There’s a long, hyperbolic profile focusing on the ten year anniversary of Gossip Girl in Vanity Fair today, and the whole piece makes it sound as if the show, which never got stellar ratings anyway, was one of the greatest television shows of all time. Or, rather, that Blake Lively is one of the greatest actresses of all time, as the article is largely about how fantastic she is (which makes sense since she clearly gave the longest interview for the piece out of her cast members.)
Here are just a few breathless quotes from show-runners and producers about Lively and Serena van der Woodsen’s impact:
“A lot of magazines would call and want to do interviews on how you get the ‘Serena look.’ . . . It was like ‘the Rachel look.’”
“When we first started talking to Blake, it was like, in order for this show to work and for you to be the ultimate New Yorker, you’re going to have to host Saturday Night Live and be in a Woody Allen movie.” “And be on the cover of Rolling Stone,” [Stephanie] Savage added. (Lively has by now checked all three of these achievements off her list.)
“Blake is very much in the moment. Blake knows what’s happening...Leighton was very removed and very quiet, and, after her scenes were done, she would wander the stage.”
“We learned a lot from Blake,” [Joshua] Safran said. “When I think about shooting the L.A. episodes, Blake was dating [DiCaprio] at the time, and she had this thing where she had a doll that she took photos of that she sent to Leo. Blake was way ahead of the curve. It was pre-Instagram. She was documenting her life in photographs in a way that people were not yet doing.”
Excuse me, what? Blake Lively had a doll that she would send pictures of to Leonardo DiCaprio when they dated for just a few months in 2011? And she basically invented Instagram while doing so? I’m speechless!
Okay but back to this doll. Even though I’d be god damn delighted to learn Lively carries around some porcelain, Victorian doll that scared everyone on set to death, my personal theory is more boring. Green Lantern came out in 2011, the same time Lively and DiCaprio were dating, and during that time Lively received a Barbie doll based on her character Carol Ferris.
“We went to WonderCon to show our first ten minutes of footage and I saw a Barbie sitting there with my face and with my mole!” Lively told press about the doll. “That was a huge, huge deal for me. I never thought I would be an actor, much less have my own Barbie!”
I think she probably sent pictures to Leo of this Barbie. What pictures? Who knows! Maybe sometime during filming she trapped Leighton Meester’s spirit into the body of this Barbie and her former co-star has been trying to scream out for help ever since.
I reached out to Blake Lively’s publicist to give me more information about the doll and will update this post if they respond.