the most embryonic seed
of an idea or a pitch or what have you,
and there would be no judgment about what was lacking,
only excitement about what it could be. We were early
(09:42):
adopters of vulnerability. Exactly who who did you guys cast
furs or who did you know when they walked in
(10:04):
the room. We're like, this is this person who walked
in when you knew other than Vanessa. There was a
big online push for Blake as Serena before we had
even started. There was a lot of like emails and
message boards, and we knew of Blake from the Traveling
Pants movies that she had done with Alloy, which obviously
(10:24):
were the producers of the Gossip Girl books and also
the series. So she was definitely on our radar very
early on. And did you guys see that, I'd say
we definitely had curiosity of like, we need to meet
this girl and like see what she's about. And then
we had was a lunch with her at the one
oh one Cafe and she was herself. She's really charming,
(10:47):
m really funny, um, super open. Her personality, her natural
personality is not really like Serena is probably a bit
more aloof and a bit more like Oblivion is, you know,
to what's going on around her, a little more self involved,
which Blake is not, but part of I think we
(11:08):
thought one of the reasons that the show is at
this point we had figured out that they tried to
develop it a couple of times it didn't work, is
that the characters really needed to be imbued with warmth,
um and kind of a rootability that the book characters
didn't necessarily have, and so Blake's natural warmth and kind
of her California sunniness was actually going to be a
(11:31):
great quality to bring to Serena. That she loves her brother,
that she cares about her friends, that she's trying to
be a better person. Blake was going to bring all
of that in spades versus some other actress who might
be more a natural Serena, but who wasn't going to
be able to like infuse Serena with those positive qualities
(11:52):
that we needed her to have. When I watched the
pilot back, I was saying, like, there's this mystery that
Blake also brought to Serena, Like she comes act you
don't know where she was. Was it bad? Was it alcohol?
Was it drugs? What did you do? She brings you
in where you care about her so much even though
you don't know if what she just did was horrible. Yeah,
Now we made one of the first moves that we
(12:13):
made in adapting the book that Stephanie was alluding to
was in uh in the books and in prior adaptations.
I'm assuming um, the mystery of why Serena left and
why she came back was kind of like a little bit.
She was a party girl and she got in trouble
and she left, and now she wanted to come back
to you. There wasn't like a super concrete reason to
her return or one that was engendering a lot of
(12:35):
sympathy for her character. She seemed like somebody would do
whatever she wanted. So the idea that she was back
because her brother, you know, had attempted suicide and she
wanted to keep that a secret and she had come
back for her family. That was a move that we
made early on in the adaptation to try to really
root the audience's interests and like root for Serena and
give this character who has the world on a string,
(12:56):
has this reputation, is beautiful and you know, a socialite
and all that. It gives people a lot of reason
to not like her. It's slept with her best friend's boyfriend. Um,
she had two strikes against her, But she was coming
back for this thing that was obviously incredibly sympathetic and
hopefully would get the audience to proof for her. Yeah,
and the books, her brother Eric is older, he's not gay,
(13:18):
he's not vulnerable, vulnerable little guy that Connor brought to life.
And one of the funny things is Blake Frost was
the second The second she started reading Serena, she just
was Serena and we were like sold on her because
the Stephanie was alluding to she was so Californian and
bubbly and it required not imagination, well a little bit
(13:39):
of imagination the part of the network just to kind
of like see her as a New Yorker. So we
did a screen test where luckily Stephanie has a very
sophisticated closet and uh, she dressed Blake in her own
clothing and so that fusion of Stephanie and Blake, you
guys are like, listen, you're going to be Serena whether
you like it or not. It made sense. Stephanie is
(14:01):
gossip girl, so it made sense that her wardrobe is
I had like like a good cashmere overcode and like
a nice like land Vin satchel, and we just like
we burned her up a bit. And when they saw
the screen test, everybody got it. Because sometimes executives have
to literally see it. You can be like hey, this,
(14:21):
this and this, and they're like they don't get it sometimes,
which is so funny to me, poor late Exactly, we
have a couple of those on this show. Or Layton
is blonde naturally, um, and she had to dye her hair.
She came in blonde, right, and she came in blonde,
and we're like, you know, Blair has brown hair. It's
(14:42):
probably best if both the girls don't have blonde hair.
She'll dye her hair brown. I thought the internet was
very intense about that stuff, right, No, that the Internet
was like very crazy about Like when Chase was cast,
they were like, Nate Archibald has green eyes and like
Chase Crawford has blue eyes, and like this show is ruined,
(15:02):
and there was funny, Oh my god, oh the Internet.
But yeah, so Layton, they just could not. They're like,
we know what you're saying, that she'll color her hair,
but we just capt it. So Layton truly during pilot season,
got her hair dyed Blair waldor Brown to come in
and read for the role. Gave exactly the same performance,
(15:24):
just a different hair color, and they were like, oh
get it now, Wow, did she WinCE her hair in
the sink? Is there? He said in the bathroom, I'm
not sure about the rinsing and the thing. We may
we may have embellished that over time. Yeah, and when
you guys were casting, I think David said, not a
lot of chemistry reads were happening, which I was. I
laughed because I'm like, that's maybe because they knew that
(15:44):
everyone was going to somehow connect at some point, and
so everyone just had to have chemil we need we
needed to dial down to chemistry. Yeah, my memory as
Blake was cast and then we had a big day
of screen tests with Layton and Chase and maybe Taylor.
My memory is that like was not cast and we
(16:06):
did a screen test of Blake, Layton, and Ed anyway,
but I don't remember them being grouped together. But Ed
was a whole situation. First, he read for Nate was
definitely not innate, but we like both like wrote on
a piece of paper during his audition, and like he
showed each other that we each had written and Chuck.
You know, he had a British accent, obviously Ed did,
so we wanted to hear it both ways. And he
(16:27):
was just so cool and so unique and there was
like I've never seen a kid like this on a
show like this before. We got to find a place
for him so he got cast his Chuck and then
couldn't get his visa to come shoot in the US
and time because he was a citizens of the UK.
And they were saying to us as we got closer
and closer to sort of the pilot, guys, you need
(16:48):
to figure out who your backup Chuck is going to
be because we don't think this is going to work out,
and we were just like, there is no backup Chuck. Instead,
I don't wways tell you figure it out, so you
could just telling the network listen, that's our guy, that's
our yeah, And then they were like no, seriously, for
like insurance purposes, like if he doesn't show what we know,
we know we want him, we want him to but
if he doesn't show up, like they're going to shut
(17:11):
down the show, we can't shoot, Like we can't let
that happen, so you need to act shut it down.
He's our Chuck. You choose a backup choice, like we
it's he's our choice. And Peter, to his credit, also
refused a choice. He's like, no, it's it. So I
think they were all very annoyed with us, but they
just rolled with it. And is bes a cleared in time?
(17:34):
I had worked with him on a previous show for
the w B, and he was a serious regular, but
he wasn't like one of the main main characters. But
I just loved writing for him so much. I thought
he was so funny and so smart. Um And when
that show ended, I made Josh go over for a
lunch with be in Pen because I wanted him to
meet him. I think I ended up going one on
(17:55):
one with him. It is my memory, but maybe you're like,
you two need to go bond. And we went to
the Alcove Bakery on Hillhurst and then um, I was
giving Pen the advice that like every year he did
a pilot for the w B, and like that's a
great gig for him, and he knew he'd get something.
And you know, when you're young. He was very young
(18:18):
when he was on my show. I think he was seventeen. Uh,
it's a lot of money and it's exciting, and I'm
just like, you have to stop doing pilots and you
have to like really just get focused on like larger goals.
And then like nine months later called him and it's like, Okay,
you need to do Romper pilot the WB And it's
not even the w B anymore. It's not like this
new thing that people don't even know what it is.
