Gossip Girl was originally supposed to be someone else

We were fairly shocked to find out that Dan Humphrey, played by Penn Badgley, was the Upper East Side’s most infamous internet troll. And honestly, in some ways, so were the Gossip Girl producers. According to the hit television show’s executive producer, Joshua Safran, Gossip Girl was originally supposed to be someone else.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Gossip Girl’s debut, Vulture talked to Safran along with the show’s co-creators, Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. The team let us in on all the juicy behind-the-scenes secrets fans were never aware of while the show was on the air.

One such shocking tidbit is that the creators and producers didn’t initially want Dan to be behind Gossip Girl. So who was their first pick?

"I always thought it was Eric until the end of season two, and I even guided it that way," Safran told Vulture. "But when the New York Post revealed it was Eric — and I still don’t know how that happened, I think they were just guessing — and we realized we couldn’t go down that road anymore, so we abandoned him."

Then Nate was under public suspicion because of the fact that he never submitted to Gossip Girl. But Vulturewrote that at the end of the series, it just had to be Dan because he was “a writer, observer, and could write in different styles.”

Too true. Dan just fit the bill in ways the others didn’t. In fact, the twist of the reveal was so good that Ed Westwick, who played Chuck Bass on the series, still doesn’t even know who Gossip Girl is. Oh Ed!

Gossip Girl gossip is our favorite kind. Keep the show secrets coming, guys.