Leighton Meester only keeps in touch with a few of her former Gossip Girl castmates — and they’re so Blair Waldorf coded.
“I keep in touch with quite a few people,” Meester, 39, shared during the Thursday, October 30, episode of “The World’s First Podcast,” hosted by Erin and Sara Foster. “There’s a couple people that I’m still very close with.”
Meester named Amanda Setton, who played Penelope Shafai on the show.
“My character had friends on the show that were kind of her underlings or whatever,” Meester explained. “They’re like minions, kind of. But these women in particular, we were always together.”
Spotted in Central Park: Blake Lively and her Gossip Girl costar Zuzanna Szadkowski. Lively, who played Serena van der Woodsen on the long-running CW series from 2007 to 2012, recruited Szadkowski — best-known for her role as Dorota Kishlovsky — for an ad promoting Lively’s canned cocktail brand, Betty Booze. The clip was shared via YouTube on […]
The actress said that Setton, 39, still lives “here in L.A.” and has become “a very, very dear friend.” Meester added, “I just love her.”
The second former costar Meester named was none other than Zuzanna Szadkowski, who played Dorota.
“She’s such a dear friend,” Meester added. “I keep in touch with quite a few people and then, you know, I’ll see other people from time to time but not as regularly.”
Nicole Fiscella, Leighton Meester and Amanda Setton. Courtesy Everett Collection
Elsewhere in the podcast, Meester detailed her experience on The CW show, which ran from 2007 to 2012.
“It’s definitely not a time I would want to go back to,” she admitted. “The work was hard and long. Some of the people were great and there were things about it in that time period that were great, but nothing that I’m really nostalgic for.”
She explained that doing Gossip Girl was like “so many different experiences” in her life.
“I’m glad that I have it and I’m glad I did it. I grew and I learned,” she continued. “I don’t know how to compare it because I didn’t go to college but maybe it’s like going to college.”
Meester added that there were “really good times” but it was “hard” overall.
“You made friends and lost friends and you reinvented yourself and learned things and maybe you embarrassed yourself,” she said. “I don’t know, it’s all those things.”
Meester hasn’t spoken much about her Gossip Girl days over the years. In a 2017 interview, the actress noted that she’s “different” than who she was when playing Blair.
“I started Gossip Girl 10 years ago when I was 20, and I’m 30 now,” she said at the time. “I loved doing it, and now I’m doing something else that I love, and something new that’s a little bit more my taste as a 30-year-old, something I’ve grown into.”
Meester added, “I feel so lucky that I can have such amazing fans, and they either grew up with [the show] or they’re growing up with it now. I’ve also heard people say, ‘Oh, we watch that as a throwback.’”
In the years since the show, Meester has grown up but also married another one of the biggest 2000s heartthrobs. She and Adam Brody tied the knot in 2014 and share two kids together. Their daughter, Arlo, was born in August 2015. They also welcomed a son in 2020, but have not publicly shared his name.
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