(18:40):
But fortunately I agree to that. Yeah. No, steph was
always like this guy's great, you have to breakfast with him.
That he and I went to brunch and we were like, Okay,
Stephanie says, we need to bond, so like let's figure
that out. Came out of there. It was like, guy
seems great. Can I see a question about his hair?
Because he had this like his hair was kind of
long at the time and it was like curly and
it was just you know, he was he was a
(19:01):
snowboarder on on the other show. So he showed up
on sat with like his his big hair. And that
morning that he went on camera, the first thing we
shot with him and Rufus putting up flyers um in
Brooklyn for the Lincoln Hot concert, which I wore my
shirt today. Oh that's so cool, And we just brought
him into the trailer and they just like buzzed all
(19:24):
of his hair off. Oh my god, that's funny. And
which is, by the way, is a nightmare for the network,
right because normally the network makes you do hair tests
and the like, and they want to approve everything, and
all of a sudden was like pen shaved his head
and now he's coming like what And then and like
Peter Roth was freaking out, like everybody's like, what is happening?
You shaved his head? And then everybody saw him and
(19:45):
was like, oh damn, he looks good. Yeah, he's so
good looking. He could pull off either well. And I
think it actually kind of pushed him into being like
it made him look like more of like a young man,
like it was like a leading man kind of a
It was good the Brad Pitt like head buzz kind
of the day. Yeah, and then Taylor was and Taylor
(20:08):
was so little. She was like Cindy Lou who, Yeah,
she's awesome and we're very proud of her. And but
who knew remember her being like do you want to
listen to my song? I've recorded like a little And
it was like Gwen Stefani like super poppy, you know
the music she's making the time. So the idea that
she became pretty reckless and is what is she like
set the record for like most number one singles by
(20:29):
a female artist on the Hard Rocks charts or something insane? Well,
we should talk. We should talk for a second though
about Matthew Saddle and Kelly Rutherford, who were like the
only two adults so to speak, Um, you know that
I mean they were actual adults, but that we were
allowed to that We were to have a series regulars
(20:50):
in the show, and we really wanted actors who would
feel real and legitimate and like obviously they needed to
be attractive, but also be able to like hit all
the levels and bring everything we would need because we're
going to be leading on them a lot. You know,
we didn't have a as big of an adult presence
in the beginning on the show as we did say
on the OC where it was much more kind of
(21:12):
half adults half kids. This was really going to be
kind So when we went to Rufus, we went to Lily,
we needed to have two actors in those parts with presents,
with charisma and with chops, and those guys were so
good and brought brought a whole other level to the show.
And obviously Rufus was a big crush for a Matthew
(21:32):
for the female audience that was more on the thirty
five side of the of the Ledger totally. Yeah, they
were great. They were so great to work with, and
even all their storylines, what Lily All went through, she
just played it so well. And Kelly was all in.
She was all in. She was to throw at her
that she would she would balk at you know, absolutely.
She was on Melrose Place, so she had been trained.
(21:53):
I know. I love it if you were either on
vl Rose Places or in a David Lynch movie, you
had like a good understanding of what was going to
happen and like you could roll with the punches on
our home. Nothing would be too bird for you. But Margaret,
Colin Wallace, Shawn, so many great you know, powder familias
came into the show adult so many totally. But I
also realized we haven't talked about Ristin Bell at all,
(22:15):
which may have been one of the most critical pieces
of casting and the whole dang thing. Yeah, how did
that come about? Because I mean, she's she's the voice
of the show. She is. And when we did the
new When we did the new show, which we knew
would be a new generation and a new cast and
what have you, the one piece we needed to have
was Kristen. That was the one piece that was going
to make it. I feel like gossip Girl because she's
so just that is, she's the tone. She set the tone,
(22:39):
and she had been on Veronica Mars for Dawn for
the up n and we had a list of names.
Steph probably remembers all of them. Um, I don't remember
all of them, but I do remember a lot of them.
But Veronica Mars also had voice over, and Veronica Mars
was not canceled when we were doing our pilot, so
we had some reluctant of because it was like, she
(23:02):
could do the voice over. I wouldn't be like, it
doesn't take that much time. She could do both shows,
but we did. We feel comfortable having two shows on
the same network with the same voice over. Voice over. Yeah,
and we also we love Veronica Mars. We had friends
at worked on that show. We didn't want to like
cannibalize it in any way, so we were sort of like,
(23:24):
but then Veronica Mars was not coming back, and it
was like, yes, let's scatter as fast as we can.
And then when she recorded it, it was she created
an entirely different character with just her voice than how
she read Veronica Mars. Completely different, totally different. She had said,
I think she was like I'm a trained voice over actress.
I can make it sound different. And we were just like, well, okay,
(23:47):
Christen is like a chameleon. You know, she can do
so many different things. So did you guys have anyone
else lined up? Or was it like she was it?
We never recorded anybody else. Yeah, but I'll tell you,
like Christina Ricci read the UM audio books, so she
was in the mix. I think Selma Blair was in
the mix. She had like cruel intentions. Uh yeah, But
(24:08):
all the cuts that would go to the network, you
know that we would always record Christian's voice over last
because that's the easiest piece to rewrite to match picture,
and she would kind of come in later in the process.
So in my mind, Stephanie is I've said Stephanie's gospel
several times, but she was literally gossip girl in that
she would read the gossip girl parts that would go
into the cuts, at least at first, and then I
(24:28):
think she was like, I don't ever want to do
this again. But yeah, then I think just the editors
did it. UM. But for the for the first episode UM,
when we had to hand the pilot and we rewrote
that voice over at the beginning probably twenty times, and
we made Christian record it like she was a good
sport about it, a really good sport about it. You also,
(24:50):
when you when you have a pilot, you have to
go test it, which is this terrible process where you
sit in a room. Helpful process sometimes, but you sit
in a room and you're watching on television and people
in another room watch your show, Oh my god, and
they have a dial. I don't know if they still
do it this way, but this is how they did
it then, and they have a dial and when they're interested,
they turned the dial up, and when they're not interested,
(25:11):
they turned the dial down. So you're watching this like
you know, like e k G. Monitor of your show,
like is it flat lighting or we're dead? And interestingly
and it went up with Gossip Girl. Well, every time
the Gossip Girl voiceover would kick in, it would drop
and people because people are like into it, and then
who's this voice that's coming in and like distracting me?
And you know, and so it was like, well, do
(25:32):
you lose the voice over? And it was like, I can't.
That's part of the show and we're just gonna ride
with it. And so sometimes testing is helpful and sometimes
you just go, thank you for the feedback, but we're
gonna keep making the show we're making. Yeah, and once
people figure out how it works. I mean, if you're
watching it for the first time, you're like, it's not
even the character in the show. You're like, who is
talking so right? But once you get it, you're like, Okay,
(25:53):
that's Gossip Girl. Yeah, I mean it's no show without it.
So yeah, No, Kristen was that Christie did an amazing jump. Yeah.
And it's so funny because people still to this day
will be like, how was it working with Chris. I'm like,
we never had a scene together. I never saw her,
you know. With with Rachel Milson, they're like auditioning for
a scene when she her voice over is her audition
(26:14):
for the Gossip Rol movie and that's her one on
camera appearance, although she was on Lucian Fallon recently and
he made her a bunch of headlines. Is the voice
of Gossip Rol, which is such a good sport about
it all. Oh my god, I gotta go look that up.
