Tony Winner Laura Benanti Joins Gossip Girl Reboot

Are you ready, Upper East Siders? Tony winner Laura Benanti is joining the cast of the upcoming Gossip Girl reboot on HBO Max, according to Deadline. Serving as a sequel to the original series that aired on The CW from 2009-2012, this spinoff is created by Joshua Safran, who also served as an executive producer for the original.

Benanti joins a previously announced cast that features such stage favorites as Adam Chanler-Berat, Tavi Gevinson and Jason Gotay. Rounding out the cast is Thomas Doherty, Zion Moreno, Whitney Peak, Eli Brown, Emily Alyn Lind and Johnathan Fernandez. Character details for the HBO Max series are being kept under wraps.

Benanti won a Tony Award for Gypsy and has garnered four other nominations for her turns in She Loves Me, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Into the Woods, and Swing!. She most recently appeared on Broadway as Eliza Doolittle in the Lincoln Center Theatre My Fair Lady revival. Benanti's self-titled debut studio album just released, and her upcoming scripted musical special Homeschool Musical: Class of 2020 will premiere on HBO Max next year.

The reboot picks up a decade after the original Gossip Girl, following "a new generation of New York private-school teens who are introduced to the social surveillance of Gossip Girl. The series addresses just how much social media—and the landscape of New York itself—has changed in the intervening years.