Kristen Bell will be returning as the voice of Gossip Girl in the new sequel series coming to HBO Max (the new streaming service from Warner Media).
WATCH: Leighton Meester talks about a ‘Gossip Girl’ reboot
“Kristen Bell has always been and will always be the voice of Gossip Girl,” show creators Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz said, according to THR.
The Good Place actress was reportedly in negotiations for months over joining the series before the deal was closed.
However, despite Bell reprising her role as the narrator, the mystery of Gossip Girl’s identity will be no longer be a major plotline in the reboot.
Gossip Girl will no longer be a lone blogger of the likes of Dan “Lonely Boy” Humphrey, because “we are all Gossip Girl now,” says show creator, Josh Schwartz (who is also responsible for hit series, The OC).
“We felt like a version that was just our cast grown up…it didn’t really feel like a group of adults who were being controlled by Gossip Girl would make a lot of sense, so it felt like there was something really interesting about this idea that we are all Gossip Girl now, in our own way, that we are all purveyors of our own social media surveillance state, and how that’s evolved, and how that has morphed and mutated and telling that story through a new generation of upper east side high school kids felt like the right time,” Schwartz said on the TV Critics Association press tour, according to E!.
Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage and Joshua Safran will return as producers for the Gossip Girl reboot, which will “address just how much social media—and the landscape of New York itself—has changed in the intervening years.”
The reboot will be set eight years after the original series and will focus on a new group of Upper East Siders.
However, Serena Van der Woodsen, Blair Waldorf, Chuck Bass, Dan Humphrey, Nate Archibald and the rest of Manhattan’s original elite still exist elsewhere.
Bell remains to be the only original cast member who is signed on for the new Gossip Girl series, despite the fact the sequel will be set in the same world as the original.
“I mean, if they want to be involved in some way, we reached out to all of them to let them know it was happening and that we would love for them to be involved if they want to be involved, but we certainly didn’t want to make it contingent upon them,” Schwartz said at TCA.
“And you know, they played those characters for six years and if they felt like they’re good with that, we wanted to respect that but obviously any time anybody wants…it’d be great to see them again.”
HBO Max will be launching in May 2020.
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