How HBO Max's Gossip Girl Reboot Is Fixing the Shortcomings of the Original

For starters, there seems to be a big "twist" with how Gossip Girl is portrayed on this instalment of the series. But, unfortunately, that's really all we have to go on. In the original, Gossip Girl was a blogger, but in the reboot, Gossip Girl becomes "more like an all-encompassing social media platform." Showrunner Josh Safran further teased the twist telling Cosmo, "My hope is that we make it to airing and people don't know. I would love to see that conversation happen in the context of people having seen it as opposed to talking about something they haven't seen."

Part of the intrigue of the original was just how far from reality everything seemed. From the characters to the storylines, everything was heightened, especially when it came to the privilege surrounding the Upper East Side. While Cosmo promises the reboot will still have that same dramatic effect, it will be tackling class in a different way. "Part of the fun of watching the old one at the time was, Oh, this is what it's like to be a very privileged teenager who can act with impunity, and living vicariously through that," Tavi Gevinson told the publication. "But with this show, class resentment is a much more explicit part of it, which I'm very in tune with."

As Safran previously teased, the series will feature a more inclusive cast than the original, including more nonwhite leads and LGBTQ+ characters. "Representation is everything," Whitney Peak further emphasised in Cosmo's cover story. "I want all the hers and the hes and the theys and the people of colour from all over the world to be able to watch the show and think, That's a person who looks like me. I don't have to be the stereotypical idea of who I am."

Savannah Smith echoed that same sentiment, adding, "It's really important for a Black girl, with twists in her hair, to be able to see someone in a position of power who looks like her. And it's also important for kids in the suburbs or kids who don't have a lot of Black friends or friends of colour just to generally see us depicted in different ways. I think this could really change things. Maybe they're not learning these things at home, but they're seeing them on Gossip Girl. How amazing is that?"