Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester unrecognisable in The Buccaneers season 2 trailer
Gossip Girl icon Leighton Meester appears unrecognisable from her days as Blair Waldorf in the stunning trailer for the highly-awaited second season of the smash-hit period drama The Buccaneers.
Kickstarting on Apple TV+ in 2023, this opulent saga first captured hearts by charting the misadventures of a clique of high society American women during the sumptuous Gilded Age, taking London's aristocratic scene by storm in their bid to snag well-to-do husbands.
Instead of charming the English elites, their brazen and lively antics saw them gaining notoriety as the delightful hell-raisers within the starched collars of London's upper crust.
Released today (Thursday, 22nd May), the trailer gives viewers a thrilling peek at Meester stepping into the role of Nell – seen imploring Patricia St. George (played by Christina Hendricks) to acquaint her with Annabel 'Nan' St. George (Kristine Frøseth).
The intrigue surrounding Nell has fans pondering if Meester might be playing Nan's natural mother, sending admirers of both previous Gossip Girl shenanigans and The Buccaneers into a frenzy for the next chapter, reports the Mirror US.
On Reddit, one fan couldn't contain themselves: "Omd is her mum Blair Waldorf???!!!!"
Over on X (formerly Twitter), the quips kept coming: "the buccaneers season 2 trailer really saved leighton meester until the end like a marvel reveal."
Another enthusiast commented: "SOOOOOO excited for the 2nd season! Really looking forward to seeing Leighton Meester in this season!"
"SO many thoughts... mabel and honoria.... lizzy as a bride... nan standing up to her sister's abuser... leighton meester cameo gagging me at the last second... i love girlhood," read one fan's post.
Another ecstatic viewer exclaimed: "leighton meester at the end WE ALL CHEERED."
Meester, still mingling with America's elite in her latest role, looks unrecognisable compared to her iconic portrayal of Blair in her fleeting appearance.
The Gossip Girl star, always known for her impeccable fashion sense, dazzles as Nell in a sumptuous purple evening dress, her hair styled in sophisticated curls, adorned with striking ruby earrings.
The synopsis for the new series teases: "Now the Buccaneers are no longer the invaders - England is their home. In fact, they're practically running the place.
"Nan is the Duchess of Tintagel, the most influential woman in the country. Conchita (Alisha Boe) is Lady Brightlingsea, heroine to a wave of young American heiresses.
"And Jinny (Imogen Waterhouse) is on every front page, wanted for the kidnapping of her unborn child.
"The girls have all had to mature quickly and now must fight to make their voices heard, grappling with romance, desire, envy, childbirth, and mortality... issues that affect women of any age, in any era.
"Last time we got a taste of England. This time we're in for a veritable feast."
Are you ready to see Nan and the Buccaneers stir up more mayhem when they return next month?
The Buccaneers season 2 premieres Wednesday, 18th June on Apple TV+.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mirror
28 minutes ago
- Daily Mirror
Love Is Blind UK fans have 'bad feeling' about season 2 couple after 'telling comment'
Love Is Blind UK season 2 is underway, with the cracks already starting to show for some couples on the Netflix series. *Warning - this article contains spoilers for Love Is Blind UK season 2.* Love Is Blind UK fans have been left divided over one couple, with some hoping they will go the distance and others predicting heartbreak. It comes after Netflix dropped the first four episodes of season 2 this week, with a fresh batch of British singles looking for love in the pods. One Love Is Blind pair that quickly became fan favourites were 29-year-old medical company owner Sarover and 31-year-old gym owner Kal. The couple have already faced a few obstacles, as they respectively come from Indian and Pakistani backgrounds, which they acknowledged could make it harder for their families to accept their romance. However, Kal and Sarover decided their connection was strong enough for them to overcome these difficulties and became engaged in the pods. Everything was going well when the pair jetted off to Cyprus, but things took a turn when Kal admitted Sarover was 'not his usual type'. This comment was clearly playing on Sarover's mind, as when they met the other couples in the process, she admitted that the comment had made her less sure of his physical attraction towards her. Fans were also concerned for the couple, with many taking to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, to voice their thoughts. One wrote: 'Kal better not break Sarover's heart! She's a gorgeous girl… he is giving me a bad feeling with her not being his 'type'.' A second penned: 'Kal needs to stop singing about Sarover not being his type, like we get it, don't make the girl feel insecure.' While a third agreed: 'Kal is going to annoy me this season I don't want Saraover to feel insecure because she's absolutely stunning!' 'Is it me or Kal is not into Sarover… Sad because she seems so nice,' another lamented, as another pointed out: 'Ya'll couldn't tell Kal wasn't into Sarover at the reveal? He barely complimented her.' One more added: 'The kisses between Kal and Sarover seem a bit forced lmaoooo idk something is off with him.' However, Kal and Sarover also have plenty of supporters, with one person writing: 'Hold on, Kal and Sarover's first date was so cute. I'm rooting for them.' 'Kal and Sarover are my ship. I hope they go the distance,' a second tweeted, as another concurred: 'Sarover and Kal you've won me over already.' 'Rooting for Kal and Sarover, they're so pure,' yet another added, as one more thoughtfully wrote: 'Kal and Sarover. Super chill and beautiful. 'I'm looking forward to seeing how you both navigate your cultural differences. Their reveal… Gorgeous, gorgeous.' Nevertheless, Netflix viewers remain divided, with one more writing: 'I actually hope Kal and Sarover work out but idk I just don't see it.' The first four episodes of Love Is Blind UK season 2 are available to stream now on Netflix.
