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Two stars from the original Gossip Girl series had a mini reunion, delighting fans of the show.

Ed Westwick and Kelly Rutherford posed together in a gold lift for a trio of selfies which they both shared to social media.

Posting one snap on his Instagram stories, Westwick captioned the picture: “Elevator selfie with the legend herself.”

Meanwhile, Rutherford uploaded all three pictures to her Instagram with a black heart emoji.

In the pictures, both are sporting shades, while Westwick is dressed in head-to-toe black and Rutherford is wearing layers in shades of beige.

The pair’s characters were close in the CW show, which ran for six seasons from 2007 to 2012, charting the fictional lives of Manhattan’s elite social set.

Westwick starred as bad-boy hotel heir Chuck Bass, while Rutherford played his stepmother and then adoptive mother Lily van der Woodsen (though her surname changed several times throughout the show due to her numerous marriages).

Lily was also the mother of Serena van der Woodsen, played by Blake Lively in her break-out role, and married Chuck’s father Bart Bass, played by Robert John Burke, in the season one finale. After Bart was killed off in season two, Lily became like a mother to Chuck, and the characters were often involved in mutual plotlines and heartfelt scenes together.

The social media post of the pair unexpectedly reuniting 12 years after the show ended garnered more than 1.4 million likes and thousands of excited comments from fans.

“Fave duo,” wrote one, while another commented: “best. reunion. ever.”

Westwick recently married his girlfriend of three years, Supergirl actress Amy Jackson, in a lavish Italian wedding ceremony, also attended by Rutherford.

The original Gossip Girl cast included Penn Badgley, who went on to play the main character in hit Netflix show You, and Kristen Bell, who acted as narrator by providing the narration as the anonymous Gossip Girl character.

A reboot of the show aired on HBO in 2021 to mixed reviews.

In what feels like the blink of an eye, Phillip Schofield is heading back to our primetime screens.

He never was a casualty of cancel culture – this was a spectacular career collapse sparked by a serious HR violation, an abuse of power and a betrayal of his inner circle, not to mention millions of viewers who saw one man and realised he was another. “I have brought myself down. I am done. I have to talk about television in the past tense, which breaks my heart,” he said then. But that was then.

Now, 16 months later, here he is, a contemporary Lazarus, gearing up for a comeback as if nothing had ever happened. In the fame business, it seems that even the most spectacular falls from grace have a reset button.

After last year’s debacle involving a tawdry affair with a much younger colleague on ITV’s This Morning, Phillip Schofield, the TV veteran, is somehow clawing his way back into the limelight.

This time he’s washed up – both figuratively and literally – on a desert island in a three-part Channel 5 special, Phillip Schofield: Cast Away. Note the narrative: here he is as an embattled survivor.

It is a very modern form of public therapy in which a disgraced star seeks redemption through the absurd theatre of manufactured reality. But in this chaotic ecosystem – of TV, of public opinion, of social media – the gambit might just pay off.

Let me tell you, from what I know of PR and strategic communications, what’s going on here.

The first trick is the apparently confessional format of the show. The solitude allows Schofield to tell his side of the story that dethroned him without dissenting voices interrupting. Then there is the setting that unsubtly symbolises both humility and victimhood – all clearly designed to propel Schofield into a redemption arc.

He went quiet for a time after the scandal hit. That, too, was strategic. These days, the public’s attention span is about as long as a TikTok clip, and the news cycle is just as fleeting. A full 80% of online news stories hit their peak within 20 hours, meaning that we collectively forget them faster than we scroll past useless ads. Borkowski research confirms that even a major scandal only holds our fragile interest for two weeks, tops.

This collective short-term memory loss is the perfect breeding ground for long-term amnesia. In that negative space, fractured reputations are painstakingly rebuilt and disgraced characters miraculously rebrand themselves – as if we wouldn’t remember the trainwreck they caused last Tuesday.

Can it go wrong? Of course it can. Consider the version of this strategy being conducted in parallel in the US with fellow cancellee Ellen DeGeneres, who lost her primetime show amid internal bullying allegations at odds with her much-loved catchphrase to viewers (“Be kind”). Her comeback vehicle, a widely derided standup Netflix special For Your Approval, should act as a cautionary tale for Schofield. She, too, picked a format she could control and in which she was the only voice – a platform on which she could give her side of the story unchallenged, and one on which she could paint herself as the “real” victim in her cancellation.

But she’s been panned. “No apologies and not particularly funny: Ellen DeGeneres’s shameless return to standup,” was the Guardian verdict. DeGeneres’s comeback vehicle appears to have lacked the necessary subtlety and balance to rehabilitate her public image. She compares her experience of being cancelled with the ostracism she experienced when coming out as gay in 1997. Gun, foot, bang.

Schofield must avoid these pitfalls. But however well pitched his comeback strategy, Cast Away is almost certainly going to be a success for Channel 5, whose decision to platform Schofield has thrust it into a spotlight that generally eludes the minnow of UK terrestrial television. Also worth noting: its achievement in preventing the show’s existence from being scooped by a tabloid until just days before broadcast, when the publicity suits it.