That's awesome. Who was the easiest to write for and
(26:43):
the hardest? Steph you wrote or rewrote everything, so you
you take this one, Well, I don't know that anything
was actually like super hard. I think I think that, Um,
I will, I will say to all the aspiring actors
out there, the actors that actually say their dialogue as
written get better dialogue written for them. I don't think
(27:05):
Adam Brody would agree with that, but yet, UM watching
the pilot last night, really loving the Humphries like I
had actually forgotten. Like Taylor is amazing. She's just like
rat a tat tat all. This dialogue coming out of
her mouth perfect. And when we were shooting, Taylor also
would know all of Matthew's dialogue, which they didn't always um,
(27:30):
and she'd be able to like give them their lines
when they needed them. But that was a really charming
family to write for. Ed and Layton were super fun
to write for. And one of the best things about
writing for television is you really get to know your
actors over time. If you're doing a feature, the script
is kind of written, you cast it, maybe you might
(27:50):
make a few changes, but you don't get to live
with your actors and know their voices and know like
with Layton, you know, I don't need to write any
parentheticals anymore. She's just you know that says like emotional
or looks away how to be Blair And I don't
need to tell her how to do that. And I
loved having an outlet for that very elevated, articulate person
(28:13):
who seems like they're they've kind of scripted their dialogue before.
It's the characters a little written as they as they
might say. But Blair did practice her dialogue in the
mirror before she went to school that day. You know,
she had like bonn mos like ready to go for people,
and so that was just always super fun to write.
But you love all your children equally. I love all
(28:34):
my children equally, but also Blair. What Layton did with Blair,
I'm shocked that someone wasn't nominated for for some things,
Like there was a scene with Layton where I'm like,
you literally just brought every emotion within two pages where
you had me laughing, You're crying, You're vulnerable, you were
a little brat. We felt bad for you, the vulnerability
that Lair had. And did you guys know that that
(28:56):
that was going to happen Chuck and Blair or maybe
was their chemistry? No, I mean we were I mean
yes to everything you just said about Layton's performance, and
on the award front, I would like to point out
we have several teen choice surfboards that we polish, and
by the way, I don't overlook that. I think those
are amazing. Don't overlook those surfboards. I would never but
(29:18):
I will go on the record and say, like the
the Emmy's do not embrace the teen shows in the
way that I think they deserved. Yeah, Emmy's Golden Globe.
I just and and again, I really those surfboards like
mean everything to me. There they're my sisters, my high school,
my sister would just graduated high school, her room, and
I love them. They mean so much to you. You
gave them to your sister, got it. Okay, it's my
(29:42):
my old room from high school. But um yeah, I
feel like maybe because it is a teen teen shower
back then, c W wasn't looked at. I know. Jane
the Virgin was one of the first. I just feel
like there was a lot of scenes and performances throughout
the show that I was like, Wow, that's like really good.
I mean, the stealth thing with her was just how
funny she could be. Yeah, you know, but oh, sorry
(30:05):
to answer your question. To answer your chemistry question, it
was the end of the pilot and those two are
standing outside the party watching, you know, Dan and Serena
and Jenny leave the party, and there was just like
a connection between them, Ed and Layton and Chuck and
Blair watching, you know, as the kind of at that
moment the villains of the story. Obviously that would evolve
over the course of the series. That was immediately just
(30:29):
so palpable and fun um. They're dynamic, and it really
kind of that was where it kind of really first
landed in my memory, was the ended up pilot. Yeah,
and it was like a revelation to watch the end
of the first episode and feel like, oh my god,
it's like dangerous liaisons. It's like Velmont and Murty, like
the characters that like they love each other but they
(30:51):
hate each other, but they're going to like do schemes together,
and like that you see story to want to lean
into because the check care after in the pilot is
very much a villain totally to a point that it
felt problematic to make him not just a villain as
we moved the story forward. But it was a question
(31:14):
of do we do that or do we not do that,
and you guys went with it, and it was everyone's
like favorite relationship. It really really was. I mean, you like,
you fight for them, you cry for them, you love them,
you hate some of the things they do. Yeah, it
was just such a great relationship. And I think that
(31:34):
they respected each other and had so much fun playing
it that that really bled into their performances when you
watch it. Yeah, and it's also part of the fun
of making you know, long form serious television where it's
an evolving, breathing, living thing and you can react to
the actors and start writing towards everybody you know as
you get to know them more um and their voices,
(31:55):
and also as the audience is responding to stuff, so
you we have that opportunity to adjust totally. Oh my god,
it's so funny. Twenty two episodes a year that the
first season because we got cut short by the writer strikes,
so we had to do a little bit less, right,
But then back to it, it was twenty two. That
was like a normal thing, which when I think about that,
(32:15):
I think that's crazy. I think we did more than
twenty two the second year to make up for that.
I think we did twenty four the second year to
make up for some of the lost episodes and fun fact,
we were one of only two dramas that launched in
two thousand and seven that came back for a second season,
(32:37):
the other one being Josh's other show, Chuck, and we
were the only show that came back directly after the
writer's strike in two thousand or the only drama. There
might have been a half hour other shows came back
for season two from the writer strike, but we were
the only ones that made it to season three. There's
three shows that premier in two thousand seven that were
(32:57):
impacted by the writers strike that survived past the into
Gossip Girl, Chuck, and then this little show very obscurity,
you probably haven't heard of it called the Big Bang Theory.
Those are the three. Oh my god, I never knew that.
That's incredible. I mean I knew it about obviously for
gossip What. We can get into this as we go along,
but we'll stay with the pilot for now. No. I
(33:17):
was going to ask, at what point in season one
did you guys know not only that the show was special,
but that it was going to hit the way it did,
Because it felt like it blew up so quickly, so
this will take us to this will bring us to
the writer strike then, because that's not actually what happened, okay,
And it was like, okay, And I remember we went
(33:40):
down to the CW with Warner Brothers and Peter Roth,
who was the head of Warner Brothers at the time
and a passionate advocate for the show, and he loved
the show right away, and and uh and Susan Rodner
and and so we went to the c W to
talk about stuff, and everybody was it was like the
elephant in the room of like everybody really believed in
the show. Everybody really loved the show, like dawns from
New York and grew up in this world, like really
(34:02):
connected to the show, but it was not happening ratings
wise when we first premiered, And part of that was
the newness of the c W and like, you know,
people not knowing that that was a thing, um that
was an actual network at that time. It was all new.
But it was kind of like the elephant in the
room of like, what are we gonna do? Guys? We
have this show and we think it should be successful,
(34:24):
but it's not really materialized yet. And then the writer
strike happened, and obviously we were saying for a lot
of shows, it was not a ptuitous event. It was
actually quite um a disastrous I don't mean to laugh
when I say that, But so everything went off the
air because once all the new episodes were done, there
was nothing to put on. And the c W, because
(34:44):
they did not unlike NBC where Chuck was, they could
put on like American Gladiators and all this reality show
and just fill the air. CW had nothing else, so
they had to put Gossip Girl back on because there
was nothing else to put on. And slowly, over time
time when all the other networks were kind of down,
the audience kept growing and growing. And then when we
(35:06):
were able to come back and do how many stuff
was it six episodes or five? So we the c
W shows again. Because they every other network, including NBC,
we all had to wait until the following year to
come back for fall season two, and the c W
just had to have shows. So they're like, we need
five more episodes whatever, we can shoot to launch in
(35:28):
February or March whenever the show came back. And that's
when they did their whole o MFG campaign that whole
like outdoor marketing campaign um which was all over l A,
all over New York. People were like scandalized, like it
says O m f G. That's like that says fuck
on my billboard Sunset Boulevard right now, and it's like no,
(35:51):
it just says f We don't know. They had to
do like ten down O MG ones that weren't O MFG.
