Nate Archibald is about to find love on the next season of “Gossip Girl.” And he’s finding it with former “Melrose Place” star Katie Cassidy, who’ll join the show this season to bring a little spice to Nate’s love life. And according to Chace Crawford, who plays Nate, his new leading lady is a bit spicy offscreen too.
“Katie’s great! I know Katie, so she just got in [and] she just started like three weeks ago and I think 10 or 12 episodes she’s here for,” Crawford told MTV News on Wednesday at the New York City premiere of his gritty drama “Twelve.”
“She’s obviously a raging, conniving mean girl at the end of it. She sort of does her thing,” he added about Cassidy’s story line. “They can’t be straight-up but she’s fun, her character.”
Not only are fans excited to see Nate get some action this season, but they’re also looking forward to seeing what kind of international antics the “Gossip Girl” crew gets into during their trip to Paris. Unfortunately for Nate (and Crawford for that matter) he didn’t get to join in on the fun.
“I didn’t get to go to Paris! I don’t know [why]!” he said. “The girls are shoving each other around in fountains and [the rest of us] shoot in New York City, just all small- town New York City.”
So, was Crawford a little jealous that Ed Westwick’s Chuck Bass got to go to France? Well, he thinks Bass kind of deserved it after what he endured in the last season finale. “Of course he did! He got shot [on camera last season] and so he had a cane and the whole thing. Maybe they’ll send us to Costa Rica,” he said. “We’ll see!”
MTV News recently caught up with Leighton Meester, who gave us a few more details about Crawford and Cassidy’s onscreen romance, teasing that she might not be exactly who she seems.
“I think she’s coming on the show, maybe, to cause a little bit of trouble,” Meester said. “She might not say it, but I will. I think she’s very much capable of that, at least in the show. I think [Nate's] a total playboy and needs to be single and I think [Katie's character] is a bad girl, so maybe they are good for each other, actually.”
Chace Crawford’s “Twelve” won’t premiere at the Sundance Film Festival until Friday afternoon (January 29), but the movie has already been snatched up for distribution for a cool $2 million by Hannover House, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
That quick transaction might have more than a little something to do with the talents and public profile of the “Gossip Girl” star, who gets his first chance to take on a gritty, mature role in “Twelve.” Based on a novel by Nick McDonell, the indie flick has Crawford playing White Mike, a teenage dropout whose mother has just died and who is selling drugs to his ex-classmates on the gleaming streets of Manhattan’s Upper East Side. In a conversation earlier this week at Sundance, director Joel Schumacher explained to MTV News why the young actor was perfect for the part.
“Chace is very intelligent, comes from a really fine family,” he said. “There’s an old soul in him somewhere. He could play the grieving really well. There are a few scenes of anger. He was just right for the part, and the camera loves him. He does a lot with very little, and that’s the essence of a good actor.”
Schumacher certainly knows how to pick ‘em. Going back to ’80s films like “The Lost Boys” and “St. Elmo’s Fire,” the director has worked with a string of young actors who became Hollywood stars, like Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson and Kiefer Sutherland.
The movie also stars Sutherland, Emma Roberts, Rory Culkin, Ellen Barkin and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson — who plays vicious drug dealer Lionel. Schumacher said filming on location with 50 and Crawford proved difficult.
“Trying to shoot a scene on the streets of Manhattan with Chace Crawford and Curtis Jackson — when all the schools let out around 3 o’clock and you’re trying to do an intimate scene with two people and there are 300 kids screaming — was a challenge,” he said. “But I have to say Chace and 50 were great with the kids. They were really fantastic. But I have to say, some of those private school teenage girls — pretty aggressive there.”
