Gossip Girl Vets Taylor Momsen & Connor Paolo Had A Mini Reunion In LA

In its six seasons, the original Gossip Girl never skimped on drama. Characters oscillated between being friends and enemies, lovers and exes, and sometimes they even became stepsiblings, too. It was a wild ride for everyone, including its stars.

Taylor Momsen and Connor Paolo didn’t stick around for Gossip Girl’s entire run. They each left during Season 4 in 2011, which still gave their characters, Jenny Humphrey and Eric van der Woodsen, plenty of time to scheme with and against one another. In the midst of it, they formed a real-life friendship that led to a mini Gossip Girl reunion in Los Angeles on April 10.

From The UES To LA

Momsen posted photos of her reunion with Paolo on Instagram, showing the two of them with Halestorm frontwoman Lzzy Hale. “Can’t leave LA without a proper reunion from both ends of the spectrum,” she captioned the post, apparently referencing her upcoming departure to tour Europe with AC/DC this summer.

Her post immediately activated Gossip Girl nostalgia. “My two babies reunited,” one fan wrote in the comments, calling them Eric and Jenny. Many others used the same names and shared how ecstatic they were to see the former Upper East Siders together. “This makes my heart happy,” another follower added.

Lasting Friendship

Eric and Jenny’s ups and downs on the show were dramatic, but Momsen and Paolo’s friendship seems to be going strong. When Momsen was a guest on fellow Gossip Girl vet Penn Badgley’s Podcrushed podcast in September 2023, she recalled how Paolo helped her when she first moved to New York. “Connor and I became friends, and he kind of took me under his wing,” she said.

Momsen explained that she tried to go to a regular school, and Paolo encouraged her to attend his. He made sure to introduce her to his friends, but she said that she didn’t really fit in because they were seniors and she was a freshman. “I was younger than them, I was the new girl, I was Grinch girl,” she added, referencing her role as Cindy Lou Who in 2000’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Eventually, Momsen left the school and started homeschooling, and she and Paolo both moved on from Gossip Girl. She chose to focus on her music career with her band The Pretty Reckless, and he became a series regular on ABC’s Revenge. Still, he’s always cheered her on. In 2012, he told The Hollywood Reporter that they’d been “really close friends for years” and he thought he’d still “go to her shows even if [he] didn’t know who she was.”