So the marketing really caught on and caught people's The
show had been rerun and rerun during the strike, and
suddenly it was the only thing launching with new episodes,
and that convergence is what really put the show over
the top. And we actually did like a one hour
(36:13):
it's so old fashioned they never do it anymore, but
like a one hour celebration of gossip Girl before the
show came back, where it with like an editorial shoot
and like interviews with the cast and like the Gossip
Girl Guide to New York, a really crazy thing that
would never happen anymore to like relaunched the show when
it came back, and that was kind of like, well,
(36:35):
we wouldn't be celebrating it if it wasn't successful. So
by then it felt like it was a thing and
it was solid, but it was very scary when it
launched because the CW was a new thing in New
York City. Like on your TV, it didn't even say
the CW, it said Picks whatever that Picks used to
broadcast the Yankee Games. So Picks was very big in
(36:56):
my house with my dad. Yeah, okay, yes, but don
Ostroff when she took over the c W and she
she merged the w B and um u pan is
Josh that and then she made kind of a bold
move which was like this show is going to focus
on women eighteen to thirty five, um and that there
(37:17):
were no networks that were for women eighteen to thirty five.
So to us, she was just like, it's probably bad
now to say make Crack for girls, Cracked for girls,
But the idea was make something that is only for
this audience. You don't have to worry about anybody else
liking it. And you guys nailed that and did it.
(37:38):
We were very lucky that we had Don in our
corner at the network, computer in our corner at the studio.
And because people don't even the show and it doesn't
perform right away people, no one has any problem cutting
baide and running at the first sign of trouble in Hollywood. Yeah, exactly.
But I remember also there was an l A Times article.
We did a whole photo shoot the cast, a whole
photo shoot for the La Times. The headline was the
(37:59):
hit it isn't well. But that's also like a really
important like milestone for the show is it was one
of the first shows that people were watching online. It
was truly like the moment where people started talking about
young people are going to want to watch shows on
iPads and phones, and other people were like, what are
(38:19):
you crazy, Like this is still broadcast television. Streaming doesn't
really exist. So that was a huge thing that our
fans were early adopters of, you know what we now
consider like how people. And what's also crazy is the
entire show being about a blog that none of that existed.
We didn't have any of the platforms, and that's a
(38:42):
credit to that's a credit too. And we haven't mentioned
her yet We should have earlier. Cecily but Zigazar, who
wrote the books, was very prescient in her writing about
blogs and blog culture and this kind of the power
of the internet and the warping of one self esteem
based on social media. You know a lot of that
stuff Cecily very smartly and presently put in into the books. Yeah,
(39:04):
because she was writing before the time of There was
before Perez Hilton, before anything that was even like that.
And then obviously the show started, Facebook existed, but Instagram
didn't exist yet. There's a MySpace reference in the in
the pilot on sidekicks. When we actually shot the final
(39:26):
episode of the show, there's a flashback to the party
that Dan goes to where he meets Serena, and so
we needed to get sidekicks. So our prop guy like
located some sidekicks. They were Paris and Nicole's sidekicks. That's amazing.
That's a fun fact. Yeah. Wow, I almost forgot about sidekicks.
(39:52):
Those were the hottest things back in two thousand and seven,
you guys. I mean, I'm like transported back to that time.
This this this is fun. Also, I was there and
didn't even know some of this stuff. It's kind of
cool to be a part of a show for so
many years and I'm still learning about it. Okay, So
obviously this conversation isn't over, but I'm actually just going
to stop it here for now because we just got
(40:13):
so into it and talked for so long that it's
too much good stuff for one episode. So I won't
make you wait too long, and I promise I have
some very exciting guests coming up in the meantime. I
want to thank Josh and Stephanie for kicking off this
podcast with me. It's incredible what they put into motion
with this show, and it just took a life of
its own and it's still here fifteen years later. That's wild.
(40:35):
Thank you all for listening. Until next time. X O
x O x O XO is produced by Propagate Content
and Me Jessica's Or. Our show is executive produced by Lnley.
Our producers are Diego Tapia, Emily Carr, and Hannah Harris.
Original music by Maxi and Luon, and the episode was
(40:56):
mixed by steth O Landski
And I'm Stephanie Savage. You're the creators. Can you take
your producers off the Girl? Welcome back, listeners to your
one and only source and to all things Gossip Girl.
You know you love it. X O x O. Hi everyone,
(00:29):
and welcome to the very first episode of x O
x O. My name is Jessica's Door and I played
Vanessa Abrams on Gossip Girl. Gossip Girl changed my life,
you guys, and I know a lot of you feel
the same way, whether you came for the fashion or
the music, the friendships, the drama, the love triangles, or
just to get lost in the world of the Upper
east Side. So many of you have told us that
(00:51):
it was your favorite show. So after a long ten years,
I'm getting the crew back together with my brand new podcast,
XL x O. We're gonna take a walk down memory lane,
bringing you the Gossip Girl stories we never told and
reuniting the people that made it all happen and why today. Well,
ten years ago, the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg,
declared January Gossip Girl Day, So I thought this is
(01:13):
the perfect time to launch my podcast. Each week we'll
be bringing you a new member of the cast, the crew,
the creators, and even some fans. And I'm just so
excited for you guys to go on this journey with us.
Today's guests are the brilliant Gossip Girl creators and executive
producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. These two are a powerhouse.
Do oh you guys true television icons. They brought you
(01:35):
The o C Runaways, Nancy Drew, the Carrie Diaries, Sitting
on Fire, and of course gossip Girl. This episode, we
are bringing you back to the very beginning, how Gossip
Girl has pitched to a little network called the c W,
Why Penn Badgeley chopped his hair before the pilot, and
the moment when everyone knew Chuck and Blair were something special.
It was such an honor working with these two, and
(01:56):
even the way that happened is a crazy story in itself.
So without further ado, please let me welcome my very
first guests, the incredible Josh Sports and Stephanie Savage. Hi,
(02:22):
oh my gosh, this is lovely. First off, I want
to say, okay, I want to say thank you guys
for creating and putting a vision to a show that
that meant so much to so many people across the world,
but personally for me changed my life. I met some
(02:44):
of my friends that I'll have in my life forever.
I got to live in New York City. I got
to learn as an actor. Um, I got to work
with two of the best and most talented producers in
the business. And who is that ye working with you
guys and the cast that you put together in the
project that we all got to work on and bring
(03:06):
so much joy to so many people across the world.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you guys for that.
I know we had a lot of years together and
fun times and memories and things like that, but I
don't know if I ever really sat down and said, hey, guys,
like really, thank you so much, because the hard work
and everything that you put in wasn't just a TV
show for entertainment that it was like a life for
for a lot of us and and for and for
(03:28):
the fans and viewers as well. Um, so just thank
you for that. Thank you good thing. You came to
that pool party that day at my house. Yeah, actually,
can you tell your guys this side of the story,
Because David had his, I had mine. I'm like I'm
gonna ask Josh and very clear memory of death. So
we just jumping into the how you got cast on
the show story. Sure, yeah, I was having a party
(03:51):
at my house. Steph was over. Was it was like
Memorial Day or fourth of July or something must have
been four July. Yeah, I think you came with Adam
Roadie right with like a group of people. We were
in the process at beginning the casting process of Vanessa.
I opened the front door, you were standing there. It
(04:11):
was like Vanessa found Stephanie. I'm like, what did you
and She's like yeah, and we had the whole conversation
and it was it was like that, I mean, I
don't think we I don't think we presented it to you
you at the party. We probably let you enjoy yourself.
You guys did not mention a word because at first
I was just like, I don't even know she's an actress.
I'm not gonna like a cost r and be like, hey,
you would be a gossip girl. She like, you know,
(04:31):
I think And it was earlier to brain surgeon or like,
I think we're able to run to my desktop because
it was like, you know, pre yeah, I think we
like IMDb do and you like found your credit. We're like, god,
she's an actress. Okay, good? You like sweet? That is wild?
And I was there for a couple of hours. You
guys never mentioned a thing, but at that point the
pilot had not aired yet. No, no, there was just
(04:54):
a lot of buzz around the producers who did the
O C and have this new show coming out on
the c W, which which was a new network. The
CW was not a thing. We were the first show
for the c W. They were a network that had
fused together the w B and the u p N.
