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It’s been nearly a decade since the game-changing showGossip Girl first strutted ontotelevision. The addictive CW series, which followed the glamorous anddrama-filled lives of high schoolers on the Upper East Side of NYC, served as alaunching pad for some of today’s biggest talents in Hollywood, mostprominently: Blake Lively. On the cusp of the decennial, the now 30-year-oldbombshell reflected on the show with Vanity Fair, revealing that she had quit acting right before being cast.
Gossip Girl is celebrating its 10th anniversary Photo: Getty Images
“I realized that [acting] was a business as much as acraft,” she told the publication. “People will go see your movie basedon your standing and all of that, and it didn’t make sense to me because I was18 and being an artist.” Having deferred from college a yearearlier, Blake then made the big decision to get out of Hollywood and into aschool setting.
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In 2007 the actress had already begun to carve out a name for herselfwith her role in the 2005 film The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. When creators Josh Schwartz and StephanieSavage started to cast the hit CW show, they scoured online message boards (thiswas pre-social media), where fans of the Gossip Girl book series hadalready pinned Blake as the perfect Serena van der Woodsen for the TV adaptation.
Blake and Leighton grew up on set of the hit show Photo: WireImage
“We didn’t see alot of other girls for Serena,” Josh revealed. “She has to be somebody that youbelieve would be sitting in the front row at Fashion Week eventually.” However,the sun-kissed talent was not completely sold on the idea of joining. “I said,‘No, I want to go to college. Thank you, though,’” Blake recalled.
“Then they said,‘O.K., you can go to Columbia [University] one day a week. After the first year[of the show], it’ll quiet down. Your life will go back to normal and you canstart going to school. We can’t put it in writing, but we promise you can go.’So that’s why I said, ‘O.K. You know what? I’ll do this.’”
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When asked if that sweetarrangement ended up working out, Ryan Reynolds’ wife laughed, saying: “This isadvice to anyone: when they say, ‘We promise, but we can’t put it in writing,’there’s a reason they can’t put it in writing.” She added, “But no, the showdidn’t slow down. It just got more and more.”