EXCLUSIVE'Gossip Girl' Sex Scenes Will Be 'Edgier' In Reboot, Which Will Be Set In Post-COVID Universe
So long, CW — and hello, HBO Max! Now that the teen cult drama Gossip Girl will be revived in a modern-day reboot for a streaming cable platform, fans are wondering just how hot and heavy the new set of angsty high schoolers will go. And we’re here to tell you: pretty darn far.
In an exclusive interview with OK!, series showrunner Joshua Safran reveals that the reboot will, in fact, be “edgier” than its predecessor — but a little less racier than HBO’s Euphoria.
“There might be full-frontal in the background of the show, meaning if characters are in the locker room, people could be fully frontal because it is HBO, but we’re not … Gossip Girl, to me, was always about … The romance of it was in what you weren’t seeing, [and instead] using your imagination,” Safran tells OK!.
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Still, he assures, “There definitely are sex scenes. There are definitely sex scenes that are a little more edgier than the first time around, but … we are not shooting them to be titillating.”
You may be wondering: How can these characters have sex, or be intimate at all, when a global pandemic is on the rise? Well, Safran explains, Gossip Girl will be set in a world post-COVID-19. “It’s post-COVID in a fantasy world,” Safran says, adding that the show is set in September 2021. Even though the real world will likely still don masks this coming fall, he says, “Masks are a thing that happened in the past.”
He adds, “There’s theatre, for instance. One of our episodes takes place at a show, so theatre exists.” (The cast is filled with theatre vets, including Donna Murphy, Laura Benanti, Jason Gotay, Adam Chanler-Berat and more.) However, the cast is currently filming in a New York City that has been hit incredibly hard by the global pandemic, and restaurants that viewers will see on the show could be closed by the time Gossip Girl starts streaming.
As OK! previously reported, a release date has not been set, due in part to the coronavirus pandemic.
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Though Safran remains tight-lipped on additional details, including characters and plotlines, he reveals that the latest class of Upper East Siders will be “a mixture of freshman, juniors and seniors,” rather than focusing primarily on one grade level.
Additionally, this Gossip Girl will represent students of all races, cultures and sexual identities.
“We are definitely telling stories of the difficulties of being queer in today’s day and age, the difficulties of being Black at a private school with the majority [of] white students,” Safran says. “Those are story details that we look into in the show.”
Instead of one ominous “Gossip Girl,” social media will play a huge part in the reboot — from Instagram and Twitter to TikTok.
The cast features 14 series regulars and up to 20 recurring roles, Safran explains, so the drama (and, of course, gossip!) will be plentiful.