And the way I recall it happening was alloy and
(05:17):
my agents had sent me the Gossip Girl books, which
were set up at the c W already with Don Ostruff.
I immediately called Stephanie and said, if you like this,
let's do this together, because we were trying to figure
out what we were going to do together after the
O C ended and there was nobody I wanted to
work with more after that then then staff, and so
it was already set up in the c W, and
(05:38):
we were like, okay, great. We knew what they were
trying to do. We knew what the w B was,
and that was kind of the model that they were
seemed to be following, and we were off to the races.
And I remember very distinctly being on the set of
the o C finale and there was like a crowd
of teenagers in the street where we were shooting the episode,
and somebody was like, what are you guys gonna do next,
and said, oh, doing the uh this book series called
(06:01):
gossip Girl, and everybody screamed. All these kids screamed. So
my books already had a big built in fan base
going into it that I think we were not fully
aware how how big the fambase was, how passionate. Yeah,
we had never really heard of them, and obviously you
guys read the books, had an idea of what you
want to do. Was it always going to be a
TV show? For us? It was so the other Not
(06:24):
only do we not know how popular the books were,
No one told us that they had tried unsuccessfully to
develop the books a couple of times prior to us,
which may have made us suspicious. We just went in like,
you know, well, good thing, good thing. You didn't know that, Yeah,
very idealistic. So I think it was. I think it
was they attempted it as a movie. I believe with
Lindsay Lohan. Yeah, Lindsay Lohan is Blair. Amy Sherman Palladino
(06:49):
I think was writing it, yeah, prior to us, so
we were not aware of any of that. Lindsay as Blair,
who has Serena. I'm not sure they got that far
down the line. Dina Lohan her mother. Okay, so you
guys knew you were going to go do that. By
the way, how did you guys originally meet to do
the O C? Are you going all the way back?
(07:12):
We met prior to the O C pilot. We met
on a general meeting and uh. Out of that meeting,
the OC was born. And we just worked incredibly closely together.
Stephanie was my boss on the pilot, is what we
like to say, or I guess that is the truth.
That's why we say truth. Um, and I was the
writer and she was the producer. And but even though
(07:32):
we had these different roles, we just worked very seamlessly
together and it was just a real creative synergy and um,
but she was Stephanie was extremely thorough as a boss
and as a producer and with time my naps because
we were working a lot of hours. I'd be very
tired and I'd be like, please just take a nap,
and she'd be like, you have two minutes ago. No,
it was like twenty minutes. And I'd always give you
(07:53):
like a couple of extra minutes. But we did joke.
My credit on the first season of The o C
was supervising producer and I literally be supervisor, just an
okay shirt to wear word Stephanie Okay, thank you. Yeah,
she was supervising. All that was part of the charm,
and so very early on though, it was like clear like, oh,
(08:14):
you are more than a producer or someone you know
who in this traditional usually producers are non writing producers
on a lot of these shows, and Stephanie was just
clearly someone who was a writer but was also at
that time acting more as a producer. So, you know,
first opportunity was like you should write an episode of
the show, um, and she did and it was the
Chris mcka episode. And then we got to switch roles
(08:36):
and I got to be her boss. She did not nap,
I did not have to time anything else. But it
was very uncomfortable for me to have to be now
the baby writer handing my script into the show runner
and like praying that you liked it and like that
it didn't get a huge rewrite, that it wasn't a
big whiff. She nailed it, shenailed it as you expect. Yeah,
(09:00):
but I think that really formed like the basis of
our the foundation of our relationship, where we can wear
different hats with each other. We can write things together
as partners. One person can write something and the other
person can be more of a producer. We can sort
of like move back and forth pretty seamlessly, and I
think that's quite unusual for people. And I think most importantly,
(09:20):
we are okay being vulnerable with each other, which obviously
if you're going to write something or create something, there's
a lot of vulnerability required. So I always felt like
I could go to Stephanie with the most embryonic seed
of an idea or a pitch or what have you,
and there would be no judgment about what was lacking,
only excitement about what it could be. We were early
(09:42):
adopters of vulnerability. Exactly who who did you guys cast
furs or who did you know when they walked in
(10:04):
the room. We're like, this is this person who walked
in when you knew other than Vanessa. There was a
big online push for Blake as Serena before we had
even started. There was a lot of like emails and
message boards, and we knew of Blake from the Traveling
Pants movies that she had done with Alloy, which obviously
(10:24):
were the producers of the Gossip Girl books and also
the series. So she was definitely on our radar very
early on. And did you guys see that, I'd say
we definitely had curiosity of like, we need to meet
this girl and like see what she's about. And then
we had was a lunch with her at the one
oh one Cafe and she was herself. She's really charming,
(10:47):
m really funny, um, super open. Her personality, her natural
personality is not really like Serena is probably a bit
more aloof and a bit more like Oblivion is, you know,
to what's going on around her, a little more self involved,
which Blake is not, but part of I think we
(11:08):
thought one of the reasons that the show is at
this point we had figured out that they tried to
develop it a couple of times it didn't work, is
that the characters really needed to be imbued with warmth,
um and kind of a rootability that the book characters
didn't necessarily have, and so Blake's natural warmth and kind
of her California sunniness was actually going to be a
(11:31):
great quality to bring to Serena. That she loves her brother,
that she cares about her friends, that she's trying to
be a better person. Blake was going to bring all
of that in spades versus some other actress who might
be more a natural Serena, but who wasn't going to
be able to like infuse Serena with those positive qualities
(11:52):
that we needed her to have. When I watched the
pilot back, I was saying, like, there's this mystery that
Blake also brought to Serena, Like she comes act you
don't know where she was. Was it bad? Was it alcohol?
Was it drugs? What did you do? She brings you
in where you care about her so much even though
you don't know if what she just did was horrible. Yeah,
Now we made one of the first moves that we
(12:13):
made in adapting the book that Stephanie was alluding to
was in uh in the books and in prior adaptations.
I'm assuming um, the mystery of why Serena left and
why she came back was kind of like a little bit.
She was a party girl and she got in trouble
and she left, and now she wanted to come back
to you. There wasn't like a super concrete reason to
her return or one that was engendering a lot of
(12:35):
sympathy for her character. She seemed like somebody would do
whatever she wanted. So the idea that she was back
because her brother, you know, had attempted suicide and she
wanted to keep that a secret and she had come
back for her family. That was a move that we
made early on in the adaptation to try to really
root the audience's interests and like root for Serena and
give this character who has the world on a string,
(12:56):
has this reputation, is beautiful and you know, a socialite
and all that. It gives people a lot of reason
to not like her. It's slept with her best friend's boyfriend. Um,
she had two strikes against her, But she was coming
back for this thing that was obviously incredibly sympathetic and
hopefully would get the audience to proof for her. Yeah,
and the books, her brother Eric is older, he's not gay,
(13:18):
he's not vulnerable, vulnerable little guy that Connor brought to life.
And one of the funny things is Blake Frost was
the second The second she started reading Serena, she just
was Serena and we were like sold on her because
the Stephanie was alluding to she was so Californian and
bubbly and it required not imagination, well a little bit
(13:39):
of imagination the part of the network just to kind
of like see her as a New Yorker. So we
did a screen test where luckily Stephanie has a very
sophisticated closet and uh, she dressed Blake in her own
clothing and so that fusion of Stephanie and Blake, you
guys are like, listen, you're going to be Serena whether
you like it or not. It made sense. Stephanie is
(14:01):
gossip girl, so it made sense that her wardrobe is
I had like like a good cashmere overcode and like
a nice like land Vin satchel, and we just like
we burned her up a bit. And when they saw
the screen test, everybody got it. Because sometimes executives have
to literally see it. You can be like hey, this,
(14:21):
this and this, and they're like they don't get it sometimes,
which is so funny to me, poor late Exactly, we
have a couple of those on this show. Or Layton
is blonde naturally, um, and she had to dye her hair.
