{"id":2288602,"date":"2026-02-19T05:06:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T05:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2288602"},"modified":"2026-02-19T05:06:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T05:06:14","slug":"gossip-girls-penn-badgley-leighton-meester-on-characters-ending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/gossip-girls-penn-badgley-leighton-meester-on-characters-ending\/","title":{"rendered":"Gossip Girl&#8217;s Penn Badgley, Leighton Meester on Characters Ending"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"adp-vgallery-title\">\n<h2\/>\n<p>These Celebs Were in the Running to Play Young Lily Van der Woodsen<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"segment-text-only\">\n<p>Gossip Girl casting director <strong>David Rapaport<\/strong> dished to Jessica about the Gossip Girl spinoff centered on Serena&#8217;s mom, Lily van der Woodsen (<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/1408052\/gossip-girls-kelly-rutherford-shares-update-on-life-in-monaco-after-years-long-custody-battle\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Kelly Rutherford<\/strong><\/a>), with a pilot that starred <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/brittany_snow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Brittany Snow<\/strong> <\/a>and <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/krysten_ritter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Krysten Ritter<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I remember for that <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/dakota_johnson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Dakota Johnson<\/strong><\/a> came in and <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/rooney_mara\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Rooney Mara<\/strong><\/a>, and a lot of other women who are now kind of big names but at the time didn&#8217;t have that kind of stature,&#8221; he recalled on\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/4RRlgGFwhpsOdelb2O1Q6a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">XOXO<\/a>.\u00a0&#8220;And you know who did the best read for that? I&#8217;ll tell you, because I think you&#8217;re friends with <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/nina_dobrev\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Nina Dobrev<\/strong><\/a>, that was one of the best auditions I had ever seen, and for that role specifically.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>David said he called the network and told them, &#8220;She is a super star.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The issue, however, as he recalled on the podcast was that &#8220;she does not look like Kelly Rutherford, because she was supposed to be a young Kelly Rutherford.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Still, she stressed to the network that they needed to keep the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/degrassi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Degrassi: The Next Generation<\/a> star on their radar, &#8220;&#8216;and you guys need to find something for her,'&#8221; he recalled. &#8220;I just remember thinking, &#8216;I am going to think about this girl in a couple of years and be like, &#8216;Oh god, I missed that opportunity.&#8217; She was so incredible!&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.eonline.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These Celebs Were in the Running to Play Young Lily Van der Woodsen Gossip Girl casting director David Rapaport dished to Jessica about the Gossip Girl spinoff centered on Serena&#8217;s mom, Lily van der Woodsen (Kelly Rutherford), with a pilot that starred Brittany Snow and Krysten Ritter. &#8220;I remember for that Dakota Johnson came in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2288603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2288602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Gossip-Girls-Penn-Badgley-Leighton-Meester-on-Characters-Ending.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2288602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2288604,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288602\/revisions\/2288604"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2288603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2288602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2288602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2288602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}