Watching The Filming of Gossip Girl

Two weeks ago while in New York, thanks to fave website OnLocationVacations – who I am now seriously thinking of naming my first born after 🙂 – I was able to watch the filming of Gossip Girl live and in person no less than THREE times!!!!! Yes, you read that right – THREE TIMES! For those not familiar with the site, OnLocationVacations features a “Daily Filming Locations” page that chronicles which productions are filming where all over the U.S. – most notably on the island of Manhattan. So, I, of course, checked that page pretty much immediately after I woke up every morning while on my New York vacation. And, as you can probably imagine, I just about died when on October 5th I read that my new fave show Gossip Girl would be filming in Central Park, just a few blocks away from the hotel where I was staying. So, I immediately dragged my fiancé, my best friend, Robin, his girlfriend, Stephanie, and his mother, who were all visiting from Switzerland at the time, out to the Conservatory Water, which is more commonly known as the Model Boat Pond, in Central Park to do some GG stalking! THANK YOU OnLocationVacations! 🙂 (On our way to the set, Stephanie and I spotted the above pictured Craft Services truck and were SO excited we just had to stop and snap a quick pic!) 🙂

Upon arriving at the Model Boat Pond, I, of course, struck up a conversation with a few crew members from the show who really could NOT have been nicer or more friendly. They chatted with me about where filming was taking place specifically and about who was on set at the time. The only cast member present when we showed up, though, was Taylor Momsen, who plays Jenny Humphrey, aka “Little J”, on the show. Taylor was very cute in person and much taller than I expected her to be, but, unfortunately, she also looked a bit under-the-weather. During breaks she pretty much just sat off to the side of the production and kept to herself. The next day, I heard that she actually collapsed from exhaustion a few hours after we left the set! Poor Taylor!

Also on set that morning was Air Bud actor Kevin Zegers who will be guest-starring as Little'”‘”‘s J.'”‘”‘s new love interest on several episodes of Gossip Girl this season. Because I didn'”‘”‘t recognize him, while we were there I asked around to see if any of the crew members could tell me who he was, but no one seemed to know. LOL One crew member told me that Kevin had starred in the Spiderman movies, but that information turned out to be incorrect. LOL It wasn'”‘”‘t until after I got home that fellow stalker Owen was able to identify him for me. Thank you, Owen! 🙂 Anyway, after watching the filming for about thirty minutes or so, my fiancé and best friend dragged me away from the set. 🙁 Needless to say, neither one of them is very much into filming locations. LOL

But have no fear, because later that afternoon, I, of course, dragged everyone back to Central Park to see if any of the other cast members had shown up. I was hoping most of all to see Ed Westwick (aka Chuck Bass) and Leighton Meester (aka Blair Waldorf) because, as I mentioned yesterday, they are my two favorite actors on the show. I so heart Chuck Bass!!!! So, as you can imagine, I literally almost fell over when I walked up to the set and saw my two faves standing hand in hand filming a scene! YAY! I could NOT have been more excited! And it seems that I’m not the only one who reads OnLocationVacations because there were at least two hundred fans and paparazzi standing around watching the filming when we arrived. 🙂

I cannot tell you how exciting it was to watch GG being filmed right before my very eyes!!!!! The scene being shot involved Chuck and Blair taking a leisurely stroll through Central Park just East of the Model Boat Pond.

We literally took close to 500 pictures while watching the filming that afternoon, so deciding which ones to post here proved to be rather difficult. LOL I wanted to post them ALL! But that probably would have crashed my entire blog, so I had to settle for a select few. 🙂

Leighton Meester is absolutely BEAUTIFUL in person – much prettier than she appears to be on TV – and MUCH taller than I had expected!! I thought she would be teeny tiny, but in person she looked to be about 5’6”.

But I have to say that seeing Chuck Bass in person was my favorite part of the day! 🙂 Like Leighton, Ed Westwick is also much better looking in person than he appears to be on TV, but what struck me the most about him was the fact that he makes the SAME EXACT facial expressions in real life that he does while acting as Chuck on the show. LOVE IT! Stephanie and I were cracking up the whole time while watching him because he is just so similar to his character.

In between takes Leighton and Ed hung out together on set and seemed to get along really, really well. They were laughing and joking together and appeared to really enjoy each other’s company. It was very cool to see.

And when she wasn’t chatting with Ed, Leighton was pretty much glued to her blackberry. A girl after my own heart, I swear! 🙂

Unfortunately, as you can see in the above photos, during most of the breaks from shooting a big guy in a red sweatshirt stood in front of Ed and Leighton blocking the paparazzi’s view of the two stars and making it rather difficult for me to take photos. 🙁

Because Chuck and Blair are my fave GG characters, I pretty much hit the jackpot with the filming I got to see. I felt really bad for Stephanie, though, as she was absolutely dying to see Serena (aka Blake Lively) in person. The closest we got to seeing her, though, was when her stand-in walked by (pictured above). And, let me tell you, it was absolutely uncanny how much her stand-in looked like her! Everyone started furiously snapping photos of her until she got close enough for us to realize that it wasn’t actually Blake Lively. LOL

The following morning, October 6th, I once again checked OnLocationVacations and was FLOORED to discover that GG was filming on location yet again – this time in SoHo. So, much to my fiancé and best friend’s chagrin, I once more dragged everyone out to the set to do some stalking. LOL This time actor Penn Badgley, who plays Dan Humphrey on the show, was shooting a scene by himself. And, for some incredibly odd reason, besides the ever-present paparazzi, we were the only stalkers on the set that day. And can I just say here that I so love the New York paparazzi!!! They are so incredibly friendly and so incredibly different from the L.A. paps, who always seem to have a chip on their shoulder. One photog that I struck up a conversation with told us exactly where to stand to get a good pic of Penn. And, sure enough, he was right! It wasn’t two minutes after we moved to where the photog had told us to stand that Penn walked RIGHT BY! 🙂

So, of course, I asked him if he would mind taking a quick photograph with us. Penn was SUPER nice and said that he had to film a really quick scene, but that he’d be happy to pose with us afterwards. You can see him filming the scene in the monitors pictured above.

So, while Penn filmed his brief scene, Stephanie and I waited off to the side and, as promised, just a few minutes later he walked by us once again. When he got close to us he stopped and said to his bodyguard, “Hold on a second, I promised these girls a picture.” How sweet is that!!!!! Sigh!!!!! So darn cool!

All in all it was an AMAZING experience being on the GG set. The cast and crew could NOT have been friendlier and I had an absolute blast being there! I highly recommend stalking the show if you ever have the opportunity!

A big THANK YOU goes out to OnLocationVacations without whom none of this would have been possible!!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Gossip Girl scenes with Taylor Momsen, Ed Westwick, and Leighton Meester were filmed on the East and West sides of the Conservatory Water, aka the Model Boat Pond, in Central Park near 74th Street and Fifth Avenue. The scene with Penn Badgley was filmed in SoHo at the corner of North Moore and Varick Streets.

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