Gossip Girl is coming back, y’all, and all I want to know is which originals will be making their return to the Upper East Side. Chace Crawford said he was down to revisit Nate Archibald’s story—who we last saw planning a run for mayor—when the GG reboot was just a little rumor. Now that it’s been confirmed, I checked back in with the actor to see if there are any plans to bring back the hottest blond on the UES (sorry, Serena).
“I haven’t heard anything official,” he tells me over the phone, while on location filming the second season of his new Amazon superhero series, The Boys (season 1 is available now). But he does have some thoughts about what could make this new version a success.
“I think they’re smart, to keep it going,” he says. Especially on a streaming service like HBOMax. Unlike a network series with 22 episodes, Chace thinks a shorter eight-episode run actually allows for a lot more freedom. “You can write with the ending in mind more...you can build more to the end.” Is that shade? It sounds like shade.
A lot of fans were thrown by the discovery that Dan “Lonely Boy” Humphrey was Gossip Girl the whole time. It just felt like the writers had no idea who their narrator really was after six seasons. What, did they throw some dice to decide when they realized they had to, you know, finish their series?
“I mean, don’t know," Chace laughs. “Was it controversial? I can’t remember what people have said about Dan.” Yea, man. It was.
“Me personally, I thought it was kind of funny,” Chace concedes. "I can’t speak for Penn, but I’m not even really sure what I think about it.” Go on. "It’s hard—on any show that has a good run and has a large, passionate fan base—to end it. You can never give it an ending that lives up to the expectation, right?” TBH, I can practically hear the guy sweating over the phone. “If I’m being honest, just knowing Penn at the time, we all thought it was kind of funny.”
Before I get the guy in trouble with the Gossip Girl powers that be, I ask him about his latest role on The Boys, a series that explores what would really happen if superheroes were a ~thing~. In this world, they’re celebrities more revered than the Kardashians and totally corrupt. Chace plays The Deep, a pseudo-Aquaman who would be a total heartthrob...if he weren’t such trash. (Warning: spoiler ahead.) In episode 1, he threatens the latest addition to The Seven (think Avengers or Justice League) that if she doesn’t give him a blow job, she’ll be kicked out of the group she’s wanted to join since she was a little girl. Yes, even superheroes get caught up in the #MeToo movement.
Chace did NOT sign on for this pivotal moment of the series. “I didn’t even know that scene was gonna be in there,” he says. In the comics the show is based on, Starlight’s (Erin Moriarty) “initiation” is much more violent and happens with different characters. “I was looking at the audition scenes, and the script was just really funny.” That doesn’t mean Chace wasn’t ready to dive into murkier waters (pardon the multiple puns). Especially when The Deep gets what’s coming to him in a future episode. “You can probably never redeem him, even with what happens in the finale, but that was a little bit of, how do you like it?” Wanna know what we’re talking about? Check out the show for yourself. You won’t regret it.
One thing Chace knows for sure: The Deep should never try to take on the real Aquaman. “He’s Dothraki, too, right? No, I could definitely not take him,” Chace says with a laugh. “My guy is little, and he doesn’t have a trident. I just got a couple little fins. I mean, maybe I can out swim him a little, you know?” Sorry, Chace. Probably not.