She came in blonde, right, and she came in blonde,
and we're like, you know, Blair has brown hair. It's
(14:42):
probably best if both the girls don't have blonde hair.
She'll dye her hair brown. I thought the internet was
very intense about that stuff, right, No, that the Internet
was like very crazy about Like when Chase was cast,
they were like, Nate Archibald has green eyes and like
Chase Crawford has blue eyes, and like this show is ruined,
(15:02):
and there was funny, Oh my god, oh the Internet.
But yeah, so Layton, they just could not. They're like,
we know what you're saying, that she'll color her hair,
but we just capt it. So Layton truly during pilot season,
got her hair dyed Blair waldor Brown to come in
and read for the role. Gave exactly the same performance,
(15:24):
just a different hair color, and they were like, oh
get it now, Wow, did she WinCE her hair in
the sink? Is there? He said in the bathroom, I'm
not sure about the rinsing and the thing. We may
we may have embellished that over time. Yeah, and when
you guys were casting, I think David said, not a
lot of chemistry reads were happening, which I was. I
laughed because I'm like, that's maybe because they knew that
(15:44):
everyone was going to somehow connect at some point, and
so everyone just had to have chemil we need we
needed to dial down to chemistry. Yeah, my memory as
Blake was cast and then we had a big day
of screen tests with Layton and Chase and maybe Taylor.
My memory is that like was not cast and we
(16:06):
did a screen test of Blake, Layton, and Ed anyway,
but I don't remember them being grouped together. But Ed
was a whole situation. First, he read for Nate was
definitely not innate, but we like both like wrote on
a piece of paper during his audition, and like he
showed each other that we each had written and Chuck.
You know, he had a British accent, obviously Ed did,
so we wanted to hear it both ways. And he
(16:27):
was just so cool and so unique and there was
like I've never seen a kid like this on a
show like this before. We got to find a place
for him so he got cast his Chuck and then
couldn't get his visa to come shoot in the US
and time because he was a citizens of the UK.
And they were saying to us as we got closer
and closer to sort of the pilot, guys, you need
(16:48):
to figure out who your backup Chuck is going to
be because we don't think this is going to work out,
and we were just like, there is no backup Chuck. Instead,
I don't wways tell you figure it out, so you
could just telling the network listen, that's our guy, that's
our yeah, And then they were like no, seriously, for
like insurance purposes, like if he doesn't show what we know,
we know we want him, we want him to but
if he doesn't show up, like they're going to shut
(17:11):
down the show, we can't shoot, Like we can't let
that happen, so you need to act shut it down.
He's our Chuck. You choose a backup choice, like we
it's he's our choice. And Peter, to his credit, also
refused a choice. He's like, no, it's it. So I
think they were all very annoyed with us, but they
just rolled with it. And is bes a cleared in time?
(17:34):
I had worked with him on a previous show for
the w B, and he was a serious regular, but
he wasn't like one of the main main characters. But
I just loved writing for him so much. I thought
he was so funny and so smart. Um And when
that show ended, I made Josh go over for a
lunch with be in Pen because I wanted him to
meet him. I think I ended up going one on
(17:55):
one with him. It is my memory, but maybe you're like,
you two need to go bond. And we went to
the Alcove Bakery on Hillhurst and then um, I was
giving Pen the advice that like every year he did
a pilot for the w B, and like that's a
great gig for him, and he knew he'd get something.
And you know, when you're young. He was very young
(18:18):
when he was on my show. I think he was seventeen. Uh,
it's a lot of money and it's exciting, and I'm
just like, you have to stop doing pilots and you
have to like really just get focused on like larger goals.
And then like nine months later called him and it's like, Okay,
you need to do Romper pilot the WB And it's
not even the w B anymore. It's not like this
new thing that people don't even know what it is.
(18:40):
But fortunately I agree to that. Yeah. No, steph was
always like this guy's great, you have to breakfast with him.
That he and I went to brunch and we were like, Okay,
Stephanie says, we need to bond, so like let's figure
that out. Came out of there. It was like, guy
seems great. Can I see a question about his hair?
Because he had this like his hair was kind of
long at the time and it was like curly and
it was just you know, he was he was a
(19:01):
snowboarder on on the other show. So he showed up
on sat with like his his big hair. And that
morning that he went on camera, the first thing we
shot with him and Rufus putting up flyers um in
Brooklyn for the Lincoln Hot concert, which I wore my
shirt today. Oh that's so cool, And we just brought
him into the trailer and they just like buzzed all
(19:24):
of his hair off. Oh my god, that's funny. And
which is, by the way, is a nightmare for the network,
right because normally the network makes you do hair tests
and the like, and they want to approve everything, and
all of a sudden was like pen shaved his head
and now he's coming like what And then and like
Peter Roth was freaking out, like everybody's like, what is happening?
You shaved his head? And then everybody saw him and
(19:45):
was like, oh damn, he looks good. Yeah, he's so
good looking. He could pull off either well. And I
think it actually kind of pushed him into being like
it made him look like more of like a young man,
like it was like a leading man kind of a
It was good the Brad Pitt like head buzz kind
of the day. Yeah, and then Taylor was and Taylor
(20:08):
was so little. She was like Cindy Lou who, Yeah,
she's awesome and we're very proud of her. And but
who knew remember her being like do you want to
listen to my song? I've recorded like a little And
it was like Gwen Stefani like super poppy, you know
the music she's making the time. So the idea that
she became pretty reckless and is what is she like
set the record for like most number one singles by
(20:29):
a female artist on the Hard Rocks charts or something insane? Well,
we should talk. We should talk for a second though
about Matthew Saddle and Kelly Rutherford, who were like the
only two adults so to speak, Um, you know that
I mean they were actual adults, but that we were
allowed to that We were to have a series regulars
(20:50):
in the show, and we really wanted actors who would
feel real and legitimate and like obviously they needed to
be attractive, but also be able to like hit all
the levels and bring everything we would need because we're
going to be leading on them a lot. You know,
we didn't have a as big of an adult presence
in the beginning on the show as we did say
on the OC where it was much more kind of
(21:12):
half adults half kids. This was really going to be
kind So when we went to Rufus, we went to Lily,
we needed to have two actors in those parts with presents,
with charisma and with chops, and those guys were so
good and brought brought a whole other level to the show.
And obviously Rufus was a big crush for a Matthew
(21:32):
for the female audience that was more on the thirty
five side of the of the Ledger totally. Yeah, they
were great. They were so great to work with, and
even all their storylines, what Lily All went through, she
just played it so well. And Kelly was all in.
She was all in. She was to throw at her
that she would she would balk at you know, absolutely.
She was on Melrose Place, so she had been trained.
(21:53):
I know. I love it if you were either on
vl Rose Places or in a David Lynch movie, you
had like a good understanding of what was going to
happen and like you could roll with the punches on
our home. Nothing would be too bird for you. But Margaret,
Colin Wallace, Shawn, so many great you know, powder familias
came into the show adult so many totally. But I
also realized we haven't talked about Ristin Bell at all,
(22:15):
which may have been one of the most critical pieces
of casting and the whole dang thing. Yeah, how did
that come about? Because I mean, she's she's the voice
of the show. She is. And when we did the
new When we did the new show, which we knew
would be a new generation and a new cast and
what have you, the one piece we needed to have
was Kristen. That was the one piece that was going
to make it. I feel like gossip Girl because she's
so just that is, she's the tone. She set the tone,
(22:39):
and she had been on Veronica Mars for Dawn for
the up n and we had a list of names.
