Leighton Meester finds it amusing that people are surprised to discover she is not a bitch.
Most people think she is like her character, Blair on Gossip Girl. “She’s not the girl next door and she’s not the run-of-the-mill bitch either,” Meester says. She’s a good girl really. It’s really fun to play because she says and does things that most people don’t have the courage to do in real life. It’s pretty funny how many people say they are surprised that I am not a total bitch.”
Meester says some of the show’s biggest fans are the very teenagers they are representing on the show. Students from New York’s Upper East Side often come to watch the show being filmed on location.
Meester says she wanted to be part of Gossip Girl because it meant working with Schwartz and Savage. “I didn’t really watch The O.C., but I knew what a great job they did with it,” she says. “I really connected with them as people. This show is kind of universal.”
Meester says she decided to be an actor when she was aged 10. Though she is not from a family of actors, Meester says her parents supported her career choice and she soon found work in Law & Order, House and CSI: Miami. “It’s funny . . . actors seem to always know what they want to be,” she says.
“You ask people when they’ve just finished college what they want to do and they have no idea, and sometimes they never know. But actors seem to know at an early age. I was lucky that I had such supportive parents.”
Meester is also a singer and hopes to release an album.