Gossip Girl Reboot Casts Code Black Actress Emily Alyn Lind in Lead Role

HBO Max’s Gossip Girl reboot has found its queen bee.

According to Deadline, Emily Alyn Lind, 17, has been cast in the upcoming reboot of the popular teen drama that originally starred Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Chace Crawford, Penn Badgley and Ed Westwick.

Lind is best known for her roles in Revenge as a young Amanda Clark and in the CBS medical drama Code Black as Ariel. She has also appeared in Days of Our Lives, Criminal Minds, Suburgatory and Hawaii Five-0.

You could say acting is in her blood. Her mom, Barbara Alyn Woods, is best known for her role as Deb Scott in One Tree Hill. Her older sister Natalie has appeared in shows like The Goldbergs and The Gifted, while her younger sister Alyvia recently played the lead role in Netflix’s drama Daybreak.

HBO Max’s reboot will be helmed by original creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. While it remains to be seen if any former Upper East Siders will be returning, Badgley, 33, told Entertainment Tonight in December that reprising his role as Dan Humphrey was something he’d have to “think about.”

“I think it’s pretty clear that, like, I’ve never been a proponent of Dan Humphrey’s,” the You star said. “I’ve never been necessarily the greatest friend or fan of Dan Humphrey, which now I reconcile in this way that I’m like, you know, I would love to contribute in a meaningful way to it. And I guess it would just depend on a lot of things.”

“It would depend on how and why he’s there and I don’t know,” Badgley added.

Meester, who played Blair Waldorf, has said that she wouldn’t want to return to the world of Gossip Girl even before the reboot was announced.

“A lot of the questions that come from it are: ‘Do you miss it?’ ‘Did you love what you wore?’ And I understand that, but — and I say this with nothing but love — it is like saying, ‘High school was an amazing time for you, do you wish you could go back?’” the actress, 33, told PorterEdit in 2018. “And the truth is, it was so special and such a unique, amazing experience, but no, I wouldn’t wanna go back to it, I was a kid!”

Writer and producer Joshua Safran has said the revamp will feature a more diverse cast and more “queer content.”

“There was not a lot of representation the first time around on the show,” Safran said at the Vulture Festival in November. “Even when I went to private school in New York in the ‘90s, the school didn’t necessarily reflect what was on Gossip Girl. So, this time around the leads are nonwhite.”

“It is very much dealing with the way the world looks now, where wealth and privilege come from, and how you handle that,” he said, teasing a big “twist” that is central to the reboot’s plot.