‘Gossip Girl’: Is Leighton Meester and Blake Lively’s Starkly Different Upbringings the Reason They Didn’t Get Along?
Not every onscreen relationship translates into real life. The same is true for onscreen best friends. Since Gossip Girl started, there have been rumors that Blake Lively and Leighton Meester did no get along while on set. But when you look at the starkly different upbringings of the two women, the clash of personalities might make a little more sense.
Leighton Meester’s childhood before ‘Gossip Girl’
Though Meester is a big star now, her life started out quite rough. When she was born, her mom, Constance, was serving a prison sentence for helping Meester’s father, Doug, smuggle marijuana out of Jamaica. Constance was moved to a hospital to give birth and was allowed to stay with Meester for a few months in a halfway house before going back to prison. Meester stayed in the custody of her godmother until her mother got out of prison.
When Meester’s mom got out of prison, their struggles didn’t end. After her parents separated, Meester began booking modeling jobs, which prompted her family to move to New York. Though she was booking jobs, her family struggled to make ends meet in the city. As Meester rose in fame, she began sending money to her mother to care for her brother.
Blake Lively’s upbringing
Lively’s upbringing was very different. She grew up in Los Angeles in a showbiz family. Ernie Lively, her father, was an actor and a director and her mother, Elaine, was a talent scout. Growing up, she went to the acting classes that her parents taught. As she got older, her older brother asked his agent to get her a few auditions. She landed the role of Bridget in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants when she was in high school. From there, her career took off.
Blake Lively and Leighton Meester had very different personalities
Whether their upbringings played a part in it or not, Meester and Lively are just two very different people.
“Blake is very much in the moment,” Gossip Girl creator Joshua Safran once told Vanity Fair. “Blake knows what’s happening. She knows this movie’s coming out, this band is happening. Leighton [on the other hand] was very removed and very quiet, and, after her scenes were done, she would wander the stage. I had this image of her just in these gorgeous dresses with a book in her hand, sort of a little bit out of focus out in the corners.”
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Their personalities did not really leave room for a close relationship.
“Blake and Leighton were not friends,” Safran continued. “They were friendly, but they were not friends like Serena and Blair. Yet the second they’d be on set together, it’s as if they were.”
Though the two were never close, multiple Gossip Girl cast members and Safran have said that the women were cordial to one another. There was no big feud like some rumors initially suggested. Lively and Meester just simply weren’t each other’s cups of tea.
