'Gossip Girl' Showrunner Teases 'Bigger, Meaner, Funnier' Season 2, More Like the Original

Gossip Girl showrunner Joshua Safran teases the new season of the series, which just premiered on HBO Max TODAY (December 1).

Words he used to describe the new episodes include “bigger, faster, meaner, funnier,” which, if you’ve seen the two episodes released, is very prevalent! (Don’t worry, no spoilers here, yet…)

Find out what he said inside…

“I always knew that if we got to a season two, the characters themselves, now that they have been manipulated by Gossip Girl for a full season, would start to play into Gossip Girl’s hand,” Joshua, who worked on the OG series, told Teen Vogue. “That would be the place for us to go back to doing that stuff that the first show did so well because we would’ve, A) established ourselves as our own entity, but, B) if you’re a group of teenagers and Gossip Girl is screwing with you, it took a while for Blair and Serena even to fall into… they weren’t pushing each other into the Seine or into fountains early. That was because Gossip Girl’s influence gets to you so much that it amps you up, and that’s season two … There are catfights, and people get pushed into a fountain.”

Did you see these photos of the cast at the premiere the night before the season debuted?

“If people didn’t finish the first season or for some reason want a vibe that’s more reminiscent of the original, it’s definitely there [in season 2],” he added. “It really is bigger, faster, meaner, funnier. One of my favorite episodes of the first version is ‘New Haven Can Wait,’ where they all go on college tours. We can’t do college tours yet because that’s not the age of these characters, but what we did do was an episode away [where] they go to the Hamptons but in the off-season, and that’s very fun. There’s a debutante ball. There’s a lot of things that echo the original in fun ways that we get to play off of.”

You can follow each of the main characters on Instagram. Find out their handles!

Another character and actress from the original Gossip Girl series is set to return this season!