Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley React to Their Gossip Girl Endings

Spotted: Leighton Meester and Ed Westwick delivering major chemistry. 

Watching the final scene of the pilot—that saw Ed's bad boy Chuck Bass and Leighton's queen bee Blair Waldorf witness her former BFF Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) leave a party with outsiders Dan (Penn Badgley) and Jenny Humphrey (Taylor Momsen)—gave co-creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage the idea to create the iconic couple. 

"There was just a connection between them...that was immediately so palpable and fun," Josh said of the scene. "That was where it kind of really first landed."

"It was like a revelation to watch," Stephanie added. "It's like Dangerous Liaisons. It's like Valmont and Merteuil...they love each other but they hate each other, and they do schemes together. That was such a juicy story to lean into." 

Ed Westwick Knows He Had "Great Chemistry" With Leighton Meester

Yes, Ed was well aware that there was something there with Chair. 

"I had an amazing time working with Leighton," he gushed to former costar Jessica Szohr on her Gossip Girl rewatch podcast XOXO with Jessica Szohr in February 2022. "And people really were taken with that relationship. It means so much to people, which is so cute and funny." 

As for his true dynamic with Leighton, he told Jessica, who played Dan's childhood bestie turned something more Vanessa Abrams, "She's an incredible talent. I miss her dearly. We just had this great chemistry, and we used to make each other laugh, and I felt protective over her at times. Yeah, she probably made me better."

Ed and co-star Chace Crawford (who played his onscreen bestie, the privileged Nate Archibald) got extra close, because they actually lived together for the first two years of filming.

As Ed revealed on XOXO, "Chace and I agreed to live together on the pilot. He was like, 'Do you want to room together?' I'd never lived outside my parents' house and I was like, 'Yeah, sure, whatever.'"

The British actor explained, "He went and looked at some places, and he sent me the strangest photos. It was like the corner of a ceiling with a little bit of the floor." Laughing, Ed noted, "I was like, 'Alright, sure. Whatever dude, looks fine!' And so we lived together for the first two years."

None other than Jennifer Lawrence auditioned to play series lead Serena, the part that ultimately went to Blake.  

"We did not realize this at the time, but Jennifer Lawrence really wanted to play Serena and auditioned,” co-creator Josh told Vulture in 2017. "This story came to us secondhand, but we were told she definitely auditioned and was bummed to not get it."

When Penn was auditioning for the part of Brooklyn-based "Lonely Boy" Dan, he was rocking what Josh and Stephanie recalled as long, "snowboarder" locks. The actor ended up chopping most of it off on his first day of filming, shocking the crew and network execs.

"Everybody was like, ‘What is happening?! He shaved his head!'" Josh recalled. However, once they all saw the new ‘do, everyone agreed: "Oh damn, he looks good."

Lily Collins Auditioned for This Role

These Celebs Were in the Running to Play Young Lily Van der Woodsen

Gossip Girl casting director David Rapaport dished to Jessica about the Gossip Girl spinoff centered on Serena's mom, Lily van der Woodsen (Kelly Rutherford), with a pilot that starred Brittany Snow and Krysten Ritter.

"I remember for that Dakota Johnson came in and Rooney Mara, and a lot of other women who are now kind of big names but at the time didn't have that kind of stature," he recalled on XOXO. "And you know who did the best read for that? I'll tell you, because I think you're friends with Nina Dobrev, that was one of the best auditions I had ever seen, and for that role specifically."

David said he called the network and told them, "She is a super star."

The issue, however, as he recalled on the podcast was that "she does not look like Kelly Rutherford, because she was supposed to be a young Kelly Rutherford." 

Still, she stressed to the network that they needed to keep the Degrassi: The Next Generation star on their radar, "'and you guys need to find something for her,'" he recalled. "I just remember thinking, 'I am going to think about this girl in a couple of years and be like, 'Oh god, I missed that opportunity.' She was so incredible!"

As Ed shared on the XOXO podcast in 2022, "Chuck Bass was supposed to be a recurring role and was only supposed to come in for a few episodes."

The actor said he feels "lucky" that the mogul became a bigger part of the show, adding of his audition process, "I kind of got around one of the testing aspects there, because I didn't have to test like a series regular. I did two auditions and then a screen test but I never had to test for network." 

Is this considered a meet-cute? Gossip Girl showrunners Josh and Stephanie knew that they had found their Vanessa when Adam Brody, who they had worked with on The O.C., brought her along as a guest to a Fourth of July pool party.

Stephanie said on an episode of XOXO that she and Josh immediately ran to a computer—after all, this happened all before the iPhone came out—and Googled Jessica to see if she was an actress.

According to Josh, casting Ed "was a whole situation." Not only had the English actor initially auditioned for the part of Nate, but his role of Chuck nearly went to somebody else as well.

"He got cast as Chuck and then couldn't get his visa to come shoot in the U.S. in time, because he was a citizen of the U.K.," Josh recalled on an episode of XOXO with Jessica Szohr, adding that the network was pressuring him to recast the part.

"They were saying to us as we got closer and closer to start of the pilot, 'Guys, you need to figure out who your back-up Chuck is gonna be because we don't think this is gonna work out,'" Josh remembered. "And we were just like, ‘There is no backup Chuck. It's Ed.'"

Since Josh and his co-creator, Stephanie, were adamant on having Ed play Chuck, the network waited for his visa to get approved.

Although Kristen Bell was the top pick for the voice of Gossip Girl, both Christina Ricci and Selma Blair were "in the mix" as possible candidates, according to Stephanie, who also served as executive producer.

Kristen was ultimately cast after Veronica Mars—which also featured her voiceover work as the series' titular star—was canceled after three seasons.