Gossip Girl is back, baby. Kristen Bell reprises her role in this new HBO Max iteration as the narrator and mysterious blogger who spills secrets about wealthy teens in New York’s upper crust. But while the rest of the cast consists of a bunch of fresh-faced acting talent, Bell isn’t the only returning player. Joshua Safran, who wrote and executive produced the original series when it aired on The CW, is the showrunner of what’s being described as an “extension of the pop culture classic.” And Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who developed and ran the original series, are on board as executive producers.

Take a look at the teaser trailer below.

Gossip Girl Teaser

I was interning at a local television news station in 2007 when Gossip Girl debuted, so I managed to see an early cut of the pilot before it aired on The CW. Unfortunately, that’s as far as my relationship goes with this franchise – but it helped usher in a new era for The CW and helped launch the careers of people like Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley, and more.

According to Safran, this new version of the show is set in the same world as the original series, leaving the door open to reference (and maybe even see the potential return of) familiar characters. The big distinction here is that this iteration stars an entirely different (and far less white) ensemble of young actors, taking audiences back to the Upper East Side and “finding a new generation of New York private school teens being introduced to social surveillance nine years after the original blogger’s website went dark.”

The new show plans to explore “just how much social media – and the landscape of New York itself – has changed in the intervening years.” And while I’m sure the show will have time to get into plenty of specifics that call back to the original series, this is a pretty evergreen concept. There will always be a new generation of teenagers who want to watch insanely hot, incredibly rich people behave badly and get caught up in ludicrous drama against the backdrop of a high society setting.

Jordan Alexander, Eli Brown, Thomas Doherty, Tavi Gevinson, Emily Alyn Lind, Evan Mock, Zion Moreno, Whitney Peak and Savannah Lee Smith are set to star in the series.

Gossip Girl will premiere on HBO Max on July 8, 2021.

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