Leighton Meester talks end of Gossip Girl

Leighton Meester has claimed that Gossip Girl is ending at the “perfect time”.

The actress, who plays Queen Bee Blair Waldorf in the show, will come to a close after six years on air.

The CW renewed Gossip Girl for a sixth and final season earlier this year to wrap up storylines, unmask just who the mysterious gossip girl blogger is and to allow producers to craft a suitable finale for the series.

“I think it’s ending at a beautiful, perfect time,” Meester told Vulture. “But it’s [also] because our contracts are up. I don’t think anyone wants to stay after their contracts.”

The 26-year-old said that working on a single project for six years can become “sort of tedious”, adding that she now wants “to move beyond” Gossip Girl.

“It’s been an amazing tool to learn from, and I owe pretty much everything… to Gossip Girl,” she admitted. “But I could say, somewhat, [that] it’s my personal growth that has made me want to move beyond it.

“I was 20 when I started, and I’m 26 now, so you don’t want to be doing the same thing over a period that long. This has been one of the most awkward and great growth periods of my life. I’ve experienced a lot of different things, and it’s just time to do something else.”

Meester went on to suggest that there is “never really a moment of release” when working on a long-running television series.

“I’ve been doing Gossip Girl for six years, and the arc is ongoing,” she said. “It’s always just tension, tension, tension. Which can be good. But for me, creatively, it starts to get exhausting.”

Gossip Girl premiered last night (Monday) in the US and will return to UK screens on Wednesday, October 17 on ITV2