“I never planned on being an actor,” says Chace Crawford. “It sort of fell into my lap ratherquickly.” This may be the understatement of the year. Crawford is, of course, one of the stars of Gossip Girl, the CW’s frothy nighttime soap about dirty, sexy, moneyed New York City teenagers. Since its debut last fall, the show has become an instant cultural flashpoint, adored by fansites, obsessed over by the tabloids, and even chewed over in a New York magazine cover story. And right now, the 23-year-old actor is looking less like every parent’s nightmare (the tagline the network is using to promote Gossip Girl’s new season) and more like every agent’s fantasy.
Less than two years after dropping out of Pepperdine, where he was studying broadcast journalism, to pursue an acting career, Crawford has become the epicenter of the biggest TV youthquake since the original 90210. He plays Nate Archibald, a rebel with a trust fund, an Upper East Sider with an endless surfeit of Burberry overcoats and father issues. Relying heavily on his expressive eyebrows, Crawford serves as the show’s scowly moral center.
As it turns out, the star of a show about disgustingly privileged kids has had a rather charmed life himself. Crawford grew up in a supportive Plano, Texas, family, the son of a dermatologist. As a kid, he wanted to be a fighter pilot like Tom Cruise in Top Gun. In high school, he alternated football and golf practice with drawing class. Then, at age 20, he suffered an existential crisis which led him to take a semester off from Pepperdine and move to Hollywood to contemplate his next step. “I never felt I would have a desk job,” he says. “I knew I had to fulfill my creative side, my creative needs.” One of his L.A. pals introduced him to a commercial agent. “I had done a bit of modeling in Dallas, which I didn’t like,” he continues. “I ended up giving in when I heard how much money was in commercials.” The commercial agent referred him to an acting agent, who signed him immediately, nabbing him a role in the 2006 supernatural thriller The Covenant, a film about teenage vampires with really cut abs. A single pilot season later, Crawford landed Gossip Girl. On one hand, Crawford is a pretty boy with a golden life, which makes him easy to resent. But on the other, he’s an appealing specimen, a genuine guy who just decided he wanted to be an actor one day and instantly became a star. He’s a Boy Scout struck by lightning.
In our conversation, Crawford retains the jovial energy of the frat brother he was in college, punctuating every few sentences with a “you know” or an occasional guffaw—ha!—to indicate that he thinks this interview is the most fun thing ever. “I have friends who are out there busting their asses,” says Crawford. “And yeah, I realize how fortunate I am. I had a lot of things fall into place, by chance, kind of a fluke. There was definitely a hint of good luck to it. But I do have a drive and a certain curiosity that not all people have.”
Now, Gossip Girl may not be the most adult TV viewing choice—there is always PBS, and Animal Planet is on in the same time slot—but I must admit that I watch the show. Regularly. At first, I watched it with 90210—the ne plus ultra of teen soaps—in mind, and thought it suffered in comparison. The cast seemed a bunch of pretty blanks, and Crawford a pale version of Luke Perry, with all the rough edges sanded off. But I soon warmed to it. Gossip Girl presents a world in which teenagers can have assignations in the Plaza Hotel, confess to murder, and loan each other thousands of dollars without blinking an eye. With its shades of Cruel Intentions (and Dangerous Liaisons before that), it’s an appealingly glossy, amoral fantasy for every underpaid urban dweller under 40, presenting a New York where passionate decisions can be made without terrible consequences and sexual adventure lies around every corner—without the air of desperation and moral panic that made Sex and the City feel like you were stuck on the heavenly panel in Defending Your Life. It also helps that the show doesn’t press the typical New Yorker’s resentment button: apartment envy. (These kids don’t own their places, so you don’t have to hate them.) And despite the 24-karat setting, Crawford’s character is an archetypal modern young male: the tortured soul with all the toys but no love.
Crawford has noticed Gossip Girl’s crossover into the adult world. “I’ll be out on the golf course, and some guy will come up to me, sort of sheepishly, and be like, ‘Hey, my wife really loves the show. Can I get a picture with you?’ They’re always super embarrassed. And I’m like, ‘C’mon man, you love the show.’ Women get their husbands or boyfriends sucked into it. I like to see that.”
There are, of course, drawbacks to success. Camera-phone pictures appeared recently on the snarky blog Gawker showing Crawford and his castmates, obviously a few sheets to the wind, entertaining some ladies in a bar. “It’s ironic that on the show we’re stalked by a blogger, and now we’re the subject of that in real life,”Crawford muses. “I don’t read the blogs. I didn’t even know what Gawker was until someone told me. The bloggers fabricate everything, and it gets picked up by the whole gossip world. It’s just one of those things you can’t get sucked into.” He says he forced himself to stop Googling his own name earlier this year.
And après le deluge, le gay speculation. This spring, the blogs and gossip columns placed Crawford in a blizzard of creative same-sex scenarios: In a cabana with former ’N Sync boy-bander J.C. Chasez! Open-mouth kissing costar and roommate Ed Westwick on the set!
Oh really? That’s weird—I didn’t know that,” says Crawford, not too convincingly. “If I’m standing next to a dog, they’ll say we’re dating. Or next to my sister—I got that as well. I let it roll off my back. There’s a lot of speculation with no reality to it, complete fabrications about my private life. My close friends and my family—ha!—they obviously know what the reality of my private life is. It’s just comical.”
He realizes he’s been cast for his looks. “There are a lot of adverse effects of being a certain type, which I am,” he says. “Look, I wouldn’t be in the business if I didn’t feel I had what it takes to have longevity. Everyone has a certain castability, or quality they’re always going to have to fight. I think the best remedy is to reinvent yourself. I’m not going to take the same type of role in the future.”
With Gossip Girl now in its second season, the show is under pressure to match its buzz with ratings (despite all the New York media attention, it ranked just 196th among prime-time shows last season). And likewise, Crawford himself will have to prove he’s more than just a pretty face. His second feature, The Haunting of Molly Hartley, a prep-school horror movie coming out this Halloween, may not be the most surprising career move, but Crawford says he’s in talks to star in a movie similar to American Beauty, which he describes as his all-time favorite because of Kevin Spacey’s Oscar-winning performance. Befitting his calculating Gossip Girl character, Crawford has a career strategy mapped out. “I want to do the edgy independent movies, like DiCaprio did, but you have to balance it out,” he says. “It’s about carving out your leading-man role. Fight Club? Yes! X-Men? Yes! All sorts of different films. American Beauty? Yes! I don’t know if I could pull off a Kevin Spacey, but I’ll try!”
