You probably saw beautiful, tall, blonde Blake Lively in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and she's shooting the sequel but, this Fall, starting Sept. 19th on The CW you can catch Blake as sultry Serena van der Woodsen in the teen-aimed series "Gossip Girl" based upon the popular novels about prep school teens in New York City.
Blake was born in Burbank, Ca. and moving to New York to play a Manhattan socialite is thrilling and all new to her!
We chatted with the actress recently in Beverly Hills to learn all about "Gossip Girl", the next "Sisterhood" and as much personal info as possible! She was wearing a great dress and heels and was accompanied by her new tiny puppy Penny, a chocolate Maltese Poodle who will be moving to New York with her. Let's dish...
TeenHollywood: There's a lot of gossip out there.
Blake: There is a lot of gossip out there, true.
TeenHollywood: So, how did you get the part of Serena van der Woodsen?
Blake: Josh Schwartz [series creator/producer] called me about it. I think when I first did 'Sisterhood', a lot of the fans of the 'Gossip Girl' series had seen me in the trailer and I don't know, maybe because I had long, blonde hair, I don't know what it was but they were blogging and they were like, 'She has to be Serena.' And I think that he saw that and he called me and said, 'I saw this a few months ago and I wrote the show for you. You have to do this. I will not do this with anyone else.' I think after he saw my name, maybe he watched 'Sisterhood' or Accepted. I don't know what it was. So we sat down, we talked about it and I thought about it for a little while. It felt right.
TeenHollywood: Has your cast become close?
Blake: When we see each other we get so excited and we're dancing and singing and handing each other cookies. I thought, 'We're going to be so sick of each other in like six years.' It's so exciting to see us now. I hope that it always stays that way
TeenHollywood: Which books do you feel more bound to, 'Sisterhood' or "Gossip Girl"?
Blake: Well, it's very different. With 'Sisterhood', I read all four books in the very beginning because it was just a movie. So for three months we'd be telling the story of the first book. Whereas this is a full series. It could go one episode, it could go 100 episodes, we don't know. So I read the books of the 'Sisterhood' but 'Gossip Girl' I just read about half of it to really get to know the character. So I know 'Sisterhood' better but 'Gossip Girl', I'm very excited to dive into. I've never done anything like this.
TeenHollywood: Do you read any celebrity gossip magazines or websites?
Blake: No, I don't really go on the websites. I sign onto AOL, there's always the popup of the entertainment stories of the week. They have a little paragraph there of what happened. I get it through that. You know, if you're sitting in an airport and there's a magazine...but I never read the stories though because they're so untrue, but the pictures are fun. But, I was brought up in the generation that when you do your school papers, you go online. A lot of times you don't read a book, you can download the book online and read it. It's much easier.
TeenHollywood: You wear some amazing clothes in the pilot for the series. Do you keep the wardrobe? Do you like it?
Blake: Oh gosh! To casual day at school, I wore a $10,000 Chanel coat. My [series] mom carries around a $35,000 Hermes purse, a $12,000 John Galiano jacket. It's just absurd but these people, we were shooting on the steps of The Met and I see my mom in the scene before had the Hermes purse. I thought, 'Nobody really spends that much money on a purse.' And someone walking down the street walking her dog had the exact same purse.
TeenHollywood: Do you keep anything?
Blake: No, not yet. Hopefully.
TeenHollywood: Describe your own fashion style?
Blake: I don't know. It's ever changing. I'm finding it. It's what I like and what I'm drawn to. Like I said earlier, I love interior designing and all that kind of stuff so different textures and fabrics and colors just pull me. It's not like I want to be punk rock. It's what I feel drawn to.
TeenHollywood: What do you want to wear on the show?
Blake: Our costume designer is so talented so I don't have problems with him to start with. He's very collaborative and you're able to really pick what you like best for you.
TeenHollywood: What do you think about having to move to New York?
