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Is Gossip Girl Coming Back? Here's What the Cast Says


Ever since Gossip Girl went off the air in 2012, people have been waiting for it to come back. We are in the era of reboots, after all, and a show like Gossip Girl⁠—with its soapy twists and diehard fan base⁠—is ripe for revisiting. In February 2019 news broke that The CW was having “discussions” about rebooting the beloved series, which centered on a group of rich teens living on New York City’s Upper East Side, but nothing was confirmed. Still, fans are holding out for a full-fledged revival⁠—and they may get it. Several of the show’s cast members have said they’re on board with a reboot if all the pieces fell into place. The latest to add his voice to the choir is Chace Crawford, a.k.a Nate Archibald, who told Digital Spy he could see GG coming back as a miniseries.

“I don’t know what it would look like with us being in our 30s now, but I always say, because it was such a big part of my life, I’m open to anything,” he said. “It would have to be really right, and really specific, and with TV and the golden age of the TV streaming service, maybe an eight-episode season.”

He continued, “It would be very tough to get everybody on board I think because of their schedules, Penn, Leighton, Ed… They’re all doing really good TV shows. It would be hard I think [to get them all together]. The reboot might come in the form of new characters. I would absolutely cameo. I’d have to.”

Crawford is referring to his Gossip Girl co-stars Penn Badgley (Dan), Leighton Meester (Blair), and Ed Westwick (Chuck), who are all currently starring in successful TV shows. That being said, they’ve also put in their two-cents about a GG reboot—as has Blake Lively (Serena). Here’s everything the Gossip Girl cast has put into the universe about a possible reboot:

“It sort of all depends. Would I do seven years of the show? No, because it’s hard work and I’ve got my babies, and I don’t want to be away from them that much. But I’ve just learned in life you never say never. I’m looking to do something that I haven’t done yet, not something that I did. But would I do that? Who knows—if it was good, if it made sense. We had so much fun shooting and living and working in New York City.” — Variety, 2017

©CW Network/Courtesy Everett Collection

” If everyone was into it and if the timing was right, you know? I don’t want to say, ‘No, never . . .’” — Vanity Fair, 2017



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The Society Review: Netflix's New Show Is a Creepier Version of Gossip Girl


Gossip Girl left a hole in my heart when it went off the air seven years ago. The popular CW series epitomized one of my favorite sub-genres in entertainment: hot people running around with zero consequences. There hasn’t been a show to come around since then that’s hit quite the same spot for me…until now. On Friday, May 10, Netflix‘s latest drama The Society comes out, and Gossip Girl fans need—I repeat, need—to tune in.

The show is essentially a more bonkers version of GG with a little bit of Riverdale and Lord of the Flies thrown in. It centers on a group of high school seniors from a wealthy suburb who are bused away for the weekend to the mountains. What soon follows, though, is terrifying: In lieu of a luxe hiking resort, the kids are dropped off in an exact replica of their town. Everything is the same (the buildings, the streets, the restaurants) with one big exception: No one else is there. Their parents, siblings, and other friends have all disappeared. There’s no cell phone reception, no Wi-Fi. They don’t even have cable. Freaky, right?

Well, these kids don’t think so at first. Instead, they revel in the lack of parental supervision, much like the Gossip Girl characters did for years. They throw a party at the town’s church, which turns into quite the scene: a fantasia of underage debauchery and Natty Light. But the hangovers come quick, and so does the revelation that all is not well. What starts out as sheer ecstasy soon becomes a nightmare, and the descent into chaos begins.

Netflix

To be clear, there’s nothing relatable about The Society. I didn’t identify with any of the characters (all hot, all troubled—Blair Waldorf is shaking in her Louboutins). I didn’t feel particularly moved by any of the narratives. What I did experience after the first episode, though, was a rush of dopamine: the type of high only a show like Gossip Girl—with its froth and illogical stakes and chiseled jawlines—can deliver. Pop-culture these days is filled with relatable programming: movies and TV shows designed to make us feel seen and less alone. Don’t get me wrong, we still need that content desperately, but sometimes it’s nice to escape into a world so steamy and far-fetched, you forget about your problems. That’s what Gossip Girl was for me in 2007. And that’s what The Society is for me now.

