Do you remember where you were the day you discovered Dan Humphrey was really Gossip Girl all along? We do. We were sitting in front of our television, open-mouthed, unable to believe that 'lonely boy' was picked to be the scandalous author on the Netflix show.
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According to the show's executive producer, Joshua Safran, this was never actually meant to be the plan. Not at all surprised? Neither are we. But who was Gossip Girl actually intended to be in the first place? Find out here...
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Chatting at the Vulture Festival, Joshua revealed that they had two options for the true identity of the website author who kept our favourite characters on their toes, and their first choice was Serena's younger brother, Eric van der Woodsen.
Speaking via BuzzFeed, he said: "Dan was not my intended Gossip Girl. We worked hard to kind of lay in tiny seeds about it being Eric." However, they ultimately decided against it after an article in the New York Post correctly guessed his identity.
Eric was originally meant to be Gossip Girl
He continued: "We were like, 'We gotta scratch that.' Nate never sent in a tip-in through all of those episodes, which is when we’re like, 'Oh, well then he’s Gossip Girl.'"
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However, Joshua admitted that even he was surprised by the final result being Dan after he left the show in its penultimate season. He said: "I like to joke that Dan was Gossip Girl because I had left the show by then. But, I understand why Dan was Gossip Girl. I just had my heart set on Nate."
The show's producers changed it to Nate before it was eventually revealed to be Dan
Penn Badgley, who plays Dan, admitted that he was surprised by the reveal during the HuffPost Live back in 2013. He said: "I was very surprised. We were all surprised. I didn't know. I didn't find out until just before we shot the last episode.
"It technically doesn't make sense for anyone to be Gossip Girl. I would have loved it if there had been a million flashes of every time he had looked at his cell phone and was like receiving some blast from Gossip Girl and being blown away from it."
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