'Gossip Girl' Creator Explains Easter Egg From Original Series

On Location for "Gossip Girl" - June 25, 2008

Photo: Getty Images

HBO Max's Gossip Girl reboot debuted earlier this month. While the revitalized series follows a whole new cast of characters, there's been a few references to the stars of the original. During one teachers' lounge conversation in the premiere episode, one of the Constance Billard educators claimed to have been a classmate of Blair Waldorf, Serena van der Woodsen, and the rest of Gossip Girl's previous targets. The teacher, a woman named Rebecca, even claimed they even once suspected her of being behind the anonymous account.

“When I was a student, we lived under constant threat. People like Nate [Archibald] were scared straight,” Rebecca says. “It was this thing that started freshman year, called itself Gossip Girl. Kind of like an Orwellian Big Sister that kept tabs on the students it deemed important. If she knew your secrets, and she always did, she told them. She kept us all accountable. People thought it was me, but it was actually one of my classmates, Dan Humphrey.”

This moment left some fans scratching their heads, wondering if they'd missed a major plot point from the OG series. Turns out, there was a Rebecca in the show's original run, but even the most die-hard Gossip Girl fans probably missed this Easter Egg. “It’s such a very deep Easter egg, I assumed that nobody would know,” Joshua Safran, creator of the reboot and writer on the original Gossip Girl, told The Wrap.

“Her full name would make you know her if you Googled it. But I couldn’t get her full name in," he continued. "I tried and I just couldn’t [get the characters] to say, ‘Rebecca Sherman, you went to school here?’ But Rebecca Sherman is the name of the character at the end of Season 2 that they briefly think could be Gossip Girl before they think that it is Eric’s boyfriend.”

Rebecca never appears on screen, however, Blair utters her name once during the second season. “If you go back and watch that episode, they think it’s Rebecca Sherman,” he explains. “And Blair is like, ‘No, her head’s always in a book. She doesn’t have time to be posting all the time.’ So it was my way of doing that.”

As of now, no original cast members are confirmed to make appearances on the reboot. We'll just have to keep tuning in to see if any of our favorite Upper East Siders make a cameo.


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