Riverdale is perhaps the only show currently on that matches The Society’s level of camp and ridiculousness (I mean that in the most complimentary way, obviously). When I tune into Archie and the gang’s shenanigans every week, I’m looking to dissociate a little bit—transport to a world where everyone’s ripped and 17-year-olds own and operate speakeasies. The eye-rolls and jaw-drops are part of what makes Riverdale so addictive and fun. The Society follows this exact formula to gangbusters results.

For one, the characters are just as delicious. There’s Campbell (Toby Wallace), an antagonistic oaf who makes Chuck Bass look like a saint; Allie (Kathryn Newton), who matches Jenny Humphrey’s blond, brooding aesthetic minus the eyeliner; and Will (Jacques Colimon), the Dan Humphrey of this universe, though I’m pretty sure he’s not running an anonymous blog.

I am, however, confident that someone (or something) is watching over these kids. That’s really why The Society gives me such distinct Gossip Girl vibes. Of course, the all-seeing eye on GG turned out to be Dan, and his reasoning for essentially stalking his friends was quite shallow: He simply wanted to see what life was like on the Upper East Side. The only price his peers paid, really, was having their adolescent secrets revealed, which was devastating in the moment but negligible in the great scheme of things.



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What the 'Avengers: Endgame' Girl Power Moment Means for Marvel


I generally feel about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) the way I feel about gender reveal parties: I get why people are into it, I’ll go if I’m invited, and I always root for a girl. So after I saw on Twitter there’s a “women got this” moment in the climactic battle of Avengers: Endgame, I decided I’d do my cultural duty and see this much-hyped project for myself.

Twenty dollars and three hours later, I can attest that, yes, the female superheroes do kick butt. Moreover, Endgame reveals a franchise—and perhaps an audience—caught between nostalgia for the status quo that built it and the interesting, diverse possibilities ahead. But before we get into that, be warned: Major spoilers for Endgame ahead.

Endgame picks up where Infinity War left off: Half of the universe’s population has turned to dust, though the original six conveniently survived (Iron Man, Black Widow, Hulk, Hawkeye, Thor, and Captain America). War Machine, Nebula, and Rocket Raccoon are also around to help, along with new recruit Captain Marvel, who saved Iron Man’s life on her way to Earth because Carol Danvers is good like that. Right away, Captain Marvel is confident that, with her help, they can all do their avenging and finally kill Thanos—and they do. The only problem: He destroyed the Infinity Stones, which means they can’t reverse his actions from Infinity War.

For five years, everyone mourns their lost loved ones. Captain America leads a support group that features the movie’s one and only openly gay character. Captain Marvel peaces out to fight crime on other planets, even though Nick Fury used his dying breath to summon her to earth. But don’t worry, because here comes…Ant-Man! Yes, they let the most powerful woman in the galaxy skip town, but good ol’ Ant-Man is crucial to the first half of the movie.

That’s not to say the first half of the movie isn’t really fun, by the way. The Avengers go back in time to collect the Infinity Stones, allowing Thor to see his mom, Iron Man to see his dad, and Captain America to fight himself. There’s a lot of sneaking around and even more anti-aging CGI. It all leans hard into the audience’s nostalgia for the earlier movies in the franchise, and that’s what we signed up for, isn’t it?

Hawkeye/Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), War Machine/James Rhodey (Don Cheadle), Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), Nebula (Karen Gillan), Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), Ant-Man/Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) in Avengers: Endgame.

Marvel Studios

The only thing is, if you haven’t seen the original Avengers since it came out and have instead been watching Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and the MCU’s other more inclusive efforts, you might have forgotten that it’s a real White Guy-Palooza. Iron Man and Captain America are going ego-to-ego, Hulk is doing his best to rein in his testosterone, and Thor still has his phallic attachment to his hammer. The only girl in the group is Black Widow…except she—spoiler—sacrifices herself so Hawkeye can get the Soul Stone and dies. After that, the only women left to save the world are Nebula and Gamora (who, yes, died in Infinity Wars but has joined with her sister in the past and traveled to the present day). But they interact with the main group pretty much never.

