Update: Vulture is taking Gossip Girl fans behind the scenes of the show with creators Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz. And the two of them have settled the doll mystery once and for all.
When Vulture asked the pair what doll Lively was sending photos of to DiCaprio, Schwartz responded, "I think it was Flat Stanley, wasn't it?" Case closed.
This story was originally published on August 30, 2017.
In honor of the 10th anniversary of the Gossip Girl premiere — yep, we're all old — Vanity Fair has an in-depth feature on the CW show's cultural impact. The article has plenty of behind-the-scenes Gossip Girl details, including tidbits about the show's stars. One of those tidbits? Apparently, while Blake Lively dated Leonardo DiCaprio in 2011, she would send him creepy doll pictures.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
That revelation came during a section where Vanity Fair's Josh Duboff explains that Lively was responsible for moving the New York-based show's production to Los Angeles. Lively was shooting Oliver Stone's 2012 movie Savages at the time, and she apparently asked that both projects film in the same place.
Lively was dating DiCaprio while Gossip Girl and Savages filmed in L.A. And Gossip Girl executive producer Joshua Safran told Vanity Fair that during that time, the crew learned from Lively's actions offscreen.
"We learned a lot from Blake. When I think about shooting the L.A. episodes, Blake was dating [DiCaprio] at the time, and she had this thing where she had a doll that she took photos of that she sent to Leo," Safran told the magazine. "Blake was way ahead of the curve. It was pre-Instagram. She was documenting her life in photographs in a way that people were not yet doing."
Sending doll photos isn't exactly most people's idea of "documenting your life," but it's definitely an interesting fact about the former couple's relationship. We need more information on what kind of doll this was, though. Was it a Barbie doll? A doll that looks like Blake? Raggedy Ann? An American Girl doll? Something along the lines of Chucky or Annabelle?
Hey @LeoDiCaprio @blakelively show us the doll pics
— mariah (@mRiah) August 30, 2017
Safran also revealed that Lively and Penn Badgley were totally professional about their breakup.
"The shocking thing was, I found out on the set of the season 2 finale that Blake and Penn had broken up months before," Safran told Vanity Fair. "They kept the breakup hidden from the crew, which you could never do now. I don't even know how they did it. They kept it from everybody, which is a testament to how good they are as actors. Because they did not want their personal drama to relate to the show."
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
If you're a Gossip Girl fan, check out the full anniversary feature over at Vanity Fair.
Read These Stories Next: