Gossip Girl

Heath Ledger was reportedly a silent investor in Five Leaves, a Greenpoint bar designed by John McCormick, who also designed Smith & Mills and Beatrice Inn. While the project was at first put on hold after the actor's death, his father has agreed to fund the project to its completion. [P6]

Christian Bale's assault on his mother was possibly not an assault at all; sources say he never touched her, but merely raised his voice when she made negative remarks about his wife. Apparently, the British consider yelling a verbal assault and therefore a crime. [NY Daily News]

As part of an investigation into Raffaello Follieri's affairs, the F.  read more »

OMFG! The CW is bringing Gossip Girl back to the internet so you can enjoy endless hours watching pretty people sort out their problems while at work or at the local coffee shop with free wi-fi. You're welcome, xoxo!

TV Week reports:  read more »

Depending on which day you read the papers, rehabilitated Kirsten Dunst is chasing Into the Wild actor Emile Hirsch, or maybe Drew Barrymore's ex, Justin Long. [P6]

CNBC interviewed Tinsley Mortimer as the "socialite-turned-entrepreneur," who designs handbags, lip gloss and clothes. Apparently she's huge in Japan! [Park Avenue Peerage]

Anna Wintour has offered to "discuss her career, stories of former successful Vogue interns and give advice on how to do well in the business of journalism" with current Vogue interns. [The Cut]  read more »

New teasers are out for the upcoming season of Gossip Girl and from what we can tell, everyone is in the Hamptons, Serena seems to be dating a lifeguard, and Nate is running from someone's house in his boxers.

Tinsley Mortimer was spotted shooting an episode of CW's Gossip Girl this morning, wearing a white dress alongside co-stars Blake Lively and Taylor Momsen.

Of course she's not the first of Manhattan's "socials" to appear on the show: Lydia Hearst was in last season's finale. But then it's not Ms. Mortimer's first time filming for television: Page Six recently reported that MTV shot a reality show featuring Ms. Mortimer that was then killed because the producers thought that her life wasn't interesting enough.

Click here to see photos of Ms. Mortimer on the set.

Last night we ran into Gossip Girl's Nicole Fiscella at the Simon Wiesenthal Tribute Dinner at the Plaza honoring Whoopi Goldberg. Ms. Fiscella, 28, wearing a belted, coral-colored sheer dress with patent leather chunky heels, was excited to talk about her life outside of the show (the girl is getting her masters!) and what it's like playing a high-school girl 10 years younger than herself.

We heard you're enrolled at University of Bridgeport?

Yeah, I'm getting my master's in nutrition.

Nutrition? How did you get into that?

Both of my parents are doctors, so we were always the health-nut family.  read more »

Mariann Florio, widow of former Condé Nast C.E.O. Steve Florio, is reportedly in a dispute with the company over payouts following her husband's death last December. [P6]

Gossip Girl had a casting call in Southampton this past weekend and no one showed up. [Daiyl Intel]

Jay-Z dined with Governor Paterson at the Spotted Pig. [P6]  read more »

Josh Schwartz has denied rumors of a Taylor Momsen-headlined Gossip Girl spin-off. [E!]

Grey's Anatomy's Katherine Heigl says she withdrew her name from the Emmy nomination list because she was not given Emmy-worthy material by the show's writers. [LA Times]  read more »

Earlier today, The Hollywood Reporter told us that Gossip Girl's Jenny Humphrey might get her own show. Taylor Momsen plays our least favorite character on GG (or maybe we just love to hate Brooklyn brat Jenny Humphrey) and apparently producers were planning on shopping a show based on her storyline, or introducing a new character in the fall for a later spin-off. But New York Magazine alerts us to a Josh Schwartz interview with E! in which he says it might not happen. "Not sure how this got out there, but no plans for a spinoff at this moment," Schwartz told E! Online this afternoon. "The books do have a spinoff, but we have nothing in the works right now other than making sure season two gets off to a great start." Sigh.  read more »

Now that HBO has hired Tina Brown and Frank Rich for consulting gigs, Felix Gillette wonders, "So what’s next?" He also notes, "the truly free-range journalist-consultant—one with a broad editorial mandate to roam here and there gnawing lustfully on some projects while trampling others willy-nilly—remains a rare and exotic beast."

Speaking of television, Doree Shafrir meets Bravo's Flipping Out host Jeff Lewis, "a deeply neurotic man who treats his staff like a dysfunctional family and has managed to turn his obsessive-compulsive disorder to his advantage."

