Keeping a secret is easier said than done.
During the height of Gossip Girl, co-stars Jessica Szohr and Ed Westwick turned their on-camera chemistry into a real-life romance. And while their relationship came to an end in 2010, both parties quickly learned how hard it is to keep a love story on the down-low.
"A lot of us did date and I remember when Ed and I started dating, we wanted to keep it super private," Jessica shared on the Feb. 18 episode of the Chicks in the Office podcast. "A couple months in—we had been together for quite a bit before it came out—we were going to go to a New York Knicks game and we went back and forth."
Stepping out together at a major NBA basketball game would put a whole other level of eyes on this pair. Ultimately, the duo decided to do it.
"Either we are going to live this private life and never leave our apartment, or we do it and we just keep our s--t as private as we can," Jessica said. "It was either you stay home—and we were people who liked going to sporting events and concerts and plays and stuff. After a couple of months, it got old. We need to leave."
Looking back, Jessica is happy that their romance played out in 2008—before TikTok, blind items and other factors made celebrity life even trickier.
"We were like kids because I remember they called and said we all need to have publicists and we needed to have security guards and we were like, ‘Wait, this is crazy. We're just getting off work and trying to have dinner,'" she remembered. "That would have been really wild and crazy and scary."
While the series ended in 2012, much of the Gossip Girl cast tries to keep their romantic lives away from the press.
Leighton Meester's love story with Adam Brody could be a textbook example of keeping family life private in Hollywood. As for Blake Lively, she keeps her three children with husband Ryan Reynolds outside of the spotlight.
As for Jessica's love life, she welcomed a daughter with longtime boyfriend Brad Richardson at the start of 2021. And no, don't expect her to kiss and tell about her love life on her new iHeartRadio XOXO podcast. That show's all about Gossip Girl.