SAINT LAURENT BY ANTHONY VACCARELLO shirt, HERMÈS pants, and PANDORA necklace, bracelet and rings. — **SAINT LAURENT BY ANTHONY VACCARELLO** shirt, **HERMÈS** pants, and **PANDORA** necklace, bracelet and rings.

Eli Brown sits in his new Brooklyn apartment in the company of an acoustic guitar and a trumpet he quite literally manifested into his life days ago. Books are stacked on every surface. He answers questions casually, flashing a boyish smile. Brown has just moved to New York to pursue the acting gig of the year: Gossip Girl. “I signed the contract before I even read the script,” he admits, as if taking the job was a no-brainer. “But that’s what I’m saying... the team behind this is so amazing, and the legacy of the last show is unparalleled.”

HBO Max’s reboot follows Brown’s character Otto “Obie” Bergmann IV, the richest kid at elite private school St. Jude’s School for Boys, alongside his girlfriend, Julien Calloway (Jordan Alexander), as she navigates influencer stardom and half-sister drama. Humble and against the superiority that money encourages, Obie is considered a rebel against his real estate tycoon parents—Otto and Helena Bergmann of the Bergmann Property Group. Obie lives in his own modest loft—in Dumbo rather than Uptown Manhattan—and his determination for standing up for his values is apparent in just the first episode.

BEN SHERMAN polo and pants and PANDORA earring, bracelet, and ring. — **BEN SHERMAN** polo and pants and **PANDORA** earring, bracelet, and ring.

HERMÈS pants, SAINT LAURENT BY ANTHONY VACCARELLO belt, and PANDORA earring, necklace, bracelet, and rings. — **HERMÈS** pants, **SAINT LAURENT BY ANTHONY VACCARELLO** belt, and **PANDORA** earring, necklace, bracelet, and rings.

CALVIN KLEIN tank, LEVI’S pants, and PANDORA necklace, bracelet, and rings. — **CALVIN KLEIN** tank, **LEVI’S** pants, and **PANDORA** necklace, bracelet, and rings.

Hailing from Eugene, Oregon, Brown has starred in The F**k-It List, Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists, and Netflix’s Spinning Out within the past two years. Before taking the leap to follow his dream in Los Angeles, where he was met with the gritty as well as the odd glimmer of glamor—the 21-year-old sharpened his acting knives during his time in high school. “My classmates somehow roped me into trying out for one of the plays,” he shares, “and so I did, and I fell in love with it. I think that was a very important growth process, and I ended up doing a play every season for the last two years of high school, so definitely worked on my chops there.”

With an uncanny resemblance to the original series’ Penn Badgley as Dan Humphrey, Brown has a taste for the finer things, much like Humphrey: the written word. “I would work with anyone,” he explains to me from his relaxed position on the couch. “I would play any role. I’ll do anything, as long as the writing is good. Basically, nothing else matters. Obviously, you want a good director. You want talented castmates and everything. But really, if the writing is good, I’m all the way in.” Besides the physical similarity to lonely boy Badgley, Brown and fellow co-stars Whitney Peak (Zoya Lott) and Alexander have come to the conclusion that Obie is “like a really rich Dan.”

CALVIN KLEIN tank, OFFICINE GÉNÉRALE pants, and PANDORA bracelet. — **CALVIN KLEIN** tank, **OFFICINE GÉNÉRALE** pants, and **PANDORA** bracelet.

Although the identity of Gossip Girl is revealed in the pilot of the series and not kept mysterious, Brown’s character makes up for the lack of suspense within the first episode. “Pilots are tricky because you’re setting up the entire world that you’re going to operate in,” he continues. “In a sense, they have to be a little bit expositional. Pilots are always a little—for lack of a better term—slow in that sense, but it was cool. I love how it’s kind of the same world that this show exists in, but it’s on HBO instead of The CW, so we can be edgy. We can kind of take it to places that the original couldn’t. I also just love how progressive the whole show is. All these monologues about like, ‘Fuck the patriarchy’ and this, that, and whatever. It’s so sex forward. It’s just very... Gen Z.”

While the reboot has big Louboutin heels to fill, the success and hype of the cast selection has only just begun. Filming at locations reminiscent of the original, Brown’s first day on set was a memorable one. “It was definitely the first time we had the entire cast together [and] we were shooting the scene on the MET steps,” he recalls. “It’s just such an iconic moment at an iconic place. That day was insane. There were tons of people walking by and... paparazzi. It was so chaotic in a really cool way. I remember thinking to myself: ‘is this what shooting this production is going to be like at all times?’”

As the show nears the end of shooting, Brown hopes to escape the U.S. after almost a year of embodying the mind of Obie and navigating the life of an actor during the pandemic. However, his popularity and market demand has only just begun. “The day after the show came out,” he recalls, “I linked up with Thomas in Manhattan, on the Lower East side. We were gonna bike up to Flatiron District. Literally, the first thing that happened after we met up, we biked like a couple blocks and the paparazzi were chasing us a day after the show came out. Then throughout the entire day, people were recognizing us all over. It was different. That was strange, and it’s weird because I’ve been really wanting to get into Manhattan. But now I’m kind of like, maybe Brooklyn is a little refuge.”