The night before her THR interview, Leighton Meester watched Friendship, the Tim Robinson cringe comedy about disastrous social encounters taken to absurd extremes — and she hasn’t stopped ruminating about it. “I really will think to myself, ‘What if I said or did the worst thing right now?’ ” she says. “Like I’m pushing against the instinct to do or say something crazy.”
Lately, that anxiety feels a little less hypothetical. “In the last couple of months, I haven’t even been able to turn on the TV at the end of the day, I’m just, like, survival sleeping,” she goes on. Meester, her husband, actor Adam Brody, and their two young children were among the thousands of Angelenos who lost homes in the Palisades Fire.
Still, she’s clearly more than surviving. Right now, in fact, Meester’s on a promotional run for Good Cop/Bad Cop, The CW’s offbeat procedural that pairs her with Luke Cook as estranged siblings forced to work together as police partners. (It’s coming to Prime Video on June 15.) The show marks the Gossip Girl alum’s return to network TV, following her brief 2018 run on ABC’s Single Parents, and it caps off a recent surge in screen work.
NBC’s offbeat procedural Good Cop/Bad Cop stars Meester and Luke Cook as estranged siblings forced to work together.
Vince Valitutti/Future Shack Entertainment
Over the course of the past year, she’s joined season two of Apple TV+’s The Buccaneers, a loose adaptation of an unpublished Edith Wharton novel that filmed in Scotland, and is currently shooting an untitled HBO series from Zillennial comedian Rachel Sennott. It’s about a group of clueless influencers trying to make it in L.A. while completely unaware that they’re the butt of the show’s joke. “At least I hope that’s what we’re doing,” Meester cracks. “Because that’s what I’m doing.”
This fall, there will be even more on her call sheet: She’ll be appearing alongside Brody on the second season of Netflix’s Nobody Wants This, playing a momfluencer. “It’s a show where everybody feels happy to be there,” she says, noting that most of the time she barely notices with whom she’s co-starring. “I truly do watch him and forget that I’m watching my husband.”
Meester’s own origin story, incidentally, reads like a streaming drama in itself. Born in a Texas hospital while her mother was serving time on marijuana charges, she spent her early months in a halfway house and was raised in Florida by her grandmother. At age 11, her mother re-entered the picture and brought her to New York, where Meester modeled for Ralph Lauren and Limited Too and started auditioning. She booked Law & Order at 13. By 20, she had landed Gossip Girl.
In the years since that iconic 2007-12 drama, she has racked up credits ranging from indie films (The Roommate, Country Strong) to Broadway (Of Mice and Men). Now 38, she’s been famous for nearly half her life — and she’s finally settling into it.
Thom Browne dress with
Swarovski crystal trim.
Photographed by Kanya Iwana
“In my 20s, I was working, but I was just sort of flailing,” she says. “Now I feel more comfortable literally in my body and my skin. I don’t place emphasis on the opinions or judgments of others anymore.”
And as more opportunities roll in, she’s learning that most elusive Hollywood skill of all: how to say no.
“If I’m doing eight episodes of a show, I have to think, ‘Are the people nice? Will the long hours be fun?’ Because I don’t want to be in a situation where the vibe is off,” she says. “I’ve had plenty of experiences where I’m like, ‘I wish this was cooler.’ ”
Not her problem anymore.
Thom Browne jacket, cardigan, shirt, skirt. Shoes, her own.
Photographed by Kanya Iwana
This story appeared in the June 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