John Koblin looks at this past week's New York Times Magazine and writes, "Sex sells, of course—but this was not Maxim. And women writers in Manhattan could be forgiven for a slightly sickly feeling as they regarded the images. This again?" Plus: Slicing the SATC Pie.  read more »

Gossip Girl creator Cecily von Ziegesar went out with a proposal last week for a novel she’s been working on called Cum Laude. It’s about a preppy girl from Greenwich; a hippie from Manhattan; and a jock-turned-artist from Westchester, whose work is said to display some violent tendencies toward women. There is also a college-age boy and his beautiful younger sister, who suffers a terrible fate. This is according to an editor at one of the finer literary houses in town, who read the first 150 pages of the proposal before passing on it.  read more »

In yet another attempt to find a new and creative way to cover the over-exposed show Gossip Girl, Vanity Fair sat down with three--real!--Upper East Side high school girls they call A, M and T. The girls talk about going to Butter--"Butter is ok; I’m not really into it"--drinking cosmos, and how many people they know that went to rehab a la Serena van der Woodsen. Here are a few of our favorite answers:  read more »

Following the announcement of Lydia Hearst's guest appearance on Gossip Girl, the CW revealed that Lisa Loeb, the 90's librarian-like hottie, will also make a cameo in the May 12 episode. Do you think she'll ... stay?  read more »

MONDAY

There’s something comforting about the predictability of House (Fox, 9 p.m.), which returns tonight. Sometimes it’s nice to have a show where you can set your watch by its familiar plot points, like the show’s every climax where Dr. House has reluctantly ordered some incredibly invasive procedure to cure a patient, only to have it interrupted at the last moment by a new symptom or a phrase that triggers one of Dr. House’s Eureka moments. But, finally, there’s a twist! It’s now on Mondays. (You probably saw that one coming, too.)  read more »

MONDAY

OMFG, Gossip Girl (CW, 8 p.m.)! (Is OMFG even appropriate slang anymore? Honest to blog, who can keep up?) Too many murdered brain cells to remember exactly where the show left off? Here’s a primer. Blair’s secret affair with Chuck Bass had recently come to light after her reconciliation with Nate. He’s angry, while she’s mortified because being a “whore” undermines her leader status amongst her prim ladies. (Uh, really?) Jenny Humphrey, Dan’s younger sister, recently slighted by Blair, uses Blair’s weakened state to her own social advantage. Jenny’s rebuke—she’s from Brooklyn!—plunges Blair into a deep shame spiral. At the end of the last episode, Serena had just swooped in to console her. All caught up now? Gr8! Kthxbai.  read more »

Oh noes! They want you to watch Gossip Girl exclusively on the Oldstube!

The CW network has announced that it will no longer stream free episodes of Gossip Girl on its Web site. Apparently the show has become so successful with online audiences that CW has decided to try to draw that viewership back to television.  read more »

Following the Gossip Girl frenzy, the CW just greenlit another show about the rich and elite: How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls. Based on the book by Zoey Dean, the show revolves around a young woman who's fired from her job as the assistant at a glossy tabloid mag. She's then hired to serve as a live-in tutor and life coach for the teen granddaughters of a cosmetics magnate. She'll have to win over the bratty girls while "navigating Palm Beach's high society and dealing with her own personal issues," according to Variety. Hmm, sounds very Ugly Betty to us.

Woo! Despite semi-dissappointing ratings, Gossip Girl is in for a second season. Maybe all the hype over Janet Malcolm's piece in the New Yorker about the original book series helped the CW make the decision. Who seems to be out at the CW's exclusive lunch table? Aliens in America and Reaper. Bummer. The Hollywood Reporter has more.  read more »

MONDAY

For several panicked hours on Friday, fans of Gossip Girl—and presumably, The O.C.—swamped message boards following the news that producers of the new CW show had offered former O.C. cast member Mischa Barton a role on G.G. as Georgina Sparks, an old chum of Serena van der Woodsen. A wave of invective ensued: “This is the dumbest idea I have ever heard,” wrote one irate commenter, “[M]ischa [B]arton is the most useless actress ever!!!” wrote another. Too harsh? Maybe … maybe not. Consider the history: Josh Schwartz, who now produces G.G., and the other O. C. producers opted to kill off Barton’s character, well before the show ran its course. Now they want her back?  read more »

What are those Gossip Girl writers doing now that they can finally return to work? Gossiping, of course! Now that the Writers Guild strike is finally over (rejoice!), and scribes are returning to their crummy offices and barely-there story lines, they're feeling "an emotion akin to what they remembered experiencing on their first day of high school," according to the New York Times' Brooks Barnes. On the Warner Brothers lot, Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz, the co-creators of Gossip Girl, likened reopening their offices to "starting up a summer camp after the winter."  read more »

Now that the strike's end is neigh, all the Upper East Side drama you can handle will return in April, when Gossip Girl comes back to the CW on Monday nights. The network asked for about five or six more episodes of dramas Reaper, Gossip Girl, Smallville, Supernatural and One Tree Hill, according to Broadcasting & Cable. Here is another guide to how the rest of your favorite shows have been affected (30 Rock is back in April too! Sweet!), courtesy of The New York Times.

