Gossip Girl was the it-series of the 2000s. Serena, Blair, Dan, Chuck, and Nate were icons of the time. According to the Parents Television Council, a group ensuring that indecent images aren’t broadcast in the United States, the series was “every parent’s nightmare”. This was also the case for Leighton Meester (Blair) and Penn Badgley (Dan).
Gossip Girl shows the life of wealthy Upper East Siders in New York, with teenagers acting like adults. This part of the show embarrassed Leighton Meester, who played Blair Waldorf. She found it very odd that the sex life of 16-year-olds was so depraved and out there.
Meester admitted this in Penn Badgley’s podcast, Podcrushed. “I was 20 at the time, I was shooting scenes not only of sex, but also of sexual fantasies. And in a bed with someone. We were 20. So in the eyes of those watching, and especially 16-year-old girls, I was playing a 16-year-old teenager. They thought that was what a 16-year-old teenager should look like. They were watching a 16-year-old girl having sex and wearing lingerie, and showing off her body… when in reality, she wasn’t a 16-year-old girl. She was a 20-year-old girl.”
Penn Badgley added, “If we had young people of 15 or 16 years in these series and films for teenagers, we would all be shocked. It would not be neither funny nor sexy.”
The two actors weren’t the only ones to raise eyebrows in Gossip Girl. Blake Lively, who played Serena Van der Woodsen, told Allure in 2015 that she was not super proud to play a 16-year-old girl who did cocaine, overdosed, and slept with her best friend’s boyfriend. Chase Crawford, aka Nate Archibald, explained that he lost his dignity “somewhere between season two and season three.”
Even if the show was on the scandalous side, it made for great television.
