The presence of English-born Ed Westwick at the TV Press Tour indicates one thing for “Gossip Girl” fans: Chuck Bass is alive.
The heir was last seen bleeding on a French alleyway in the season finale. But for the new season, he and some other show stars are all spending time in Paris, where the crowds of rampaging fans were as wild as they are back in New York City, he says.
“It was pretty crazy; they were parked outside our hotel most days,” Westwick says. But that was OK. “I was holed up watching the remaining games of the World Cup semifinals from the comfort of my hotel.”While in Paris, “Gossip Girl” producer Stephanie Savage says, “We were the first people who ever shot inside the Musée d’Orsay. You saw Blair standing in front of the real Le Dejeuner Sur l’Herbe. We shot in front of the Eiffel Tower. We shot on Avenue Montaigne. We shot at the Gare du Nord.”
“I’m happy to say that was mainly Blake and Leighton that got to shoot at those locations,” Westwick says, referring to his costars Blake Lively and Leighton Meester. “I didn’t get the train station, but I did get the oldest market in Paris which was quite quaint.”
“Gossip Girl” runs in France but at an odd timeslot — Sunday afternoons, two years late. And parts of it are changed. The narrator, says Savage “says, ‘bisou bisou’ instead of XOXO.”
What else is to come to “Gossip Girl” this season?
“We’re doing Fashion’s Night Out, an event that we’re doing in the third episode. We are sort of dealing with that in multiple episodes, the planning of it, the people that are involved with it on the New York side, which is a really fun, great event in New York City that happens in September that our characters of our world can really fit in.”
Vogue magazine is cooperating and Diane von Furstenberg is popping up in the episode.
“Katie Cassidy has a big, nice, juicy arc this season that I think is going to be a lot of fun and raise a lot of trouble, “ show creator Josh Schwartz says. “Which is always good: To have a character who can come in and turn everybody on their heads and stir the pot.”
Another guest, Clemence Poesy, is on board this season. “I was just actually absolutely blown away by Clemence,” Westwick says. “I think she’s absolutely fantastic. I had to, like, catch myself in moments in the scene and remember how much you’re supposed to be acting. She was really, really great, so, you know, an absolute great dynamic to bring to the team.”
What happens in Paris, though, “will echo through the whole season,” Schwartz says. “It sets in motion the entire season.”
Also: “You will be seeing more of Georgina Sparks in more ways than one.”
Of Taylor Momsen’s character, Jennie, Savage says “We want to keep it a little bit up in the air. Obviously, her character left at the end of last season in a fairly dramatic fashion, and it felt kind of anticlimactic to just have her appear at the beginning of this season as if all of that didn’t happen. So we’re excited about being able to create some tension while she’s not in the show and bring her back with as much drama as possible at the right moment.”
It will likely be in the first half of the season, she says.
The “Gossip Girl” site itself will get a facelift as well. After years of predicting the era of celebrity-blogging sites, “we felt like this year, some of the things that we were doing on our show felt like they had actually fallen a little behind the times versus leading the times,” Savage says. “So we made some changes this year to just get back ahead of that curve.”
She did not elaborate.
As far as the direction of the serialized show, “we definitely have ideas about where we want things to end,” Savage says. “We have some definite end-game story ideas in mind for the characters.” “We know what the island is,” Schwartz says. “Manhattan.”
After four seasons, Westwick says, “We’re having a good time still. Everyone is enjoying themselves, and I’m enjoying my work with the character, and I get to kind of now to – where with this interesting position of the character’s in after being shot and left for dead and his whole world crumbling down around him, to now decide on whether or not he really wants to be Chuck Bass, you know. It’s pretty — you know, it never ceases to surprise me and amaze me.”