New, Queer 'Gossip Girl' Series Shows Cast In First Look

Hello, Upper East Siders! Gossip Girl is back and apparently a lot more queer.

After being announced back in 2019, the hit TV series Gossip Girl is making its return to the small-screen. The reboot -- erhm extension -- sees cameras return to the Upper East Side to chronicle the lives and exploits of a new, still young, but way more diverse set of private school terrors. And with filming having started up this week in New York City, we have our first looks.

Though this new series -- which will be on HBO Max as opposed to CW like the original -- is set some eight years after the first, the central characters still love reclining on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. So that's where we find them. And while none of the original cast appears in the series, nor are their characters related to the new characters, a prep school uniform is a prep school uniform meaning there's some sort of continuity there.

We don't know much about the characters but we do know there will be some queer representation.

"How much homoeroticism can I expect from it?" one fan tweeted Joshua Safran, an executive producer and writer of the original as well as the showrunner and executive producer for this revamp.

"Well, considering we have many queer characters, a lot?" Safran responded. We aren't sure who is playing what but Jordan Alexander, Emily Alyn Lind, Whitney Peak, Thomas Doherty, and Zion Moreno, Eli Brown, Evan Mock, Savannah Smith, and Zion Moreno will all appear in the series. The tweet exchange just confirms what Safran has previously said about the new series though.

"There was not a lot of representation the first time around on the show." Safran said in a 2019 panel. The only main character that was queer was Eric Van Der Woodsen who came out in the first season."I was the only gay writer I think the entire time I was there."

"This time around the leads are nonwhite," he continued. "There's a lot of queer content on this show. It is very much dealing with the way the world looks now, where wealth and privilege come from, and how you handle that. The thing I can't say is there is a twist, and that all relates to the twist." While we aren't sure of what that twist was set to be originally, there's been an additional layer added.

The show was expected to debut in 2020 but due to the ongoing pandemic it's been pushed back to 2021. Safran confirmed on social media that the pandemic will be referenced in the series as a result.

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