Superrich Kids Get Trolled

The next-generation ‘Gossip Girl’ is more diverse, more self-aware, and far more lavishly produced.

- By Hunter Harris. Photograph by Landon Nordeman

It’s a rainy June afternoon, and most of the cast members of the new Gossip Girl are lining up to hit their cues for the Thanksgiving episode. It’s a classic Gossip Girl setup: a holiday designed to sow discord while supposedly being about gratitude. Zoya, played by Whitney Peak, the middle class (and therefore comparatively underprivileged) freshman scholarship student who just moved to town, has found herself improbably rising in the school’s social ranks, which are ruled by her half-sister, Julien, played by Jordan Alexander. Zoya answers a series of knocks on her rent-controlled Upper West Side apartment’s door to reveal, much to her surprise, a steady stream of friends and enemies, some at war with one another.

Eleven actors float in the door and out of frame in one continuous shot. A camera operator starts spinning a wheel and the lens whips around to catch the spoiled-kid spectacle:

“What are you doing here?” “I asked you first!” “Did you know Max was—” a semi-estranged high-school couple huff in unison when their friend, who’s also the third member of a recent threesome, saunters through the door. “If we hurry, Dad, we can still make the 5 p.m. seating at Le Bernardin!” Julien, dressed in a slinky-shimmery dress, sighs.