“Gossip Girl” debuted its second iteration last week on HBO Max, introducing us to a new generation of Upper East Siders and their penchant for name-dropping real-life elite, just like their predecessors on the original CW series.
But the rebooted “Gossip Girl” exists in a even more social-media savvy world, where those people who get referenced on the show have the ability to publicly comment on the references made about them very quickly. And, in the case of Olivia Jade — the social media influencer daughter of Lori Loughlin and designer Mossimo Giannulli, who went to prison due to their involvement in the infamous college admissions scandal — correct them.
During the series premiere episode, which began streaming on HBO Max last Thursday at 12 a.m. PT, the “Gossip Girl” reboot features a scene where Jade gets name-dropped during a discussion about influencers recovering from a very public “L”, following “it girl” Julien Calloway’s (Jordan Alexander) “social media nightmare” over her half-sister Zoya (Whitney Peak) being photographed in a scandalous way with Julien’s boyfriend, Obie (Eli Brown).
Julien’s friend Luna La (Zion Moreno) says “everything will be fine so long as you win. Olivia Jade gained followers when her mom went to jail.”
Jade played this scene behind her in a video posted to TikTok on Sunday, shaking her head and saying, “No, I didn’t,” in response to the statement about her increased popularity post-mom’s prison sentence.
Per HBO Max, the new “Gossip Girl” is an “extension of the pop culture classic” that “takes us back to the Upper East Side finding a new generation of New York private school teens being introduced to social surveillance nine years after the original blogger’s website went dark.” The streaming series will explore “just how much social media — and the landscape of New York itself — has changed in the intervening years.”
Watch Jade fact-check the “Gossip Girl” reference about her in the TikTok video below.
New episodes of “Gossip Girl” launch Thursdays on HBO Max.
