Spotted in Central Park: Blake Lively and her Gossip Girl costar Zuzanna Szadkowski.
Lively, who played Serena van der Woodsen on the long-running CW series from 2007 to 2012, recruited Szadkowski — best-known for her role as Dorota Kishlovsky — for an ad promoting Lively’s canned cocktail brand, Betty Booze. The clip was shared via YouTube on Monday, June 30, and began with the actresses reuniting on a park bench.
“I have tea,” Szadkowski says, playing on the popular fan theory that Dorota should have been Gossip Girl. (Penn Badgley’s Dan was ultimately revealed as the face behind the voice, instead.)
“Good tea?” Lively replies, to which Szadkowski teases, “The best tea.”
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Szadkowski then reveals a can of Betty Booze vodka iced tea along with two tea cups. She pours the beverage into the cups, saying, “It’s crisp. Balanced. Nothing artificial.”
“That’s hard to find around these parts,” Lively, 37, says.
“Yeah, no kidding,” Szadkowski, 46, quips.
She then touts a second Betty Booze flavor, a passion fruit vodka iced tea, calling the drink “a naughty little bitch.”
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“So I’ve heard,” Lively responds.
“I drank it on the walk over,” Szadkowski jokes, to which a smiling Lively gushes, “I have missed you.”
Lively then gets up to exit, revealing a pair of sweatpants and Ugg boots hiding under her high-fashion outfit. (The moment seemingly references the now-viral season 6 Gossip Girl episode that accidentally showed Lively sporting cozy clothes under her couture dress during a scene.)
As Gossip Girl fans know all too well, Szadkowski portrayed the housekeeper and confidant of Serena’s frenemy, Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), during the show’s original run. Blair, however, was not mentioned in the ad.
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More than a decade after the series ended, Lively, not Serena, is making headlines. The star is currently embroiled in a bitter legal dispute with Justin Baldoni, her director and costar in the 2024 drama It Ends With Us.
Lively sued Baldoni, 41, in December 2024, accusing him of sexual harassment on the set of their film and later orchestrating a smear campaign against her surrounding the film’s premiere.
Baldoni has denied the allegations and filed a $400 million defamation lawsuit against both Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds. Earlier this month, a judge dismissed Baldoni’s suit. Team Baldoni ultimately chose not to file a revised legal motion, instead choosing to focus on Lively’s lawsuit. A trial date for the duo is set for spring 2026.
“The Court’s decision on the motion to dismiss has no effect whatsoever on the truth that there was no harassment nor any smear campaign, and it does not in any way affect our vigorous defense against Ms. Lively’s claims,” Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman told Us Weekly in a statement. “Discovery is proceeding and we are confident that we will prevail against these factually baseless accusations. Instead of revising the existing claims, our clients will be pursuing additional legal options that are available to us.”
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Lively, for her part, celebrated the legal victory via Her Instagram Story.
“Last week, I stood proudly alongside 19 organizations united in defending women’s rights to speak up for their safety,” she wrote on June 9. “Like so many others, I’ve felt the pain of a retaliatory lawsuit, including the manufactured shame that tries to break us.”
She added, “I’m more resolved than ever to continue to stand for every woman’s right to have a voice in protecting themselves, including their safety, their integrity, their dignity and their story.”
