“Gossip Girl” wouldn’t be “Gossip Girl” without THE Gossip Girl herself. #KristenBell has just signed on to come back to the hit show.
Bell was the iconic narrator of the original series created by #JoshSchwartz and #StephanieSavage, and now she will be joining the reboot that is set to air on HBO Max. “Kristen Bell has always been and will always be the voice of Gossip Girl,” the producers said in a statement Thursday. The HBO Max version was written by former showrunner #JoshSafran and is set to debut with a 10-episode season. The Hollywood Reporter reports that the reboot will take place eight years after the original “website” went dark.
The show will also follow the stories of a new generation of New York private school teens who come face-to-face with the infamous “Gossip Girl.” The series will also portray how social media and the landscape of New York have changed over the years. Safran will write the script and executive produce alongside Schwartz and Savage. Bell served as the narrator —Gossip Girl — for all six seasons comprised of 121 episodes. She appeared onscreen briefly for a surprise cameo (playing herself) in the series finale.
“The show went off the air in 2012, and a couple of years later there was talk of revisiting it as a low-budget feature at New Line. The idea of being able to do it on a streamer where we’re less restricted was very exciting to us, so we called [executive producer] Josh Safran,” Schwartz told THR in October of how the new iteration came together. Savage continued: “Safran loves twists and turns. I don’t think it’s going to be a meditative version of Gossip Girl. It’s not a tone poem. If it’s more explicit, that’s something that we’ve talked about and haven’t really come up with a solid take on. Like, can they swear? Maybe there will be some nudity. We haven’t really figured it out.”
