Gossip Girl was a hit during the mid-2000s to the early 2010s is one of the more popular teen dramas on television because of their well-written characters (they seem generic characters at first, but trust me they’re not) in the lavish world of New York’s Upper East Side where teenagers are act like adults and adults act like teenagers.
Nevertheless, Gossip Girl has produced some good talent coming out of it. And most of them, at least the main cast, has now portrayed psychopathic killers on screen after the show ended. This funny little coincidence came into being after the success of Netflix’s You starring Gossip Girl alumni Penn Badgley, who starred as ‘Lonely Boy’ Dan Humphrey and (spoiler alert) the titular character. This gave way to musings as to what the other Gossip Girl alumnus have been up to and hey, here’s what we found out:
Leighton Meester (From Blair Waldorf to Rebecca Evans)
The Queen Bee herself. Leighton Meester’s Blair Waldorf is a somewhat iconic television character during the span of Gossip Girl‘s run, being the somewhat unofficial successor to Rachel McAdams’ mean girl trope but on television. Meester starred as the obsessive psychopath Rebecca Evans in The Roommate. Okay, the movie didn’t do so well, but Meester’s performance showed her range after being pigeon-holed in having the look and the acting chops to play the mean rich white girl. And honestly, her performance in The Roommate is enjoyable.
Blake Lively (From Serena van der Woodsen to Emily Nelson)
Serena was Blair’s BFF and the It Girl in Gossip Girl, but in A Simple Favor, Lively plays Emily Nelson, now, this is a bit confusing. She has/had a twin, and they burned down their house when they were teenagers because they wanted to kill their abusive father. One of the twins drowned the other one, and yeah, very confusing. The gist of it is, Emily or whatever her name is, has been conning everyone and killing people in the process.
Ed Westwick (From Chuck Bass to Kent Grainger)
Ahh, Ed Westwick. I wonder why this dashing fellow hasn’t skyrocketed after Gossip Girl. His portrayal of Chuck Bass was exquisite having most of the show’s best quotes. Westwick played a serial killer known as the Hollywood Slayer in Wicked City, set in the 1980s Los Angeles. You might be asking why you haven’t heard about this show. Well, its because it got canceled after just eight episodes.
Chace Crawford (From Nate Archibald to Tex Watson)
Nate Archibald is the prototypical high-strung, ever so oblivious entitled jock and in all honesty, Crawford played Nate wonderfully. The only thing I didn’t like is the way his character progressed though. Anyway, Crawford played Tex Watson in Charlie Says, a bio-pic about the infamous serial killer Charles Manson. Watson was a central figure in the Manson Family and was one of the focal figures in the murders of actress Sharon Tate and four other people in Los Angeles back in 1969.
Penn Badgley (From Dan Humphrey to Joe Goldberg)
And last but not the least, the man who made this list come into light, Penn Badgley. I might sound biased because I’m a fan of Badgley’s work and doubling down, I kind of identified with the Dan Humphrey character. The irony in all of this is that Dan and Joe have a lot of things in common, the only difference is that Dan has a way better moral compass, not saying that he’s purely good. Watch the show and you’ll see Dan has done some very shady things himself. They are both very intelligent and charming in a somewhat demure way which leads the audience to root for them. This is a testament to Badgley’s amazing acting chops. There are only a few actors both on film and television that can shift from two different characters in a snap of a finger and Badgley is one of them.