Duff told In December that she had become a fan of Gossip Girl, and her favorite character was Chuck Bass. “I don’t know why, because he’s so bad and terrible,” Duff said. “He is so sad that I feel bad for him,” she admitted.

According to E! News, newly single Dan, who broke off his relationship with Serena last season, is looking to find love with Olivia and doesn’t even know she’s famous. Dan, according to E!’s sources, is looking to get serious with Duff’s character.

At the time, Duff was developing her own pilot for NBC called “Barely Legal.” She told E! News, “It’s exciting. I’ve been meeting with writers. I’m ready to get back on TV.” Producers eventually passed on “Barely Legal,” but producers for “Gossip Girl” soon found a spot for the Disney teen queen on the show. She makes her debut in the fourth episode of the season, scheduled to air on October 5.

Unfortunately, the cast has to deal with a healthy dose of real life gossip off the set, too.

Early Show co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez stopped by the set of “Gossip Girl” to chat with the cast while they film their new season in Queens, New York.

Rodriguez talked with Blake Lively (”Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants”), who plays Serena van der Woodsen on the show.

“We had a wonderful response the first season that we’re really excited to bring a second one back. I think we’ve got a lot of really exciting, great story lines and new characters,” Lively said.

Although the show is going strong, there is a price to pay when you’re part of a hit TV show.

The cast has become paparazzi magnets.

“When they try to dive into your personal life and make rumors about everyone on the set feuding and hating each other and try to chase you around with a camera to walk your dog. That part is upsetting,” Lively admitted.

Ironically, the “Gossip Girl” cast is surrounded by gossip on all platforms, from the blogosphere to the tabloids.

Lively dismissed the rumors of onset drama and said that the cast is all friends.

“We’re all around the same age so getting to be thrown into the city, thrown into this experience, which is so wild and the fact that we have to go through that together and that we have the support system that we have and that we actually enjoy each other’s companies,” Lively said.

To further prove the camaraderie on set, Lively pointed out that even after a 16-hour work day, the cast still spends time together offset going to dinner or shopping.

Ed Westwick, who plays Chuck Bass, compared the casts’ relationships as being almost like a marriage with an even greater bond blossoming on set.

“At first you’re kind of dating someone, you’re worried about impressions that you may cause and you may be worried what you say from time to time. You are trying to keep up appearances, but now it’s going into that comfortable husband and wife kind of thing where everyone is comfortable with each other,” Westwick said.

Besides bonding on and off set, there are also lessons learned when it comes to the more wild scenes in the show involving teen sex and underage drinking.

Matthew Settle, who plays Rufus Humphrey, the father of Jenny Humphrey (played by Taylor Momsen) can attest to that.

“I guess being her dad is a real education for me in real life because I get this whole group of people back in Los Angeles that teach me what to say when you’re a father. So I’m just kind of memorizing it for when I have a kid,” said Settle, whose first baby is due March 10.

Some critics might say that the characters get too wild.

According to Momsen, she doesn’t worry about the message that is sent to kids her age.

“I think, anything ‘bad’ on the show ends up resolving. Everything has consequences. Everything that Jenny does, she steals a dress, she gets grounded. She gets in a lot of trouble for it. So everything that happens, ends up resolving itself and I feel like in a realistic way” said Momsen.

“It shows a realistic take on life and it shows the consequences of actions and choices. It’s a show about kids finding their identities,” Settle added.

In true Manhattan fashion, the Upper Eastsider’s identity goes hand in hand with their clothes.

“We love our clothes. The designer is just a genius and what we wear is part of us, part of our characters and every time I put on what I wear, I feel like suddenly I’m Blair (Waldorf). It’s changed my view on fashion a lot. I think the viewers kind of have responded to that, as well as the actual story itself,” said Leighton Meester.

“It’s great,” said “Gossip Girl” costume designer Eric Daman. “I get to do what I’m doing and have such an influence. I think it’s all come together really well.”

Daman has seen his style worn by young girls all over Manhattan.

“Especially the last six months it seems like the trickle down has definitely happened,” he said.

“At the end of the day as glamorous as it is, it’s just a job,” Lively said.

Lively maintains a balance with her own identity and that of her character. For her 21st birthday, she went home and watched the Food Network and ordered in Chinese food, which is not how Serena would celebrate it.

“You can’t get lost in a character and something that is a celebrity. I just think that’s a load of nonsense anyway,” Lively admitted.

“It’s a dream,” Meester said. “And it’s just fun and it’s a blessing.”

Credit: CBS

There’s a new Gossip guy in town!

John Patrick Amedori has been cast as the new love interest for good girl Serena Van der Woodsen (Blake Lively), according to E!.

The 21-year-old actor will play an artist with a philanthropic side in the current second season.

In other casting news, Willa Holland, best known as Kaitlin Cooper on The O.C., snagged a multi-episode arc on the hit CW show. She’ll play bad girl Agnes, a 16-year-old model who meets Jenny Humphrey (Taylor Momsen) while working for Blair’s fashion designer mother.

credit: JustJared

The CW series, which has seemed to generate more press than viewers, got off to a solid start last night, averaging 3.4 million for its second-season premiere, Nielsen Media Research estimates said.

Overall, a jackpot-hitting Deal or No Deal won the night in so-so fashion, while a new TNT drama debuted in record-setting fashion.

