Gossip Girl Made Blake Lively Really Fearful of This One Thing

Blake Lively may have secretly hoped we wouldn't fall in love with Serena van der Woodsen as hard as we did. In fact, she was actually scared we would.

The dramatic hit CW TV show will have premiered 10 years ago this September, and now, the 30-year-old actress and mother of two is looking back at her days spent zipping across N.Y.C. on set. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Lively reveals she was fearful of becoming too famous, and dealing with all that comes with everyone knowing your name.

“I’m actually a very shy person and the idea of losing my anonymity was one that was scary to me,” she said. “I remember saying when I read this script, ‘Whoever does this will not be able to walk out of their house ever again and be the same as before they started this.’ You could tell it was a cultural phenomenon. That was both exciting and thrilling, but also very scary.”

Lively apparently had fantastic intuition, considering the show moved on to become a mega success, making her an even more recognizable household name. Eventually, what she feared came true, with photographers lining up outside of any neighborhood they filmed in.

She said eventually, the acting wasn’t so important. “It didn’t really feel like acting as much ... It felt like we were in the center of a marketing machine, a cultural phenomenon. We were creating three episodes at once sometimes, we were given our lines at the very last minute, we didn’t know where our characters were going; there was no planning or arc … It almost felt like a sketch show. We were basically sort of reading off cue cards,” she said.

“There were people taking pictures the whole time and paparazzi jumping in front of the cameras—it felt like we were part of a cultural experiment.”

Indeed, a crazy-popular one.

XOXO.