A mini Gossip Girl reunion
Stars of Gossip Girl Chace Crawford and Penn Badgley reunited on video chat this week for Variety's Actors on Actors.
Chace played Nate Archibald, while Penn played Dan Humphrey on the show from 2007 to 2012.
The pair talked about their time on the show together, re-watching old episodes and more.
Re-watching Gossip Girl
Penn asked his former co-star whether he had ever re-watched Gossip Girl.
Chace replied, "Buddy, you have to strap me to a gurney and pop my eyes open like Clockwork Orange."
"But no, it would be interesting to see the first couple maybe."
The YOU star admitted he watched it with his now wife, six months after they met.
He explained, "She had never seen it, and that’s the last time I can remember seeing an episode."
Penn admitted, "I remember even then, it has nothing to do with the show, but it was very hard to watch."
"These snapshots of yourself when you’re 20, 21, 22 years old."
"Who can enjoy that? Sometimes it’s just uncomfortable."
Chace agreed, "Yeah, of course. I don’t like really watching myself that much in general."
"So to go back and open that time capsule, I think there would be some nostalgic value."
"We’re doing that when you come to L.A. We’ll have a drink."
Social media
Penn insisted, "Dude, if we live-tweet a viewing of any episode of Gossip Girl, people would love that."
Chace reminisced on how they never had to worry about social media back then.
He recalled, "Remember, ’07 was when the very first iPhone came out. I remember you got it."
Chace continued, "I remember you had it at a Halloween party. You had the first iPhone, and think about that now."
"I remember we were more about camera phones and this and that."
"There wasn’t social media," he added.
Penn revealed, "Blake [Lively] got me that."
"I literally was like, “I don’t want this thing. It’s so cumbersome, and it has all these apps on it.”"
"But, man, I remember even meeting a publicist that first season, and she was talking about this thing called Twitter."
"... this thing called Twitter"
The Dan Humphrey star continued, "And as she explained Twitter, I was like, “What is this nonsense? I don’t want to have a Twitter account, and you tweet. What is this bird thing?”"
"That’s something that actually years later, I think we got to give credit to Gossip Girl."
Chace agreed, "It was ahead of its time. It really tapped into something interesting on the cusp of it all changing."
"I’m like, “Why would I want to put my life out there? I’m trying to crawl into my hermit shell, I’m a Cancer.”"
"But now we’re all partaking. It’s part of the business. I should follow you," he thought.
Watch Penn and Chace's full video chat here.