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
Media corporations beware, piracy is starting to roar back
But corporate greed and the battle for market share have recreated a lot of the same conditions where piracy once thrived. For film and television, the battle for rights is often an exclusive agreement, meaning having access to everything requires paying subscriptions to multiple services. If you want everything available that you wish to watch, then make sure and subscribe to Disney+, Netflix, Max, Apple TV+, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and an assortment of others. It all becomes reminiscent of the expensive and burdensome cable packages that plagued the 2000s. The lessons learned from the past become easily forgotten through the tunnel vision of quarterly profits, and the decisions of media corporations seem to always be taken at the expense of their users. Read more: Spotify CEO is bankrolling high-tech military warfare, now musicians are walking away Except now, in 2025, people are poorer, and household entertainment budgets are nonexistent. Where convenience once dictated user behaviour, now affordability is a major factor. The streaming model has become unsustainable – if it ever was sustainable – and it will only get more complicated and less appealing as the expectations of endless growth cannibalise streaming services further. Moves like widespread crackdowns on password sharing and other harsh decisions made to punish users just make the openness and freedom of piracy all the more alluring. And prices for streaming services steadily climb, too. The price of Netflix's standard plan has more than doubled since 2011. Plenty of streaming services have subsequently introduced a cheaper plan equivalent to their original asking price, but with adverts included where there were none before. The constant flow and lack of interruption were once an arrow in streaming's quiver, but now media corporations seem intent on bringing back all the pitfalls of traditional television and radio that initially drove people to the convenience of pirating. Piracy was at its most insignificant during the height of streaming's dominance in the pandemic, but it has risen in use dramatically in the following years, up to 216 billion website visits in 2024 from the low of 130bn in 2020. Several factors are converging to make piracy an attractive option once again. The promise of streaming was simplicity – one or two services for everything. Now, it's a labyrinth of paywalls and subscription fees, and there is increasing fatigue towards such fragmentation. Want access to all your favourite shows and films? You might need to subscribe to quite a number of services (Image: Unsplash) And the illusion of endless choice has begun to run dry. As studios pull their shows and movies to bolster their own platforms, users find that what was available yesterday is gone today. HBO Max's infamous purges, Disney's vault strategy, and Netflix's ever-rotating catalogue mean that even loyal subscribers can't reliably access what they want. Why subscribe in the first place when your watchlist might disappear next month, once the licensing and rights terms change (which is often the case)? Before, piracy was framed as an attack on artists, that downloading a song is equivalent to personally taking food out of the artist's mouth. The erosion of the moral argument against piracy is perhaps the biggest danger to streaming's dominance. Because it's now not the artists facing the harmful effects of piracy but the industry itself, the faceless corporate middlemen who are already busy exploiting artists through streaming. In the old industry model, there was a bit of truth to piracy decimating the artist's share. But in the streaming era, where artists are compensated so little, it's much harder to make this case. Read more: Netflix and the films no one is actually watching A trend of straight-out advocating piracy has been building, with musicians, filmmakers, and even actors openly criticising the inequities of streaming payouts. Some artists are encouraging piracy as a way to stop an unwanted license holder from benefiting from their work. When the system feels rigged, piracy becomes its own form of protest. The resurgence of piracy shows a failure of trust. Media corporations spent years conditioning audiences to believe that streaming was the ethical, sustainable alternative to piracy, only to replicate the same exploitative practices that pushed people toward illegal downloads in the first place. The difference now is that consumers are more aware than ever of how little their subscriptions actually support creators, making piracy feel less like theft and more like bypassing a broken system. The industry's response so far only accelerates the problem. If corporations refuse to adapt, history will repeat itself. The golden age of streaming was built on the illusion of consumer-friendly access. Now, as that illusion shatters, piracy is poised to reclaim its throne – not because people want to steal, necessarily, but because the industry has left them with no choice.
