The Boys of ‘Gossip Girl’ Are a Brat Pack for the Instagram Age

“These two make me laugh,” Doherty says, once he’s composed himself. “There’s some telepathy shit going on. We all know exactly what the other person is thinking,” Brown confirms. Their collision was essentially random, a paint-by-numbers casting of impish jokester, rich do-gooder, and chill skater. But against all odds, they became practically inseparable. According to Mock, “The girls get mad at us because there’re so many inside jokes.”

Call them the Gossip Boys, a Brat Pack for the Instagram age. Doherty, 26, is a Scottish former Disney star whose role alongside Zoë Kravitz in High Fidelity generated headlines such as “Why Is Thomas Doherty on High Fidelity So Hot?” Mock, 24, is a pink-haired model and ambassador of multihyphenate cool who frequently graces Calvin Klein billboards. Brown, 21, was only eight when the original Gossip Girl series premiered on the CW, but he’s the breakout star of the new show.

“They’re like college roommates,” says Whitney Peak, one of the show’s female leads. Filming a TV show last year, in an unopened New York City, was tricky—and before they could safely venture out, they had only one another. “When we moved here there was nothing going on, at all,” Brown says. “The city was shut down, it was freezing outside—”