Blake: Oh, I'm so excited. [Shooting] the pilot was the longest amount of time I've ever been there but I'm very excited to live there just because there's so much energy and there are so many artists there, so many people doing what they want to do. Even if they're not accomplishing it yet, it's just like the world is at your fingertips there. Nothing closes and everybody's so excited about what they're doing and everybody's all pushed together on an eight mile island. L.A. is a lot more isolated.
TeenHollywood: Will you be living on your own?
Blake: I will. I haven't done that yet. I'm so excited. I love being around people but I have a feeling I'm going to be working 20 hours a day, five days a week so I won't have time to get lonely. I like downtown. I love the village.
TeenHollywood: Were there "Gossip Girls" when you were in high school in Burbank?
Blake: I think there are catty, insecure girls everywhere. It's never people being genuinely bad at heart. I just think that maybe the way people are raised makes them different, makes them insecure. Thus, they have to talk about other people and pull out things that are wrong with other people in order for them to feel better about themselves. So there were definitely gossipy girls there but I loved growing up in Burbank. It's like a small town. I was very involved in school.
TeenHollywood: You'll have more time in a series to develop the Serena character. How do you see her so far?
Blake: Serena is very complex. She was what you can call a bad girl before and now she's trying to be good. But she's still got this core to her. She's being pulled at all different angles from her mom to her brother to this new good guy, Dan, to Nate who she still loves, to her best friend. She's got all of these people pulling on her and she needs to find her place. So I definitely think there's going to be room to explore different areas because she's so complex.
TeenHollywood: Do you like good guys or bad guys?
Blake: I don't think there is a good guy or a bad guy. Unless it's like a Superman movie. I like someone that makes me laugh. I enjoy someone that's really fun.
TeenHollywood: How different was shooting the TV pilot than a movie?
Blake: Very different. Well, my mind-set was different because in a movie, like okay, three months it's going to be done. I have my whole character arc to do in these three months. Whereas the pilot, you can't have a huge arc in one episode. You need the change to be interesting, but you may have 100 episodes to find out really who you are.
TeenHollywood: What do you like doing off the set?
Blake: I love party planning, interior decorating, baking. I'm very domestic. I'm like a little Martha Stewart.
TeenHollywood: What would you make for us if we came over?
Blake: All desserts. My appetizer, main course, they'd all be desserts.
TeenHollywood: Yum! We hear you are actively trying to help the environment.
Blake: You have to live it. You can't be a hypocrite. I recycle and when I go to Whole Foods I buy the green everything. The paper towels, all the stuff that's been recycled. I'm planning on the pilot to buy the whole crew mugs so that we don't have to keep using plastic cups and water bottles and stuff like that.
TeenHollywood: What books did you grow up on?
Blake: Oh, see I'm a huge Harry Potter fan and I just read recently, 'The Glass Castle' by Jeannettte Walls. It's a terrific, terrific book. It's a memoir. 'Memoirs of a Geisha', I liked.
TeenHollywood: What teacher inspired you?
Blake: I had so many great teachers when I was younger. Mostly I had a really great counselor in high school that really, really pushed me and helped me learn a lot about myself. I ran for class president and he just sat me down and he's like, 'You can do anything you want. You can be the next JFK.' He was so great.
TeenHollywood: What goals do you set for yourself?
Blake: There are so many things that I want to do in my life. Specifically, I would love to open a restaurant. I would love to have an interior decorating business. There are so many different businesses that I would love to have. That's another great thing about acting. It opens doors for you to be involved with so many different things. And also, I'm trying to become very involved in charity work. I'm more drawn to children. I really like to help children and also I think it's important that we help our environment now for our children, so it all comes back to the same thing. Now that I'm doing the show and I'm going to be more in the spotlight, I have a voice and I think it's irresponsible not to use it, especially in a good way.
TeenHollywood: Are you getting used to being famous?
Blake: I just feel like a normal girl that's in Burbank. I live such a normal life. I was never in the Hollywood scene. So any time anybody comes up to me, I always get a little shy. But, I have my cute dog now so a lot of people come up to me and they're like, 'Oh, my gosh, are you . . .'and I think they're going to ask if I'm from 'Sisterhood', and they say, 'with that really cute dog?' Yeah.
