“When we first started filming, people would walk by and ask, ‘What are you filming?’,” Leighton Meester, who played Blair, told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012. “Once we aired [in 2007], the whole mania started.”
It wasn’t long before Gossip Girl’s New York City sets were mobbed with fans trying to get a glimpse of their favorite characters. “We were shooting on the Upper East Side one afternoon and must have been outside three all-girl schools. Within an hour, ten girls multiplied to 300. I mean, we weren’t the Beatles,” Chace Crawford, who played Nate, added. “Ed [Westwick, who played Chuck] and I were crossing Park Avenue and had a ring of girls around us. We got stuck on the median and our make-up people had to fight them off. They were getting their hair pulled and had to throw elbows to get us through.”
