There’s some bad news for the many fans of ‘Gossip Girl’. Despite the wealth of comebacks for fellow US TV hits, the tales of young, beautiful and impossibly wealthy Manhattanites won’t be joining them in a return, according to its star Ed Westwick.
The British actor tells Radio Times that’s it’s far too soon to talk of returning to the upper east side, where he reigned as the impossibly smooth, often dressing-gowned Chuck Bass.
He says: “No, that’s not going to happen.
“I know there’s a bunch of them coming back – I hear they’re doing ‘Will and Grace’, they’ve done ‘Gilmore Girls’… But it’s such a strange thing to think about. It feels like we only just finished! And I haven’t done enough in between yet to feel like I could comfortably revisit it. And I did so much with that character – it’s played out, man. It’s done.”
Unlike some of the other characters in the glossy show, Chuck Bass did evolve over the six-season arc, increasingly revealing his well-concealed heart. Ed counts himself lucky in the role:
“I was the only character who got to do that – or maybe one of two – ’cause I know some of the other guys were a little frustrated with some of the storylines they got.”
Better news for Ed’s fans is that he will be returning to our screens, in a comedy set far closer to his London home - Essex of the 1980s, where his character Vincent Swan and his colleagues are chasing the profits of a whole new enterprise, the arrival of double-glazing, aka the ‘White Gold’ of the title.
It comes from the pen of Damon Beesley, co-creator of ‘The Inbetweeners’, is gloriously retro and fast on its feet, and also stars half of the cast of the coming-of-age comedy, Joe Thomas and James Buckley.
Vincent Swan’s smooth winning ways with the ladies share more than a little bit of DNA with Chuck Bass, but Ed is emphatic he’ll prove quite different.
“Everyone says, ‘Oh, you’re playing the bad boy again’. And I say, ‘Yeah, he’s bad in a way…’ But I see more levels to these characters, and hopefully I convey that.”
‘White Gold’ begins on Wednesday 24 May at 10pm on BBC Two. Read the full interview with Ed in next week’s Radio Times, on sale now.
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