TeenHollywood: What's on your iPod?
Blake: The weirdest things. I really enjoy' Punk'd'. I have a lot of the Punk'ds on it, the videos. There's a really funny one with Jesse Metcalfe where he's auditioning for Spider-Man 3. Have you seen it? It's absurd. I really like that one. I also have 7,000 songs on my iPod. I think maybe the most shocking thing is Penn [Badgley] had a pop single when he was 12 years old. Don't tell him I told but I have that on my iPod. It's blackmail, it's called 'Be That Way'. He's going to have a heart attack when you ask him.
TeenHollywood: Darn, we already talked to him! We'll get him later! Do you think you'll ever go to college?
Blake: Yes, I've wanted my whole life to go to Stanford. I never planned on acting. So when it came up, it was in the summer between my junior and senior year so I thought, 'Well, I'll try this out.' And I enjoyed it so much but my agents and everyone were saying that now's the time. You've got to do a bunch of movies now but school is most important to me. So I finished my senior year of high school and decided I would just delay college for a year but it just took off. This is what I want to do so college you can always go back to. High school you can't, so I'm hoping to go. My producers actually said they might work it out so maybe I can go to school, Columbia, one day a week. So that would be really exciting. I really enjoy social sciences but the English program there is fantastic. We'll see.
TeenHollywood: Any hidden talents people don't know you have?
Blake: I can pop my hip out of the joint. I think that's kind of cool. I don't really have that many talents. I can't sing or dance to save my life but I was very passionate about it. It looked like I was so excited to be there and it was a performance, so they always put me front and center, give me dance solos and people would get so mad because I cannot dance.
TeenHollywood: Do you think being rich leads kids to become more like Paris or Nicole?
Blake: I don't think it's so much a life of privilege as it is how you're raised. I think parenting is very important because even the Humphries on the show, they're privileged. You look at their apartment and anybody that's been to New York and looked at apartments knows that those people aren't struggling. And they go to these expensive prep schools but they were brought up by really great parents and the family was so important to them that they have stayed grounded. They're very moral people. And my family are all actors but I grew up with the business around me, but I have such a great family and such a great base, that was never an option for me to become a Paris Hilton type. So I don't think it's money and privilege as much as it is parenting and the important of education and your surroundings.
TeenHollywood: How was shooting 'Traveling Pants 2'?
Blake: Oh, it was fantastic. It was so great to be back with all the girls again. We enjoy each other so much. We got to go to Greece, Connecticut, so we really had a great time. We each have our own storylines again but in our own personal lives, we make time to be together. The first movie, we were off doing our own things yet we have the sisterhood. This one is more about we're so caught up in our own lives, how do we find the Sisterhood within this? Because we need each other. We're really kind of falling apart. it's an accumulation of all three books. It's mostly the fourth book but in the beginning we tell what has happened for the past two summers. My storyline has a lot to do with the second book though.
TeenHollywood: How have the actresses changed since the first movie?
Blake: Well, our lives have gone in different paths than they were when we first met but they're really great, genuine people. Nothing has changed about them as a person so when we get together, it's exactly the same whether people believe it or not. No time has passed. They got to mothering me again.
TeenHollywood: You're still the baby?
Blake: Oh yeah, oh yeah, but I beat them up too. We make up dances and we have so much fun together.
TeenHollywood: Have they saved the jeans from the first 'Sisterhood'?
Blake: They did but since two summers have gone by since, we've added decoration to the jeans as our lives change. As stories and experiences have been added to our own lives, we've added on the jeans. We haven't tried them on though because we don't want to see how our own sizes have changed. They're magical, right?
TeenHollywood: When does that come out?
Blake: August of 2008.
TeenHollywood: You've also got Elvis and Annabelle coming out?
Blake: Yes. It's an independent film and we're looking for the right person to take it on. There've been a few people that are interested. It's a really important story and it's got so much heart. We don't want somebody to just put a commercial stamp on it and change things that were very important to us about the story.
