“Gossip Girl” Stars Savannah Smith, Zión Moreno Talk Mean Girls Monet & Luna

Crystal Bell
·3 min read

Behind every Queen Bee stands a pair of loyal subjects. (You can thank Shakespeare for that.) From the Heathers to the Plastics, the mean girls always come in threes. In Gossip Girl 2.0, Julien Calloway rules the school, but it's her cunning devotees Luna La and Monet de Haan who conjure up the more menacing machinations within the halls of Constance Billard St. Jude's — like, say, making new girl Zoya's life complete hell. But is there more to these mean girls than meets the eye?

"Yeah, no, they're ruthless. They're evil!" Savannah Smith tells Teen Vogue. "And they enjoy every bit of it." In the first episode, billionaire social media savant Monet is described by her teachers as the "school villain," a designation Savannah thinks is unfair because "the villain never thinks they're the villain."

"She's very mean, but there's a reason for that," she adds. "Whatever the reason is, I'm excited to dive into that and explore that as more character work. No one is a bully for no reason."

It's a sentiment that her co-star Zión Moreno shares. As Luna, Zión portrays Julien's stylist, a savvy social climber with a killer instinct. "Very much like Monet, she's very cutthroat and she understands the fierceness of the industry that she's in, which is that of fashion and celebrity," Zión says. "She acts the way she does because she feels like that's the only way to succeed, and she doesn't want anyone to stand in her way" — even if the person standing in her way is Julien.

When Julien's social influence begins to wane, Luna attempts to turn naive, young ingenue Zoya into the school's Queen Bee. For Luna and Monet, it's all about proximity to power.

"I try to look into her past to see what makes her act the way that she does," Zión adds. "I think that humanizes her. No one is inherently bad. You're a product of your experiences."

For Monet, at the root of her duplicity is inherited trauma. "She doesn't want to work for her mother for reasons we'll find out soon," Savannah says. "For those reasons she's very focused on her career." That drive is what propels her to make a few morally questionable decisions. "She is very driven, and I can relate to that hunger. She's hungry. Her work ethic is insane. The reason why she f*cks over everyone she comes into contact with is because she's trying to get somewhere. And sometimes that lends herself to be a little evil and a little mean."

There's a reason the mean girl archetype prevails even after all this time; in a patriarchal society, there's nothing more terrifying than a woman asserting her power. In future seasons, of Gossip Girl Savannah hopes Monet starts to wield on her own. Who wants to be a follower when you can lead? "What happened in her past to keep her from doing this herself?"

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Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue