11 Juiciest Bits Of Gossip In Vanity Fair's Major Gossip Girl Tribute

I know, it's hard to believe, but it's been 10 years since we first met Serena van der Woodsen, Blair Waldorf, Nate Archibald, Dan Humphrey, and Chuck Bass. And while Gossip Girl is gone, it certainly hasn't been forgotten — especially the gossip.

For the 10th anniversary of Gossip Girl, Vanity Fair posted a long tribute to the series about the most stylish Upper East Side students, which totally spills the tea. Yes, VF had a little fun playing GG, revealing some of the juiciest gossip about the cast that may surprise. Either way, it'll definitely keep you busy while you wait for a Gossip Girl revival, which might be a while if you believe Chuck Bass, himself Ed Westwick.

So, delve into some of the juiciest bits of gossip that you didn't actually see on Gossip Girl. Come on, you know, you love it, xoxo.

Meester actually auditioned for Serena first, but ended up telling the show's producers that she was a "better fit" for Blair, but it seems the whole auditioning process wasn't all that memorable for her. “I think it was just the normal, typical pilot season audition for me," she told Vanity Fair. "I auditioned and then I tested once and then we did a screen test with everybody. And then, that was it... I dunno. I got it.” What we now know is that Meester was right, she was the perfect Blair.

She also may have wanted the role more than she lets on. Showrunner Josh Schwartz remembers that Meester was perfect for Blair, but was blonde at the time which was a problem being that Lively was also blonde. "So, [Leighton] went to the sink and dyed her hair," he said. "She wanted it.”

The guys who would play Nate and Chuck first realized how popular Gossip Girl could be when they went to an Arctic Monkeys concert together. “We had these girls coming up to us, and they were kind of freaking out about it: ‘Oh, we love the books.’ [Ed and I] kept looking at each other like, shit, man.”

While executive producer Joshua Safran said Lively was "very much in the moment" and was someone who you could talk to on "a very contemporary level" about the latest pop culture. While Meester was "very removed and very quiet, and, after her scenes were done, she would wander the stage. I had this image of her just in these gorgeous dresses with a book in her hand, sort of a little bit out of focus out in the corners.” And now, we do, too.

“Blake and Leighton were not friends," Safran explained. "They were friendly, but they were not friends like Serena and Blair. Yet the second they’d be on set together, it’s as if they were.” They definitely fooled us, showing just how good of actors they both are. Don't worry, though, the real life Blair and Dorota are best friends.

Before Lively was married to Ryan Reynolds she dated DiCaprio for a few months in 2011. That short lived romance, though, inspired the GG writers. Apparently, she was Instagramming before anyone knew what it was. “We learned a lot from Blake,” Safran said. “When I think about shooting the L.A. episodes, Blake was dating [DiCaprio] at the time, and she had this thing where she had a doll that she took photos of that she sent to Leo. Blake was way ahead of the curve. It was pre-Instagram. She was documenting her life in photographs in a way that people were not yet doing.”

Turns out, before Game Of Thrones was being hacked Gossip Girl was. Throughout season 4 a Russian hacker was posting scripts online. “We hired a private investigator. We didn’t understand what was happening, because everything was getting leaked, every detail," a producer on the show told VF. "A teenager, I think either [from] Russia or Bulgaria, had hacked one of the writer’s e-mails, and was selling scripts on eBay. But they were underage, so they couldn’t be prosecuted. It was a fucking production nightmare. We would have to ‘X’ out every script. We would have to print on red paper. . . . It was like there was a ‘Gossip Girl’ in our system.”

Badgley has never been shy about his dislike for the show so it's no real surprise that he declined to be interviewed for the Vanity Fair piece. But Safran was quick to point out that whether Badgley likes it or not, he's actually a lot like his character. “Penn didn’t like being on Gossip Girl, but . . . he was Dan," Safran said. "He may not have liked it, but [his character] was the closest to who he was." The truth hurts.

It was no secret that, for three years, Lively and Badgley were a couple, but when they broke up it was a secret to the GG writers. Safran said that "the shocking thing was, I found out on the set of the Season 2 finale that Blake and Penn had broken up months before. They kept the breakup hidden from the crew, which you could never do now. I don’t even know how they did it."

Why they did it though, was because they didn't want their "personal drama to relate to the show." What Lively later realized was that's exactly what the creators of the show wanted. For the personal lives of the Gossip Girl cast to meld with the show until it was hard to tell the actors apart from their characters.

"They wanted us all to date," Lively said. "They wanted us all to wear the same clothes that we’re wearing on the show. They wanted that, because then it fed their whole narrative. People could buy into this world.”

Sure, Chuck Bass' purple suits and patterned handkerchiefs were inspired by Westwick's British style, but it was also a rebellion from the Jersey Shore uniform of shorts and T-shirts that was all the rage at the time. “[Chuck Bass] had a very big influence on menswear and how men dress today, and on what getting dressed up means. Menswear, at that point, was still very Jersey Shore," costume designer Eric Daman. "I’m very proud we got to break through to the men and be like, ‘No, it’s O.K. to dress up. You’re not gonna look like some big pansy because you’re in a fucking suit, dude. Suck it up, put on the bow tie.’”

This may shock you, but Westwick still doesn't know about the biggest reveal of the show. When asked about his favorite Gossip Girl memories, he emailed the Vanity Fair writer to admit: “I still am not sure who GG was lol.” OMG, Chuck Bass wrote LOL.

Fans would love to see the Gossip Girl gang together again and showrunners Schwartz and Stephanie Savage admit they “could be persuaded [to revisit the world of Gossip Girl] if there were new stories to tell.” One of those new stories could be an adaptation of the 2002 book Gossip Girl: Psycho Killer in which “Serena comes back from boarding school to kill everyone." Sounds like a bloody good idea to us.