We are a harsh, judgmental culture, and yet we enjoy a redemption story. The headlines generated by the mere prospect of Schofield’s onscreen return demonstrate that we are on some level still fascinated by the character even while recognising his wrongdoing and his trajectory. He’s got our attention instantly; his challenge now is to maintain it without sustaining further damage to his already battered reputation.

If Cast Away is to launch him out of showbusiness purgatory, Schofield must put in the performance of a lifetime. The programme will need to feel raw and authentic.

Facing a morbidly curious but largely unsympathetic public, Schofield must walk a tightrope of humility, contrition, grace, thick skin and self-awareness, while also reminding us of the prodigious camera presence that made him a star in the first place.

No tantrums, no indignation at his downfall, no navel-gazing. He must be sincere or at least construct a sincerity – and then keep his fingers crossed.

TOWIE’S Tommy Mallet and Georgia Kousoulou have revealed they’re having a baby girl after he opened up about losing £4million.

The ITVBe personality and fashion brand businessman, 32, is preparing to welcome his second child with wife and co-star Georgia, 33.

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And the blonde beauty delighted fans with her latest Instagram post yesterday.

Taking to the platform, Georgia shared four ultrasound scans of their upcoming arrival along with an adorable caption.

She wrote: “Our little girl. The first pictures we have actually been able to get as baby girl is breach with legs & arms infront of her face, her little hand under her chin.

“Thank you so much @pure.scan you are the best.”

Georgia and Tommy left Towie in 2021 and were subsequently given their own reality show, Baby Steps, to document family life.

The pair secretly wed last year after welcoming their son Brody in 2021.

Last year, they were left heartbroken after suffering a tragic miscarriage.

Georgis and Tommy went for their 12 week scan and were told about the rare chromosome disorder, called triploid syndrome, that meant their baby had no chance of survival.

The discovery left Georgia with the agony of having to undergo a termination – had she continued with the pregnancy, her baby would have been miscarried or stillborn.

Speaking about dealing with the news, Georgia previously said: “It’s a very hard thing to take in when someone says your baby isn’t going to survive, but you’re watching that same baby moving around.

“If there had been no heartbeat, it might have been easier to accept. I asked if it was my fault, or if there was anything I could have done differently.

“He said it was incredibly rare and nobody was to blame, but I couldn’t stop torturing myself.”

The couple halted filming their show Baby Steps while she came to terms with her loss, with Georgia later saying:  “I was in the darkest place I’d ever been.”

Tommy, who co-owns trainer brand Mallet London, recently revealed his clash with his business partner Evren Ozka, which has now seen the pair lock horns in court.

Continuing his candid chat on Ben Gallagha’s Everybody Wants To Be Us podcast he told how his bank balance had plummeted.

Tommy said: “I was very cash rich at one point

“I’d always have 4million in the bank but now I’ve probably got £5K in and I’m like f**king hell.

“How am I gonna pay for this?

Mallet London has taken the footwear world by storm over the last nine years.

Tommy built the firm with Evren from scratch in 2015.

They worked from Evren’s premises and the business exploded, making them millions.

However, over the past year, Tommy has spoken cryptically about an ongoing court case centred on Mallet London.

He told how he had offloaded his assets after departing the company in October 2023, but claimed his lips were legally sealed over the details about what had happened.

Tommy did, however, write on social media: “It’s probably not over, but as it stands I can work and support my family.

“I’ve sold all my assets to defend myself and starting from scratch, but I’ve got some wonderful companies and I will give it my all to get it back so my family can continue living the life I worked so hard to give them.”

Tommy Mallet’s Business Journey

Tommy grew his brand and made his fortune from humble beginning that saw him grow up on a council estate in London

While Tommy might be living a life of luxury now; treating himself to a customised Ferrari and flying around the world – it wasn’t always like that for the dad-of-one.

He grew up on a council estate in North London and left school with no GCSEs.

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His upbringing is what actually inspired him to create his footwear brand, as he was bullied at school for the clothes he wore.

The businessman said that he was humiliated when he was just 12 because his family couldn’t afford to buy him fashionable trainers.

He trained as a carpenter after school before joining the cast of Towie – which is where he met his fiancée Georgia.

Speaking about his childhood, he told MailOnline: “I feel like at one point in my life I definitely could have had the potential to go down the wrong path but ultimately, I knew that I wanted to do things the right way and to succeed.

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“So staying on the right track was important to me.”

His shoe brand is favored by the likes of Drake, Olly Murs, Craig David, and Will.i.am.

He launched Mallet in 2015 and by 2020 the business had clocked up 11.8million sales.

His shoes and apparel is stocked in over 150 stores around the world, and that’s only going to increase.

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Tommy, who made the Forbes 30 under 30 list, says he prefers to be known for his work rather than his time on Reality TV.

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