More than one and a half million people tuned in to learn the identity of Gossip Girl’s title character on the show’s 2012 finale, however Ed Westwick was apparently not one of them.
“I still am not sure who GG was,” the actor, 30, who starred on the CW series throughout its six-season run, said in an email to Vanity Fair. “Lol.”
The long-awaited reveal shocked viewers, who learned that the show’s master manipulator was outsider Dan Humphrey, who was played by Penn Badgley — although the show’s writers considered unmasking Chace Crawford’s heartthrob Nate Archibald and Eric van der Woodsen (Connor Paolo), who was the younger brother of Blake Lively’s Serena, as the villain instead.
In a profile looking back at the wildly popular series 10 years after it premiered, showrunners Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage revealed to VF that Westwick, who was relatively unknown at the time, was their only choice for the role of the smooth Chuck Bass, although he originally auditioned to play Nate. According to VF, the network asked the show’s creators to have a backup for Westwick in case the U.K. native’s work visa didn’t come through, but they refused to consider the option.
Aside from his sharp one-liners and iconic romance with Leighton Meester’s Blair Waldorf, Chuck’s eclectic wardrobe choices had a profound impact on society, the show’s costume designer Eric Daman explained. “He had a very big influence on menswear and how men dress today, and on what getting dressed up means,” Daman said. “Menswear, at that point, was still very Jersey Shore. . . . I’m very proud we got to break through to the men and be like, ‘No, it’s O.K. to dress up. You’re not gonna look like some big pansy because you’re in a fucking suit, dude. Suck it up, put on the bow tie.’”
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