The Untold Truth Of Gossip Girl

For years, the CW teen drama series Gossip Girl captured the hearts and minds of the American zeitgeist. Its cast also dominated the tabloids. From on-set feuds to bizarre custody battles, we're revealing the shocking untold truths of one of the most gossiped-about shows in recent memory. As Gossip Girl herself would say, XOXO. For years, the CW teen drama series Gossip Girl captured the hearts and minds of the American zeitgeist. Its cast also dominated the tabloids. From on-set feuds to bizarre custody battles, we're revealing the shocking, untold truths of one of the most gossiped-about shows in recent memory. As Gossip Girl herself would say, XOXO.

In September 2010, actress Taylor Momsen — who played youngster Jenny Humphries — was accused by guest star and Project Runway mentor Tim Gunn of being difficult to work with on set. "What a diva!" Gunn said of Momsen in a scathing interview with E! Online. "She was pathetic, she couldn't remember her lines, and she didn't even have that many. I thought to myself, 'Why are we all being held hostage by this brat?'"

Well, apparently, the hostage crisis didn't last. About two months after Gunn blew the lid on Momsen's alleged on-set behavior, Deadline reported that Momsen had been put on "indefinite hiatus." Us Weekly later confirmed that Momsen had officially left the show, although she did return for its much-anticipated series finale in 2012. She's since quit acting all together to focus on her music career, according to an interview she gave to ELLE magazine.

If reports from some gossip magazines are true, Blake Lively and Leighton Meester's friendship was about as tense as the one between their characters, Serena van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf. In 2010, sources for The National Enquirer (via Wetpaint) claimed that Lively and Meester's relationship had taken a turn for the worse, further fueling rumors that the two flat-out hated each other. "Leighton thinks Blake is an egomaniac who views her time on the TV set as slumming," sources said. "And Blake feels stifled. She's just ignoring her co-star because she knows bigger things are in store."

But perhaps the craziest part about the report came from Lively's publicist, who pretty much seemed to confirm the story was true in a blistering statement. "Blake and Leighton have never been best friends and never professed to be," Lively's rep is quoted as saying by Wetpaint. "Blake goes to work, does her job, and goes home." Yowch.

Curiously enough, Lively denied the two ever feuded during a Twitter Q&A session for her now-defunct lifestyle brand, Preserve. "Oh boy," Lively reportedly wrote after a fan asked if she and Meester hated each other. "The press always tries to pit women against each other. Don't fall for it. We should be celebrating women's bonds."

Blake Lively and Penn Badgley split in October 2010 after about three years of dating. After the news broke, all eyes turned to the set of Gossip Girl as people began to wonder: how the heck would two actors who just broke up with each other continue to act romantic on screen?

A few days later, the press got its answer. Lively and Badgley were seen hugging and smiling as they returned to set, showing no signs that a breakup had even happened. "We were consummately professional," Badgley later said during a 2015 episode of Bravo's Watch What Happens Live (via Us Weekly). "And I think we should both pat ourselves on the back for getting through it ... We handled it."

"We were very much caught up in the show, which itself was a six-year endurance test," Badgley previously told Yahoo!. "Our relationship was a part of that and helped us through it. I mean, like anything valuable, it was good and it was bad and it was a learning experience."

Lively went on to date Leonardo DiCaprio before marrying her Green Lantern co-star Ryan Reynolds. Badgley is reportedly dating Domino Kirke, the sister of Girls star Jemima Kirke.

The on-again, off-again relationship between Ed Westwick and Jessica Szohr — who played Chuck Bass and Vanessa Abrams, respectively — played out much like a storyline on Gossip Girl. The couple, who began dating in 2008, reportedly split in April 2010 amid rumors that Szohr had cheated on Westwick with one of Westwick's best friends. A few months later, they were spotted looking like a couple again at Lollapalooza in Chicago.

Things only got more confusing from there. In 2012, Westwick loosely told Wetpaint he was single and still looking for a girlfriend. Then, the following year, Westwick and Szohr were spotted hanging out together on at least two separate occasions in Los Angeles, fueling rumors that they were indeed back together again. Those rumors have since died off. In 2015, Us Weekly reported that Szohr was dating an ex of actress Hayden Panettiere.

In other words: yes, our heads hurt, too.

Leighton Meester was the subject of her own gossip scandal in 2009 after TMZ reported that a sex tape featuring the young actress and her then-boyfriend was being shopped around. The story lingered around for a few months before Meester squashed the rumors for good. "The tape is not real," she told Harper's Bazaar in August that year. "So it makes me sort of sad. It's unfortunate that it got carried as far as it did." "I definitely understand the nature of people better now and that the mere allegation of something like that could be headline news," she continued. "People think it's real because somebody says it is."

The custody battle between Kelly Rutherford — aka Serena's mom, Lily van der Woodsen — and her ex-husband Daniel Giersch played out with more dramatic twists and turns than a trashy movie that plays on Lifetime at 3 a.m.

According to Vanity Fair, the couple began divorce proceedings in December 2008 after two years of marriage and while Rutherford was pregnant with the couple's second child. What followed was about six years' worth of a nasty, at times shocking, custody battle that included everything from lawsuit to private detectives and, at one truly bizarre point, accusations of kidnapping.

The case finally settled in December 2015 when a judge in Monaco granted Giersch full custody of their two children and ruled that Rutherford could only visit them in France and Monaco, according to People magazine. At the time, a lawyer interviewed by People magazine — who was not involved in the case — alleged that the Monaco court's ruling was likely fueled by an incident that August in which Rutherford refused to return her children to Monaco, where they had been living since 2012 under court order. Like we said, the whole thing was insane.

From pretty much the moment Gossip Girl became a tabloid sensation, co-star Chace Crawford has battled rumors in the press alleging that he is gay. Despite dating a number of high-profile female celebrities, Crawford has been accused of being with everyone from Westwick to his good friend and former 'N Sync member JC Chasez, both of which were adamantly denied. Speculation over Crawford's sexuality sprouted up again in 2012 after some outlets wondered if The New York Observer outed Crawford as gay in a piece on celebrities' struggle to keep their sexuality a secret in Hollywood.

In separate interviews over the years, both Crawford and Lively have given quotes to magazines suggesting they may not think all that highly of Gossip Girl's quality. In October 2012, Crawford quipped to Us Weekly that he had lost his dignity while filming the popular series. "My dignity is somewhere on set," he said. "I think it happened around season two. Leading into season three, it was all out the window."

A few years later, Lively spoke to Allure magazine (via E! Online), during which she confessed, "People loved [Gossip Girl], but it always felt a little personally compromising — you want to be putting a better message out there." Yeah — not great.