MONDAY

It’s George Bush’s final State of the Union (All Networks, 9 p.m.). Incidentally, the one year when the networks are scrambling for programming and therefore probably welcome the intrusion is the one year where no one could care less. The failing economy, Iraq, and his legacy will more than likely be on the agenda. Watch and wait for the presidential candidates to trip over themselves trying to respond first.

Speaking of wastes of time, it can’t replace an actual new episode, but Gossip Girl Revealed (CW, 8 p.m.) should satisfy your weekly fix for the posh adolescents. In the show’s new time slot, it promises plenty of bonus features—commentary, deleted scenes, profiles—and a re-airing of the pilot. Sadly, this is meant as an introduction to the uninitiated and harkens the beginning of repeats. Oh, they’re too young to die!  read more »

I didn't want to write this about the CW show Gossip Girl, but I feel I have to before it's too late.

As it stands now, Gossip Girl; is spreading throughout the United States a disjunctive, distorted, ultimately dangerous, view of what buys what in New York City right now, and the show's doing so mostly through its depiction of real estate. Like Friends in the 1990's and Sex and the City earlier this decade, Gossip Girl is giving the impression to Suzy in Nebraska and Mandy in Alabama (and Clay from Texas) that real estate in New York is as affordable as anywhere and that poor in New York means living in a $2 million Williamsburg loft.  read more »

Blake Lively isn’t the only one seeing an in increase in attention since Gossip Girl debuted this season. Just ask the staff at Henri Bendel on Fifth Avenue. It seems the ritzy retail store has seen a spike in curious visitors dropping by to inquire about the show, which has filmed scenes on the premises. Bendel’s Web site and general phone number have also been seeing an increase in usage. And because they have been keeping a record of the surge times, they’ve discovered that most of hits and calls happen after the CW show airs. According to WWD, even Gossip Girl stars Ms. Lively, who plays Serena van der Woodsen, and Taylor Momsen, who plays Jenny Humphrey, have popped in to pick up some pricey wares.

Gossip Girl star Blake Lively, who plays sassy social-dominatrix Serena van der Woodsen on the CW series, gets recognized on the street. Like, all the time. In a recent interview, the 20-year-old actress said she even gets shout-outs from “Guido-type guys, like frat boys.” (Some people have all the luck.) But Ms. Lively assured the AP that she is very different from her character on the show. After all, as the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants actress reminds us, she grew up “in a small town in California”—Burbank, to be precise. But Ms. Lively promised, too, that she and her on-screen persona aren’t altogether apples and oranges, either; “We both giggle a lot. We look alike.” Imagine the odds!

More interview highlights after the jump!  read more »

In the new issue of the New Yorker, writer Nancy Franklin devotes some 1,600 words to digging into the CW’s New York-based coming-of-age drama series “Gossip Girl.” Her verdict?  read more »

Jessica Shaw of Entertainment Weekly wrote that on paper Gossip Girl is not very successful, drawing a relatively lame 2.6 million viewers and languishing near the bottom of the Nielsen chart. (It's at No. 105, to be exact.) But in a season with few new breakouts, Gossip Girl is redefining what it means to be a TV hit.  read more »

“It’s okay to think about clothes as long as you think about other things,” the actress Maggie Gyllenhaal told the Daily Transom last night. “Otherwise it’s pretty problematic.”

The clever moppet was looking like a young Joan Crawford with her long, dark and wavy hair framing a pair of claret-colored lips, a glass of Champagne in her hand, as she stood on a tented balcony that hugs the third floor of the Longchamp store on Spring Street. She was wearing a deep vintage black dress under a trench coat as guests gathered at the store for an intimate dinner party.

But she didn't mean fashion can't be deep. She said shopping provides an opportunity to "think about who you are."

“I think that’s the pleasure in it for me,” the 29-year-old said.  read more »

For most of us, the universe of the Gossip Girl books can be a little mysterious. What is the meaning of all these places—the pizza shop, the 79th Street bus, that glam-sounding bar—that get name-checked so casually? We know from executive producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage that they’re using an amalgam of actual N.Y.C. school exteriors (Brooklyn’s Packer Collegiate Institute and the actual Upper East Side’s Russian Orthodox Synod of Bishops) in the television show, but which fancy-pants school in the book is supposed to be which?  read more »