Steph probably remembers all of them. Um, I don't remember
all of them, but I do remember a lot of them.
But Veronica Mars also had voice over, and Veronica Mars
was not canceled when we were doing our pilot, so
we had some reluctant of because it was like, she
(23:02):
could do the voice over. I wouldn't be like, it
doesn't take that much time. She could do both shows,
but we did. We feel comfortable having two shows on
the same network with the same voice over. Voice over. Yeah,
and we also we love Veronica Mars. We had friends
at worked on that show. We didn't want to like
cannibalize it in any way, so we were sort of like,
(23:24):
but then Veronica Mars was not coming back, and it
was like, yes, let's scatter as fast as we can.
And then when she recorded it, it was she created
an entirely different character with just her voice than how
she read Veronica Mars. Completely different, totally different. She had said,
I think she was like I'm a trained voice over actress.
I can make it sound different. And we were just like, well, okay,
(23:47):
Christen is like a chameleon. You know, she can do
so many different things. So did you guys have anyone
else lined up? Or was it like she was it?
We never recorded anybody else. Yeah, but I'll tell you,
like Christina Ricci read the UM audio books, so she
was in the mix. I think Selma Blair was in
the mix. She had like cruel intentions. Uh yeah, But
(24:08):
all the cuts that would go to the network, you
know that we would always record Christian's voice over last
because that's the easiest piece to rewrite to match picture,
and she would kind of come in later in the process.
So in my mind, Stephanie is I've said Stephanie's gospel
several times, but she was literally gossip girl in that
she would read the gossip girl parts that would go
into the cuts, at least at first, and then I
(24:28):
think she was like, I don't ever want to do
this again. But yeah, then I think just the editors
did it. UM. But for the for the first episode UM,
when we had to hand the pilot and we rewrote
that voice over at the beginning probably twenty times, and
we made Christian record it like she was a good
sport about it, a really good sport about it. You also,
(24:50):
when you when you have a pilot, you have to
go test it, which is this terrible process where you
sit in a room. Helpful process sometimes, but you sit
in a room and you're watching on television and people
in another room watch your show, Oh my god, and
they have a dial. I don't know if they still
do it this way, but this is how they did
it then, and they have a dial and when they're interested,
they turned the dial up, and when they're not interested,
(25:11):
they turned the dial down. So you're watching this like
you know, like e k G. Monitor of your show,
like is it flat lighting or we're dead? And interestingly
and it went up with Gossip Girl. Well, every time
the Gossip Girl voiceover would kick in, it would drop
and people because people are like into it, and then
who's this voice that's coming in and like distracting me?
And you know, and so it was like, well, do
(25:32):
you lose the voice over? And it was like, I can't.
That's part of the show and we're just gonna ride
with it. And so sometimes testing is helpful and sometimes
you just go, thank you for the feedback, but we're
gonna keep making the show we're making. Yeah, and once
people figure out how it works. I mean, if you're
watching it for the first time, you're like, it's not
even the character in the show. You're like, who is
talking so right? But once you get it, you're like, Okay,
(25:53):
that's Gossip Girl. Yeah, I mean it's no show without it.
So yeah, No, Kristen was that Christie did an amazing jump. Yeah.
And it's so funny because people still to this day
will be like, how was it working with Chris. I'm like,
we never had a scene together. I never saw her,
you know. With with Rachel Milson, they're like auditioning for
a scene when she her voice over is her audition
(26:14):
for the Gossip Rol movie and that's her one on
camera appearance, although she was on Lucian Fallon recently and
he made her a bunch of headlines. Is the voice
of Gossip Rol, which is such a good sport about
it all. Oh my god, I gotta go look that up.
That's awesome. Who was the easiest to write for and
(26:43):
the hardest? Steph you wrote or rewrote everything, so you
you take this one, Well, I don't know that anything
was actually like super hard. I think I think that, Um,
I will, I will say to all the aspiring actors
out there, the actors that actually say their dialogue as
written get better dialogue written for them. I don't think
(27:05):
Adam Brody would agree with that, but yet, UM watching
the pilot last night, really loving the Humphries like I
had actually forgotten. Like Taylor is amazing. She's just like
rat a tat tat all. This dialogue coming out of
her mouth perfect. And when we were shooting, Taylor also
would know all of Matthew's dialogue, which they didn't always um,
(27:30):
and she'd be able to like give them their lines
when they needed them. But that was a really charming
family to write for. Ed and Layton were super fun
to write for. And one of the best things about
writing for television is you really get to know your
actors over time. If you're doing a feature, the script
is kind of written, you cast it, maybe you might
(27:50):
make a few changes, but you don't get to live
with your actors and know their voices and know like
with Layton, you know, I don't need to write any
parentheticals anymore. She's just you know that says like emotional
or looks away how to be Blair And I don't
need to tell her how to do that. And I
loved having an outlet for that very elevated, articulate person
(28:13):
who seems like they're they've kind of scripted their dialogue before.
It's the characters a little written as they as they
might say. But Blair did practice her dialogue in the
mirror before she went to school that day. You know,
she had like bonn mos like ready to go for people,
and so that was just always super fun to write.
But you love all your children equally. I love all
(28:34):
my children equally, but also Blair. What Layton did with Blair,
I'm shocked that someone wasn't nominated for for some things,
Like there was a scene with Layton where I'm like,
you literally just brought every emotion within two pages where
you had me laughing, You're crying, You're vulnerable, you were
a little brat. We felt bad for you, the vulnerability
that Lair had. And did you guys know that that
(28:56):
that was going to happen Chuck and Blair or maybe
was their chemistry? No, I mean we were I mean
yes to everything you just said about Layton's performance, and
on the award front, I would like to point out
we have several teen choice surfboards that we polish, and
by the way, I don't overlook that. I think those
are amazing. Don't overlook those surfboards. I would never but
(29:18):
I will go on the record and say, like the
the Emmy's do not embrace the teen shows in the
way that I think they deserved. Yeah, Emmy's Golden Globe.
I just and and again, I really those surfboards like
mean everything to me. There they're my sisters, my high school,
my sister would just graduated high school, her room, and
I love them. They mean so much to you. You
gave them to your sister, got it. Okay, it's my
(29:42):
my old room from high school. But um yeah, I
feel like maybe because it is a teen teen shower
back then, c W wasn't looked at. I know. Jane
the Virgin was one of the first. I just feel
like there was a lot of scenes and performances throughout
the show that I was like, Wow, that's like really good.
I mean, the stealth thing with her was just how
funny she could be. Yeah, you know, but oh, sorry
(30:05):
to answer your question. To answer your chemistry question, it
was the end of the pilot and those two are
standing outside the party watching, you know, Dan and Serena
and Jenny leave the party, and there was just like
a connection between them, Ed and Layton and Chuck and
Blair watching, you know, as the kind of at that
moment the villains of the story. Obviously that would evolve
over the course of the series. That was immediately just
(30:29):
so palpable and fun um. They're dynamic, and it really
kind of that was where it kind of really first
landed in my memory, was the ended up pilot. Yeah,
and it was like a revelation to watch the end
of the first episode and feel like, oh my god,
it's like dangerous liaisons. It's like Velmont and Murty, like
the characters that like they love each other but they
(30:51):
hate each other, but they're going to like do schemes together,
and like that you see story to want to lean
into because the check care after in the pilot is
very much a villain totally to a point that it
felt problematic to make him not just a villain as
we moved the story forward. But it was a question
(31:14):
of do we do that or do we not do that,
and you guys went with it, and it was everyone's
like favorite relationship. It really really was. I mean, you like,
you fight for them, you cry for them, you love them,
you hate some of the things they do. Yeah, it
was just such a great relationship. And I think that
(31:34):
they respected each other and had so much fun playing
it that that really bled into their performances when you
watch it. Yeah, and it's also part of the fun
of making you know, long form serious television where it's
an evolving, breathing, living thing and you can react to
the actors and start writing towards everybody you know as
you get to know them more um and their voices,
(31:55):
and also as the audience is responding to stuff, so
you we have that opportunity to adjust totally. Oh my god,
it's so funny. Twenty two episodes a year that the
first season because we got cut short by the writer strikes,
so we had to do a little bit less, right,
But then back to it, it was twenty two. That
was like a normal thing, which when I think about that,
(32:15):
I think that's crazy. I think we did more than
twenty two the second year to make up for that.
