When Adam Brody became the internet’s boyfriend a few months back, people started acting weird around Leighton Meester.
Of course, long before audiences became obsessed with Brody’s turn as a hot rabbi in “Nobody Wants This,” both he and Meester were cemented in the pop culture firmament as teen drama icons. She was “Gossip Girl’s” Blair Waldorf. He was “The O.C.’s” Seth Cohen. And it warmed everyone’s cold little hearts that actors from two beloved mid-aughts shows had ended up together IRL.
But when the couple — who have been married since 2014 — showed up at the Golden Globes in January, the vibes were off. Reporters on the red carpet couldn’t stop fawning over Brody during interviews, to the point where he had to step in and attempt to make things less awkward.
“Your date is the Hot Rabbi,” an “Entertainment Tonight” host gushed to Meester.
“And she’s my real shiksa goddess,” Brody duly pointed out.
On the “Access Hollywood” podium, one journalist even grabbed Meester’s face to ask if her husband kissed her as intimately as he did his scene partner on his new Netflix show.
“She taught me,” Brody chimed in again. “I mean, she gets the good stuff. That’s not even, like, the A material.”
TikTok users zoomed in on their television screens that night, posting clips highlighting the odd energy being directed Meester’s way. This was Queen B, after all. Show a little respect.
But Meester herself swears she didn’t even clock the gushy line of questioning.
“Wow, I don’t remember that,” the 39-year-old insists. “I understand that people are doing their jobs. I’m sure they’re generally trying to be nice and supportive and rooting for us, and me.”
From anyone else, this might read as frustratingly Pollyanna-ish. A politically correct answer from an actor trying not to offend the people who help her make her and her spouse’s livelihoods. But Meester really is that unbothered. It’s hard to square with the fact that she played a calculating, uppity bitch so well in the role that made her famous.
But the signs have always been there. In the 13 years since “Gossip Girl” wrapped, most of the paparazzi pictures snapped of her have been shot while she was surfing, appearing more concerned with sun protection — outfitted in a bucket hat and full-body wetsuit — than her appearance. Meanwhile, Meester and her husband, 45, have both continued to work steadily, often in independent films or as supporting characters in larger projects. Meester has played a country ingenue opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in the musical romance “Country Strong,” done an arc on the short-lived “How I Met Your Mother” spinoff and co-starred in an Elizabeth Meriwether-created sitcom that fizzled out during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In other words, she’s not overly precious about what she chooses to act in. Her latest role is in the comedic police procedural “Good Cop/Bad Cop,” which starts streaming on Amazon Prime this month. The show has been airing on The CW since February but, despite earning strong reviews, has yet to become much of a talker.
Australian actor Luke Cook — the male half of the sibling detective duo on the series — attributes much of that to the fact that the show was co-produced by a streaming company in his native country.
“There’s a marketing budget in Australia, and there’s not been one behind the U.S. launch,” says Cook. “I have family members and friends over there sending me pictures of posters of the show everywhere, and over here, there’s no sign that it’s on other than on social media.”
But if Meester is the least bit salty about the show’s reception stateside — you guessed it — she doesn’t let on.
“I’m super proud of this show,” she says. “I just really hope that if people watch it, they enjoy it. It’s my happy place.”
It’s February, about a week after the first episode dropped on The CW, and Meester is sitting in a booth at Casablanca, a dimly lit, vaguely divey Mexican restaurant whose decor is comprised entirely of memorabilia relating to the 1942 film. She’s already sipping on a mezcal margarita by the time I arrive, passing a menu to recommend the enchiladas or ceviche. She’s a regular here — her kids, ages 9 and 4, often ask to swing by after school — but doesn’t know the origin of its ties to the Humphrey Bogart-Ingrid Bergman film.
We ask the waiter.
“You know, like the movie,” he says, dropping a basket of chips on the table and walking away.
That Meester and her family are gravitating toward the familiar right now makes sense. It’s been just over a month since their home burned to the ground in the Palisades fire.
She’s still trying to find the right words to describe the loss. Devastating, of course. That’s the first one she settles on. Painful. But then she starts talking about how lucky she feels in the grand scheme of things — that she hasn’t had to face many crises in her life. She didn’t think she needed a perspective shift, but the fire forced one on her, and now she feels surprisingly grateful.
