Gossip Girl Creator Says Reboot Won’t Follow Kids of Original Characters: ‘We Ain’t That Old!’

Michele Corriston
Gossip Girl Creator Says Reboot Won’t Follow Kids

You know you love him. Gossip Girl creator Josh Schwartz is setting the record straight about HBO Max’s reboot of the iconic mid-2000s teen soap.

Schwartz, executive producer and director of Looking for Alaska, answered a few questions about the just-announced revival at Hulu’s Television Critics Association tour on Friday.

First, the titular snoop probably won’t be texting threats to teens’ Motorola RAZR flip-phones. Schwartz, 42, explained how will the new Gossip Girl be updated to reflect influencer culture and the technological advances since the first series’ 2007-2012 run.

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“There was something really interesting about this idea that we are all Gossip Girl now in our own way, we are all purveyors of our own social media surveillance state, how that’s evolved, and how that has morphed, mutated, and telling that story through a new generation of Upper East Side high school kids,” he told reporters. “It felt like the right time.”

More scoop: Schwartz said there will not be a mystery about the identity of Gossip Girl again (guess we all have to live with that Dan Humphrey twist), and although the original characters like Serena Van Der Woodsen (Blake Lively) do exist in this version of New York City, no cameos are guaranteed.

“If they want to be involved in some way, we’ve reached out to all of them to let them know it’s happening, and that we would love for them to be involved if they want to be involved,” he said of stars like Lively, Penn Badgley, Leighton Meester, Ed Westwick and Chace Crawford. “They played those characters for six years, if they felt like they are good with that, we wanted to respect that. But obviously any time anybody wants [to come back] it would be great to see them again.”

And no, the new iteration won’t follow Blair and Chuck’s hypothetical spawn in high school.

“We ain’t that old, Jesus!” he joked. “Come on. We’re not that old.”