Gossip Girl’s performance was on par with last season’s opener (3.5 million), up a bit over last May’s finale (3 million), and up a lot over its first-season average (2.5 million).

Showing its limitations, the show was outdrawn in its time slot by the Univision telenovela Al Diablo con los Guapos (5 million). It also came up short when compared to fellow teen drama The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which has been averaging 3.7 million this summer for cable’s ABC Family Channel.

Pointing out its strengths, the struggling CW said Gossip Girl hit a series high among the network’s most-coveted demographic: women, aged 18 to 34.

Aided by the sixth-season premiere of One Tree Hill (3.1 million), the CW said it won the night in its key demo in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago—three cities where the CW affiliates, all owned by Tribune Broadcasting, have begun to downplay their association with the network.

credit: E!

When audiences first see him in Monday’s premiere of Season 2, he’ll be on a beach surrounded by a bevy of bikini-clad babes, who remove their tops just for him (and to, you know, avoid tan lines).

But something funny happened on the way to the Hamptons. Somehow this teenage cad won over “Gossip Girl” fans when no one was looking, despite his bad behavior when they first met him.

His romance with Blair will be the big draw when the show returns, according to executive producer Stephanie Savage. (A photo of Chuck offering up a dripping piece of cherry pie — and the texty tagline “ready4more” — covered the preview screeners sent to the press this month.) By the end of last season, it was difficult not to root for the caustic relationship between him and Blair, whom he earlier discarded and compared to one of his father’s Arabian horses: “Rode hard and put away wet.”

How did this happen? Is this Luke and Laura 2.0? So wrong, yet so right?

“He hasn’t victimized Blair. That sort of Stockholm syndrome isn’t in operation here,” Savage said. “I think of Chuck and Blair as equals. It’s much more Glenn Close and John Malkovich in ‘Dangerous Liaisons.’”

Chuck, however, is more of a would-be Casanova than a seasoned predator. He’s the charming devil at the center of all the intrigues, the go-to guy when something naughty needs to be said — “Who’s the sasquatch? He looks like Matthew McConaughey between movies” was one Chuck observation. And he’s the most self-aware of the Upper East Side high schoolers: “What we’re entitled to is a trust fund, maybe a house in the Hamptons, a prescription drug problem, but happiness is not on the menu,” he told his best friend, Nate, during the series premiere.

“Chuck is the most fun character to write,” Savage said, trying to explain the groundswell of Chuck love. “He’s entertaining and observationally smart, he’s the friend who says all the things you want to say but can’t, and he tempts you in ways, at that age, you want to be tempted.”

She also credits the appeal of Ed Westwick, the 21-year-old British actor who portrays Chuck. Savage, who fought to keep him on the show even when he had not yet been cleared to work in the U.S., said he embodies the perfect combination of “James Spader in ‘Pretty in Pink’ and the raffish quality of Robert Downey Jr.”

Still, it’s hard to forget the way Chuck was introduced, forcibly being shoved off of Jenny in the pilot episode after she text-messages her older brother Dan for a rescue; it’s a scene that would have spelled doom for such a character in any other teen drama.

“There will always be people who say, ‘Chuck’s done these bad things. How could you root for his happiness?’ But we don’t bring that moral framework to bear on our characters,” Savage said.

That much is true: In only one season, it was revealed that Serena had accidentally killed someone via drug use and that Dan’s jealously had led him to cheat on Serena. They quickly forgave each other for those offenses. It didn’t take long for Nate to get over Chuck swooping in on Blair, either.

Moral ambiguity propels the best of prime-time’s soap operas, making you cheer for cheaters like Gabby and Carlos to reunite on “Desperate Housewives” and for things to work out for a politician and his mistress on “Dirty Sexy Money.” Should it make a difference that the most ardent “Gossip Girl” watchers are teen girls?

Westwick says it does. “You reserve judgment with these characters because they are young enough to change, and you’re always aware of that. I think one of the reasons we like to watch these kinds of shows is because we know there’s that possibility for change and we want to see it.”

Chuck, like the show’s other teens, is a work in progress. “Not everyone got to be multidimensional in that first episode,” Savage said. “You didn’t really even see his humanity until Episode 6.”

Then, Chuck was shown to be an only child, seeking approval from his father, a wealthy businessman and womanizer. He later developed a chummy relationship with the show’s most altruistic (for now) character, Serena’s gay, younger brother, Eric.

Audiences will soon meet his absent mother and find out where she’s been all this time.

And, of course, there’s the play for Blair, whom Chuck left stranded on a helipad last season. (Spoiler: He’ll run into competition immediately.)

Westwick isn’t sure the two necessarily belong together. “They’re both kind of childish and selfish in their approach to the world. It’d be kind of like fire fighting fire for them,” he said. “In the same way, it’s also like two peas in a pod. But I don’t know. It would have to be like one of those up and down roller-coaster rock ‘n’ roll romances, though, wouldn’t it?”

Sounds perfect.

– Denise Martin @ LA Times

With Season 2 literally right around the corner, this Monday at 8pm ET.  We are gearing up our site to have a huge kick off party to celebrate everyones favorite show.

Stay tuned for a ton of stuff from us in the next 48-72 hours and also be sure to tune in to watch the Gossip Girl season premier!!