Between 2007 and 2012, a TV show called Gossip Girl was top of the must watch list for teenage girls and young women in their early twenties everywhere.
Based on the series of books by Cecily von Ziegesar, the show was narrated by an anonymous blogger known as Gossip Girl. Her snarky, witty, and often sarcastic delivery style caught the imaginations of fans, and one of the show’s biggest unanswered questions was: Who is Gossip Girl? This is something the characters tried to figure out, actively reacting to the blog posts about them.
This naturally led to another question from fans: Who is the voice of Gossip Girl?
Despite being named in the end credits, the fact that the actor voicing the narrator was not named in the opening credits left many people wondering.
Well, the answer is…. Kristen Bell.
That’s right, the actress famous for playing Veronica Mars who is now better known for her role in The Good Place.
How Kristen Bell Got the Job
Kristen Bell has talked about this subject in interviews.
She had been playing Veronica Mars since 2004, but the show had just been cancelled by the network at the same time Gossip Girl was being green lit to start production.
Bell had read the script and loved it, but she knew she was slightly too old to play any of the characters. So she had another idea as to how to get involved.
@vanityfair No notes. #KristenBell reveals how she became #GossipGirl‘s iconic narrator. #nobodywantsthis #forgettingsarahmarshall #veronicamars. #frozen #thegoodplace ♬ original sound – Vanity Fair
She called the network and played on the fact that they had just cancelled her show, Veronica Mars! It was a bold move but it paid off, because they let her try for it and she was almost instantly cast.
When it came to recording the dialogue, she went in with her initial idea to be sassy and catty and didn’t receive a single performance note. She spent 121 episodes recording the voice without ever being given direction.
XOXO, Gossip Girl
The narrator’s famous sign off, “XOXO, Gossip Girl”, became iconic during the height of the show’s success.
However, it was the delivery that people really connected with.
Gossip Girl was a show about the lives of privileged high school students on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. It was full of glamorous settings, dramatic relationships, even more dramatic betrayals, and high-end fashion, so it was a cultural perfect fit for the late 2000s.
The character’s scandals were exposed by the anonymous Gossip Girl via their blog, hence the title of the show. We hear Gossip Girl, but we never see her, and this allowed Kristen Bell to deliver the voice over in a gossipy, confident and almost conspiratorial way. The audience felt as though she was speaking to them and them only, inviting them in to her world and trusting them with big secrets.
People were so taken with the narration that they would even use her phrase, XOXO Gossip Girl in conversations. It was a cultural touchstone, shorthand for something a little bit mischievous. You might tell someone a naughty secret and they may reply “Oh my God. XOXO Gossip Girl!”
It still happens to this day with people of a certain age, although less so.
Character Reveal and Reboot
At the end of the original show, which lasted from 2007-2012, the producers decided to reveal the true identity of Gossip Girl.
And guess what? It was a MAN.
It was one of the main characters, Dan Humphrey (played by Penn Badgley). He had been writing a blog revealing the secrets of Manhattan’s elite pretending to be a woman.
This was quite the plot twist, especially considering how much everyone loved Kristen Bell’s work voicing the character. It was met with mixed reactions from fans.
Bell went on record saying she thought it was a “fun twist”, but some fans felt it didn’t fit or came out of nowhere. Some thought it worked, underlining the show’s themes of secrets and lies.
Kristen Bell also voiced Gossip Girl in the 2021 reboot. This time though, the show was very different.
The bloggers were a group of teachers attempting to control and manipulate the social dynamics of their elite students. It had much darker undertones and didn’t work as well as the original, ending after just 2 seasons.