New Events – January 26
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APPEARANCES > 2012 > Jason Wu For Target New York Launch – January 26
APPEARANCES > 2012 > “Gossip Girl” 100th Episode Celebration with Mayor Bloomberg – January 26
Happy Gossip Girl Day, everyone! Yes, that exists now.
To mark the occasion, made official this morning by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a ceremony on the Gossip Girl set in Queens, N.Y., EW caught up with executive producers Stephanie Savage and Josh Safran to get the intel on Monday’s 100th episode of Gossip Girl.
Now, much has already been said about the episode. It’s Blair’s wedding day, Georgina’s back, and there are love triangles upon love triangles about to come to a head. But arguably one of the episode’s most important moments, says Safran, has yet to be spoiled. (He checks online!) “You have to see [the last few minutes] to believe them. I really think they will take people’s breath away,” he says. “Someone asked on Twitter, ‘Will we smile or cry at the end of the episode?’ And I said, ‘It will be more like a gasp.’”
Elaborating, while still playfully coy, Savage explains that the final moment was something that “had to happen” in the 100th episode. “That’s one of the fun things about having a mature show in season 5, you feel like you can really have some fun. In the first couple of seasons, you feel like you have to keep certain things very guarded and protected because the hope is that you’ll have to make them last a long time,” she says. Safran adds: “What we can say is that why we made that decision will become clear with future episodes because, obviously, you’ll learn more about why that has happened, how that has happened. You see, it was such an easy decision… It wasn’t something we belabored over or had long discussions about. It really wasn’t.”
A more contested issue, as Safran has told EW before, was the outcome of the love entanglements (Chuck and Blair, Dan and Serena, Dan and Blair, Blair and Louis…), something fans will get a taste of in Monday’s episode. “Well, obviously [the end] changes things. And what happens in the episode for Blair, Dan, Chuck, and Serena will become a whole new world for them. Obviously, we pushed the 100th episode as a special episode — a huge wedding, a royal wedding — but it’s also the 13th episode of the season. So, the season arc does continue,” says Safran. “The 100th is a turning point, but it’s a turning point connected to everything that was happening before.”
While the episode set to air will certainly have big moments for the characters, off screen the showrunner duo found themselves thinking long ago about the turning point that led to their big moment today. Before Gossip Girl had filmed a single frame, the pair recalls being shown a small soundstage in Los Angeles and were told it was where they’d film their show. Looking at the diminutive space, they knew even then that it’d never work. “I don’t know if we would have ended up making the show if we didn’t know we were making something we were proud of,” Savage reflects, “and something that reflected the vision we had from the beginning, which was very much about shooting on location in New York.” Creating iconic Gossip Girl images — say, for example, the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where much of season 1 took place, would have been impossible. “Oh my gosh, we would have have to find something in, like, Toronto,” laughs Safran, as Savage adds, “like the steps of the CN tower!”
Scans
Blake Lively: I Don’t Use a Stylist!
Blake Lively may have a hot and heavy love life (she dated Leonardo DiCaprio this summer and is now connected to Ryan Reynolds), but one thing she can’t be bothered with is a stylist.
“I don’t work with a stylist,” the Gossip Girl actress told Us Weekly in NYC December 9. “I just like whatever I’m feeling. Sometimes things are really beautiful, but they just don’t photograph well, and that’s that. I don’t know, I don’t really look at pictures of me when I’m in public.”
But it’s no secret that whether she’s decked out in a whimsical Chanel creation or a sleek Michael Kors sheath, the blonde beauty has no problem working the gamut of the style spectrum — a trait that’s similar to her on-screen Gossip Gir character, Serena van der Woodsen. And adding to her low-maintenance flair? Her get-up-and-go hairstyle.
“What I literally do is I just get out of the shower, put it in a ballerina bun, I dry it a little, then put it back in a ballerina bun,” she explained. “Then I take it out and it’s just wavy. So, I’m lucky that it holds that, but some days, it doesn’t look so good!”
While many stars in Hollywood may look up to Lively and her head-turning looks, the actress says she admires a different blonde in tinseltown.
“Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is just perfect looking,” Lively, 24, mused. “Whether she’s walking down the street, she looks so regal and elegant all the time and I love that.”
But besides a knack for putting together eye-catching ensembles, the star describes herself as a “persnickety baker” too, so it makes sense that the actress partnered with Sprinkles bakery in NYC to create a special cupcake of which 100 percent of proceeds would benefit Somalia.
“They’re delicious and it goes to such an incredible cause. The news as of August was, in 90 days, 29,000 children had died and 649,000 were still endangered and dying at any moment, because it’s the worst famine in 60 years,” she said. “It’s so incredibly heartbreaking and I found that it’s hard to have people just sign a check unless they get something out of that, so this is a good way to inspire people and to give back.”