After some twists and turns, though, Hulk is able to un-dust all the people Thanos previously dusted—right as a now-alive Thanos (who time-traveled his way from the past) arrives with his entire army. But good news: The heroes who turned to dust have returned, too. If the first half of Endgame was a long and loving tribute to the original batch of Avengers movies, the second is a rapid-fire reminder of all the characters Marvel introduced in the past five years. On your left is Doctor Strange! On your right is Spider-Man and the Scarlet Witch! Directly in front of you…Wakandans! And arriving via the sky are Valkyrie and Captain Marvel (taking down a whole ship by herself in the process, by the way). Except, wait, those last two never got the dust treatment. They could have been here helping the whole time.



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Hulu's PEN15 Review: I Wish Every Teen Girl Would Watch This Show


Junior high is, for me at least, a time worth forgetting. That formative, cringe-inducing time was filled with angst, cliques, and a whole lot of acne. So watching Hulu‘s PEN15, a coming-of-age comedy following two seventh grade girls in the year 2000, was a mixed experience: The rush of seeing the early aughts return, the uncomfortable twinges from remembering the growing pains of those years.

It’s just so scarily accurate. The pivotal slow dance to K-Ci & JoJo’s “All My Life.” Early AIM experiments with away messages, “hot singles” chatrooms, and desperate pleas to your parents to stay off the phone while you’re on the Internet. Gel pens. B*Witched. Butterfly clips. Middle parts. Regret all around.

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There’s a moment in episode three—”Ojichan”—that many woman might find as deeply relatable as I did, regardless of whether a TigerBeat poster of Jonathan Taylor Thomas was on the bedroom wall or not. After spending the majority of the episode masturbating and being consumed by shame over it—to the point that she’s literally haunted by the prospect of her dead grandpa knowing what she’s up to—a distraught Maya (Maya Erskine) confesses to her best friend Anna (Anna Konkle), “I’m like Sam [their male friend who was caught looking at porn earlier in the episode], only I’m grosser because I’m a girl and I’m a pervert. And I really shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing.”

That scene alone is proof why I so desperately needed a show like PEN15 when I was younger. Sam and his buddies crack as many sex jokes as you’d expect from a group of adolescent boys, gathering after school to try and catch a glimpse of boobs on the Spice channel. It’s accepted as normal, something we’ve seen onscreen so many times that it’s become a cliché: Horny Teen Boys.

But I can count on one hand the times I’ve seen a teen series tackle female masturbation, and I was 30 when I saw most of them. Maya feels guilt over something boys are taught to boast about because, like me, she grew up without a show like PEN15 or Netflix’s Sex Education and Big Mouth to reassure her that what she’s doing is normal. To show her that many other girls her age are just as weird and awkward—and, yes, gross—as the boys. That she’s never grosser simply because she is a girl.

Alex Lombardi

“Gross” is definitely something PEN15 leans into—and in doing so, it’s groundbreaking. The fact that Erskine and Konkle are adults playing teen versions of themselves allows them to depict their characters’ burgeoning sexualities with an attention to detail that would be impossible with a younger actor. The first time Maya masturbates, it’s seconds after she’d been playing with two My Little Pony dolls, pressing their nuzzles together to have them make out. It’s deeply realistic—my Barbies were “having sex” with Ken before I even knew what sex really was—because, in the words of Britney Spears, she’s “not a girl, not yet a woman.” Despite knowing I’m not watching an actual teen grind against pillows or wipe her hand on her bedroom carpet when she’s finished, it was hard not to feel challenged by PEN15‘s unflinching portrayal of something I’m accustomed to seeing from only males onscreen. Maya’s shame is my shame, and that’s hard to shake—no matter how many decades I’ve had to unlearn what the patriarchy taught me.

The thing is, puberty is a nightmare. For too long, girls have been relegated to the sidelines in these stories, limited to being some sort of Winnie Cooper type—a chaste, flawless object of affection with perfect manners and not a single zit. But we aren’t immune to the horrors of adolescence; girls can be just as raunchy, just as cruel, just as dorky as the boys who have dominated pop culture’s coming-of-age stories for so long.