“Loving something — or someone — so much that it would hurt so badly to lose it, and then saying I wouldn’t have loved it any less? That’s what I think I’m here for,” she says. “I don’t want to feel unhappy loving another human and thinking, ‘Well, you could leave me tomorrow. You could die.’ That’s the horrible truth of this life. But it’s also the amazing thing of the day-to-day, and most days, I’m fortunate enough to say, are pretty damn good.”
It has been a time of stark contrast. The fires started just over 36 hours after the Golden Globes. Shortly after, the second season of “Nobody Wants This” started filming, so Brody began traveling across town from the couple’s new rental house on the Westside to go to set.
At Casablanca, Meester has just arrived from a table read for the Netflix rom-com, for which she’ll shoot a cameo in a few weeks. She says her scenes are mostly with sister characters Kristen Bell and Justine Lupe, rather than her husband. But they’ve acted together before — she thinks this is the seventh project for them — most recently on “Good Cop/Bad Cop.”
“When the camera wasn’t on her and we were doing his coverage, I would be like, ‘Leighton, you’re not acting. You’re just watching Adam with a big smile on your face,’” recalls John Quaintance, the show’s creator. “They’re so supportive of each other that it’s both heartwarming and a little sick.”
They’ve never played an onscreen couple, but Meester says she’d be down for it. “I really like hanging out with him and working with him,” she says, her eyes getting that gooey look she had watching Brody take home the actor in a comedy series prize at the Critics Choice Awards in early February. (His speech ended with this ol’ heartstring-puller: “And my darling, darling, darling wife, Leighton. Thank you. Thank you for sharing this life with me, and this journey with me. Thank you for our family. I love you with all my heart.”)
Those who’ve worked with Meester would love for her to have her own renewed moment in the sun.
“I don’t think enough people have seen how great she is at comedy,” says Quaintance. “ I think that first huge role probably hangs over her in the form of expectations that people think, ‘Oh, I’ll go see her on some sort of nighttime soap.’ And I think the real Leighton is a lot more fun than that.”
Meester acknowledges that she and her “Gossip Girl” character share startlingly little in common. She’s definitely not into headbands. But you know that saying about ducks? They look calm on the surface of the water, but their feet are anxiously paddling away underneath. That feels like the thread connecting Meester and Blair Waldorf — they’re both ambitious, the latter is just unabashed about showing it.
As a girl, Meester did local theater in Marco Island, Fla. The only stage in town was a church, so the venue moonlighted as the host of Girl Scout meetings, potluck dinners and local productions. In fifth grade, Meester got a part in a play and went there every day after school for rehearsal. She loved it so much that she convinced her mother to let her attend a modeling and acting convention in Georgia. After performing a made-up commercial for a handful of talent representatives, one urged her to move to New York for the summer to try her hand at professional auditions.
So at 11, she and her mother decamped to the city. She enrolled in junior high at Manhattan’s Professional Children’s School and soon landed a role on “Law & Order.” She got to act with Jerry Orbach and Benjamin Bratt, and the costume director liked her grape-juice-stained shirt so much that she was ordered to keep it on for her scene.
She spent her high school years in L.A. but returned to New York City for “Gossip Girl.” The show ran from 2007 to 2012, when she was in her 20s, and it’s a period she still feels tender about. “I feel so close to that person, almost now more than any other time in my life,” she says. “I feel very in touch with her, and I feel for her.”
There has, of course, been a lot of speculation about the turmoil of the “Gossip Girl” years, particularly among the suddenly-famous young and beautiful cast members. In January, after Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni entered into a public and contentious legal battle, clips resurfaced online of Meester and Lively. It has long been rumored that the two did not get along, and old interviews posted online purported to spotlight steely interactions between the two of them. Asked how she felt about being brought up in relation to the Lively drama, Meester demurs.
“Oh, I — I don’t want to talk about any of that,” she says.
At the moment, she’s focused on making her life as low-stress as possible. This summer, she’ll stay in L.A., partly because of work: She’s booked a recurring role on HBO’s forthcoming “Untitled Rachel Sennott Project.” But that’s about all she knows about how the next few months will go. After the fires, she’s focused on trying not to plan too far ahead. Her kids help with that. Lately, they’ve been fascinated with something called Stick Nation, a subculture of people on TikTok who upload videos showcasing unique sticks they’ve found in the wild.
“My son will see a stick and be like, ‘Can I take it home? It’s special.’ To see the world like that is pretty amazing,” says Meester. “I’m trying to spend those moments with them and absorb it. I was going to say trying to focus on the joy of the moment, but even sometimes the pain of it. It sounds strange, but I’ve really been enjoying this time.”