Before Emily in Paris and To The Bone, a baby Lily Collins was vying for the role of Jenny Humphrey in the original Gossip Girl series. In an interview with Glamour, the actress recalled undergoing a screen test at 17 years-old.
“I wanted it so badly,” Collins said. “Everything happens for a reason.” She continued, “I remember the screen test for Gossip Girl was on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. I was about 17 or 18 years old at the time. I remember driving onto the lot and going, ‘Oh my God. This is surreal.'”
You would recall that Taylor Momsen was eventually selected to play the role alongside Penn Badgley who famously portrayed Dan Humphrey. Unbeknown at the time, but a then-unknown Jennifer Lawrence had also auditioned for Serena van der Woodsen who was eventually played by Blake Lively.
Collins went on in her early career to appear in The Blind Side, Abduction and Mirror, Mirror. Following another successful season for Emily in Paris, the actress has most recently starred in Windfall, a Netflix thriller which was directed by her newly-wedded husband, Charlie McDowell. The 33-year-old was photographed in Manhattan this week for the promotional tour – looking extremely Parisian-chic if you ask us.
“Weirdly, there were moments when I forgot that we were together, because the way in which he directs, he such a communicative and collaborative director that is all about how the actor feels and grounding it in truth and someone that you feel very safe with in an environment where you’re the most vulnerable,” Collins explained in an interview with CBS Mornings. “That’s what you want in a life partner and it is what you want as an actor in your director.”