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The Poet Warsan Shire Wrote the Short Film 'Brave Girl Rising' for International Women's Day


What the film does well is highlight both the experiences that girls all over the world have in common and the terrible, particular difficulties and threats that a girl like Nasro faces. How much of girlhood is a shared experience?

Being a girl is always difficult. It’s a strange rite of passage, and being a woman in this world is difficult. But there’s a massive difference between what it feels like to be a woman in [America or England] and where Nasaro is. And a girl’s [experience] will be different, too, based on her race, her socioeconomic background, how much education she has. Does she have people in her life to support her? What part of the world is she in? What resources does she have access to? That will decide what her life will be like.

In the New Yorker, Alexis Okeowo wrote that your work “evokes longing for home,” which I think is true. When you feel that ache for home, what do you do?

I feel that every day of my life. For me, home is Somalia. I’m living in L.A. now, but London was home for a really long time, and now I’m living in America under Trump. So it’s double. I miss London, but I miss home home, which is Africa. It’s really important for me to listen to old Somali music and to speak in my mother tongue. It gives me a lot of pride. I like looking at old photographs of Somalia. I love to eat Somali food. I love to put on Somali incense. It’s all the time reminding myself a little bit of where I’m from, and the richness of it. Because it’s very easy to not do that and then you forget—how to cook, how to speak the same language, the comedy, the music.

I don’t want to grow older in different parts of the world and forget all the things that bring me a lot of joy, so I spend a lot of time on YouTube looking for Somali videos. And whenever I want to connect with London, I hope for rain. It’s rainy today in L.A., and it always makes me feel comforted. I just have to stay connected so I don’t forget where I’m from.

It can feel like time travel a bit, to surround yourself with those memories of home.

Yes, definitely. That’s a big help for writing as well. If I want to write about my teenage years, I’ll go back and listen to all the music I listened to and look at photographs of myself back in the day, and I’ll even ask my mom to send me old clothes from London. It’s like a time machine.

International Women’s Day can feel a little two-dimensional, I think. Because so much of it takes “place” online. I’m sure people will see the film and read articles about it. But then what? Do you have advice for people who want to do something with the pain or emotion that they feel?

I’m interested in the ways in which human beings are able to practice empathy, so my recommendation would be to read books written by different women from different backgrounds you don’t know anything about, watch films made by women all over the world, not just by women who look like you.

And try to practice empathy. Think about how massive the world is and how small your life is in comparison to that. Think about what it means to be a woman. Think about how you want to bring awareness to the suffering of other people. Think about women from different parts of the world, trans women, poor women, black women, women in prisons, women in shelters, women all over the world, women and girls in refugee camps. The world is so massive, but we forget that all the time.



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Watch Kate Middleton Tell a Little Girl What It's Like Being a 'Princess'


Kate Middleton went on an official trip to Northern Ireland last week and along the way, she stopped to chat with a little girl who seemed enamored that she was talking to a real-life duchess. In an adorable moment that’s now surfacing from the trip, the Duchess of Cambridge told her what she loves most about being a royal.

On Twitter, journalist Valentine Low—who captured the moment—shared that the exchange happened when Middleton and Prince William stopped in the town of Ballymena. Middleton heard that the little girl, whose name is Hannah Ritchie, was working on a biography of her for school. Being the class act she is, Middleton decided to answer a few questions to help out.

In the video Low captured, you can see Middleton telling Richie that she enjoys “meeting special kiddies like you. I meet lots of different people, it’s really great. I love working with young people. Everyone’s so brave and strong in some of the places we go meet.”

Before she walked away, Middleton told Ritchie, “It’s very nice to meet you…Good luck with your biography.” We have a feeling Richie is going to nail this assignment.

The whole thing was incredibly sweet and capped off a two-day trip, in which Middleton also had some nice moments engaging in a little PDA with Prince William.

Since becoming a royal in 2011, Middleton has been a fixture in Kensington Palace for her grace, public service, and always-elegant fashion. But even though she’s a duchess now, she’s also still pretty down to earth: She’s been known to drive herself around, and sources have reported that she usually prefers a laid-back approach to big occasions. She’s even spoken candidly about the difficulties that come with being a mother.

Gotta love an off-the-cuff royal moment, especially when it’s as sweet as this one was.



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