Gossip Girl alum Ed Westwick paid tribute to former costar Michelle Trachtenberg following her death at age 39.
“So sad to hear of the passing of @michelletrachtenberg,” Westwick, 37, wrote via his Instagram Story on Wednesday, February 26, alongside a throwback photo of Trachtenberg from the series. “Sending prayers.”
Police sources confirmed to Us Weekly earlier on Wednesday that Trachtenberg was found unconscious inside her New York City apartment, located in Midtown West. The incident is not believed to be suspicious. No cause of death has been reported. (The New York Post was the first to break the news.)
Trachtenberg began her career as a child star in the 1996 movie Harriet the Spy, which also starred Rosie O’Donnell and Eartha Kitt. She went on to join the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Sarah Michelle Gellar’s sister, Dawn.
‘Gossip Girl’ and ‘Buffy’ Star Michelle Trachtenberg Dead at Age 39
In 2008, she made her first appearance on Gossip Girl as Georgina Sparks, a former friend of Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) who loved scheming. After starring in 28 episodes of the original CW show, Trachtenberg went on to reprise the role in two episodes of Max’s short-lived sequel series, also titled Gossip Girl, in 2022.
While Georgina was usually the villain on Gossip Girl, Trachtenberg said she liked to find the good side of the character.
“I think with every evil character, there’s some moments of deception, but there has to be some redeemable qualities there,” she told Seventeen in 2009. “You’re going to have to decide, as an audience, if those redeemable qualities are just a big trick to get everyone to love her. Then you’ve got to tune in to see if she pulls the wool over everyone’s eyes!”
Michelle Trachtenberg Through the Years: Her Life and Career in Photos
She went on to say that playing Georgina was “easy” because Gossip Girl’s writers did such a great job crafting her deceptions.
“It’s actually kind of easy because the words that they write are so fantastic,” she explained. “It’s kind of easy to be evil when you’re saying evil things. It’s definitely a lot more fun than playing the good girl. I love the reaction you get. I never understood why some actors don’t want to play villains or evil characters.”
When Georgina returned to the sequel series, creator Joshua Safran said that Trachtenberg pitched her own comeback.
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“I definitely knew that I wanted Georgina back from pretty much the day after I pitched the show. Michelle actually started DMing about it during the season 1 writers room,” Safran told Deadline in December 2022. “She was like, ‘I want to come back.’ And I was like, ‘I really want you to as well but I actually don’t think season 1 is the right place,’ because I wanted everybody to be really set up so that she could come in and sort of destroy them.”
