Leighton Meester Reveals Which Gossip Girl Co-Stars She Still Talks To

Leighton Meester opened up about her friendships with her Gossip Girl castmates during an Oct. 30 episode of The World’s First Podcast. According to the actor, she still talks to “quite a few people” from the hit show, which aired from 2007 to 2012. But when she got into specifics, Meester did not mention any of her fellow main cast members.

“Yeah, I keep in touch with quite a few people. There’s a couple people that I’m still very close with,” she told co-hosts Sarah and Erin Foster (the creator of Nobody Wants This). When Erin asked for details, Meester gave a surprising answer. “Amanda Setton is her name. She was on the show, and she lives here in LA,” she said. “And I just love her, and she’s a very, very dear friend.”

Setton played one of Blair’s minions, Penelope Shafai, on the series. “She played one of the girls… actually [I’m friendly with] three of the people who played ... my underlings,” Meester explained. “They’re like minions kind of. These women in particular, we were just always together.”

Meester named one other good friend from the hit series. “Zuzanna [Szadkowski] who played Dorota who’s the maid. She’s such a dear friend.”

“I’ll see other people from time to time, but not as regularly,” Meester added. Erin replied, “But not everybody,” which made Meester laugh.

Meester notably left a few people out of her list of Gossip Girl friends — Blake Lively (who played Serena van der Woodsen), Ed Westwick (who played Chuck Bass), Chace Crawford (who played Nate Archibald), and Penn Badgley (who played Dan Humphrey).

In 2017, Joshua Safran, who worked as a writer on the series, told Vanity Fair about how the real-life Blair and Serena acted off-camera. According to him, they weren’t close. “Blake and Leighton were not friends. 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,” he told the outlet in honor of the show’s tenth anniversary.

“Blake is very much in the moment. Blake knows what’s happening. She knows this movie’s coming out, this band is happening. You talk to Blake on a very contemporary level, and she would be like, ‘I’m doing this thing tonight. Have you been to this restaurant?’” he explained. “Leighton was very removed and very quiet, and, after her scenes were done, she would wander the stage.”