I think we did twenty four the second year to
make up for some of the lost episodes and fun fact,
we were one of only two dramas that launched in
two thousand and seven that came back for a second season,
(32:37):
the other one being Josh's other show, Chuck, and we
were the only show that came back directly after the
writer's strike in two thousand or the only drama. There
might have been a half hour other shows came back
for season two from the writer strike, but we were
the only ones that made it to season three. There's
three shows that premier in two thousand seven that were
(32:57):
impacted by the writers strike that survived past the into
Gossip Girl, Chuck, and then this little show very obscurity,
you probably haven't heard of it called the Big Bang Theory.
Those are the three. Oh my god, I never knew that.
That's incredible. I mean I knew it about obviously for
gossip What. We can get into this as we go along,
but we'll stay with the pilot for now. No. I
(33:17):
was going to ask, at what point in season one
did you guys know not only that the show was special,
but that it was going to hit the way it did,
Because it felt like it blew up so quickly, so
this will take us to this will bring us to
the writer strike then, because that's not actually what happened, okay,
And it was like, okay, And I remember we went
(33:40):
down to the CW with Warner Brothers and Peter Roth,
who was the head of Warner Brothers at the time
and a passionate advocate for the show, and he loved
the show right away, and and uh and Susan Rodner
and and so we went to the c W to
talk about stuff, and everybody was it was like the
elephant in the room of like everybody really believed in
the show. Everybody really loved the show, like dawns from
New York and grew up in this world, like really
(34:02):
connected to the show, but it was not happening ratings
wise when we first premiered, And part of that was
the newness of the c W and like, you know,
people not knowing that that was a thing, um that
was an actual network at that time. It was all new.
But it was kind of like the elephant in the
room of like, what are we gonna do? Guys? We
have this show and we think it should be successful,
(34:24):
but it's not really materialized yet. And then the writer
strike happened, and obviously we were saying for a lot
of shows, it was not a ptuitous event. It was
actually quite um a disastrous I don't mean to laugh
when I say that, But so everything went off the
air because once all the new episodes were done, there
was nothing to put on. And the c W, because
(34:44):
they did not unlike NBC where Chuck was, they could
put on like American Gladiators and all this reality show
and just fill the air. CW had nothing else, so
they had to put Gossip Girl back on because there
was nothing else to put on. And slowly, over time
time when all the other networks were kind of down,
the audience kept growing and growing. And then when we
(35:06):
were able to come back and do how many stuff
was it six episodes or five? So we the c
W shows again. Because they every other network, including NBC,
we all had to wait until the following year to
come back for fall season two, and the c W
just had to have shows. So they're like, we need
five more episodes whatever, we can shoot to launch in
(35:28):
February or March whenever the show came back. And that's
when they did their whole o MFG campaign that whole
like outdoor marketing campaign um which was all over l A,
all over New York. People were like scandalized, like it
says O m f G. That's like that says fuck
on my billboard Sunset Boulevard right now, and it's like no,
(35:51):
it just says f We don't know. They had to
do like ten down O MG ones that weren't O MFG.
So the marketing really caught on and caught people's The
show had been rerun and rerun during the strike, and
suddenly it was the only thing launching with new episodes,
and that convergence is what really put the show over
the top. And we actually did like a one hour
(36:13):
it's so old fashioned they never do it anymore, but
like a one hour celebration of gossip Girl before the
show came back, where it with like an editorial shoot
and like interviews with the cast and like the Gossip
Girl Guide to New York, a really crazy thing that
would never happen anymore to like relaunched the show when
it came back, and that was kind of like, well,
(36:35):
we wouldn't be celebrating it if it wasn't successful. So
by then it felt like it was a thing and
it was solid, but it was very scary when it
launched because the CW was a new thing in New
York City. Like on your TV, it didn't even say
the CW, it said Picks whatever that Picks used to
broadcast the Yankee Games. So Picks was very big in
(36:56):
my house with my dad. Yeah, okay, yes, but don
Ostroff when she took over the c W and she
she merged the w B and um u pan is
Josh that and then she made kind of a bold
move which was like this show is going to focus
on women eighteen to thirty five, um and that there
(37:17):
were no networks that were for women eighteen to thirty five.
So to us, she was just like, it's probably bad
now to say make Crack for girls, Cracked for girls,
But the idea was make something that is only for
this audience. You don't have to worry about anybody else
liking it. And you guys nailed that and did it.
(37:38):
We were very lucky that we had Don in our
corner at the network, computer in our corner at the studio.
And because people don't even the show and it doesn't
perform right away people, no one has any problem cutting
baide and running at the first sign of trouble in Hollywood. Yeah, exactly.
But I remember also there was an l A Times article.
We did a whole photo shoot the cast, a whole
photo shoot for the La Times. The headline was the
(37:59):
hit it isn't well. But that's also like a really
important like milestone for the show is it was one
of the first shows that people were watching online. It
was truly like the moment where people started talking about
young people are going to want to watch shows on
iPads and phones, and other people were like, what are
(38:19):
you crazy, Like this is still broadcast television. Streaming doesn't
really exist. So that was a huge thing that our
fans were early adopters of, you know what we now
consider like how people. And what's also crazy is the
entire show being about a blog that none of that existed.
We didn't have any of the platforms, and that's a
(38:42):
credit to that's a credit too. And we haven't mentioned
her yet We should have earlier. Cecily but Zigazar, who
wrote the books, was very prescient in her writing about
blogs and blog culture and this kind of the power
of the internet and the warping of one self esteem
based on social media. You know a lot of that
stuff Cecily very smartly and presently put in into the books. Yeah,
(39:04):
because she was writing before the time of There was
before Perez Hilton, before anything that was even like that.
And then obviously the show started, Facebook existed, but Instagram
didn't exist yet. There's a MySpace reference in the in
the pilot on sidekicks. When we actually shot the final
(39:26):
episode of the show, there's a flashback to the party
that Dan goes to where he meets Serena, and so
we needed to get sidekicks. So our prop guy like
located some sidekicks. They were Paris and Nicole's sidekicks. That's amazing.
That's a fun fact. Yeah. Wow, I almost forgot about sidekicks.
(39:52):
Those were the hottest things back in two thousand and seven,
you guys. I mean, I'm like transported back to that time.
This this this is fun. Also, I was there and
didn't even know some of this stuff. It's kind of
cool to be a part of a show for so
many years and I'm still learning about it. Okay, So
obviously this conversation isn't over, but I'm actually just going
to stop it here for now because we just got
(40:13):
so into it and talked for so long that it's
too much good stuff for one episode. So I won't
make you wait too long, and I promise I have
some very exciting guests coming up in the meantime. I
want to thank Josh and Stephanie for kicking off this
podcast with me. It's incredible what they put into motion
with this show, and it just took a life of
its own and it's still here fifteen years later. That's wild.
(40:35):
Thank you all for listening. Until next time. X O
x O x O XO is produced by Propagate Content
and Me Jessica's Or. Our show is executive produced by Lnley.
Our producers are Diego Tapia, Emily Carr, and Hannah Harris.
Original music by Maxi and Luon, and the episode was
(40:56):
mixed by steth O Landski
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