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
Step into the witty world of PG Wodehouse
'Yes, he's got a great story,' says Daws, one of the most familiar faces on television, who has appeared in the likes of Jeeves and Wooster, John Sullivan's Roger Roger. Essex-born Daws became interested in PG 'Plum' Wodehouse (as a child, Wodehouse couldn't pronounce his first name, Pelham, and early attempts sounded like 'Plum,') when at RADA. 'I was given a copy of Right Ho, Jeeves by actor/writer Tom Wilkinson, who was directing at the Academy. I read it and loved it, little knowing that a few years later I'd be starring in a wonderful TV adaptation.' Daws became fascinated with Wodehouse, reading several biographies of the writer. 'I learned about his extraordinary life, including his early career as a Broadway lyricist, which I'd known nothing about. I then called my friend Bill Humble and said, 'Do you think there might be a play about this?'. Incredibly, he told me that he'd just finished working on a screenplay about his life, which wasn't being picked up.' He smiles. 'The screenplay didn't make it, but the play has.' The actor adds; 'I was invited up to do the piece at the Assembly two years ago but couldn't because I was filming. Then Bill died just before Christmas. But I called our producer and suggested we do it this year.' The Wodehouse theatre project is clearly a labour of love. 'I was fascinated to learn that Wodehouse was a man who lived in a little bubble. So few people actually knew what he looked or sounded like. And I had no idea that before he'd become a successful writer, he'd been a contributor of stories to magazines, but then made his fortune in America as a lyricist for the likes of Cole Porter. At one point he had five shows running on Broadway simultaneously, and even if he'd never writer a Jeeves and Wooster, he'd have become famous for helping to create the great American musical, using the American vernacular, which hadn't been done before.' What sort of man was Wodehouse? 'He was guarded and considered quite shy and naïve. He was in some ways a repressed Victorian, separated from his parents for most of his childhood. (His father was a Colonial Civil Servant. Plum was dumped on a nanny from the ages of two to 15 while they worked in Hong Kong). He really did exist in the world he conjured up and was never really happy in the world outside of it. The one time in his world he was forced out of it, it didn't go well at all.' Daws is referring to Wodehouse's connection with Nazi Germany. Living in France when war broke out, he was playing in a cricket match on the June day in 1941 when taken prisoner and sent to an internment camp in Upper Silesia. The Germans manipulated him into making what became known as the 'Berlin broadcast', which was used by the Nazis for propaganda purposes. He wrote a diary of this period entitled Wodehouse in Wonderland. Wodehouse described the period as his 'great shaming.' MI6 later exonerated the writer. 'To be honest, some people are still divided (about Wodehouse's complicity) but I think there is no shadow of a doubt that he was innocent. But stupid? Yes. Interestingly (and sadly) the British government didn't release the report of his innocence until after his death.' Wodehouse was a workaholic, describing himself as 'a writing machine'. 'This was when he was happiest,' says Daws. Was Wodehouse living the life in his head of the sort he couldn't manage for real? 'I didn't think of that, but I think it's spot on. It's often true of writers generally, such as Dickens, but I think it's especially true of Wodehouse.' Daws adds; 'And Plum didn't write about a world which existed. It was historic, but it had a lightness to it, about toffs and rich people and the so-called Roaring Twenties. Yet he's still respected as one the greatest comic writers ever. And he was entirely dedicated to his craft.' The actor laughs. 'He knew that comedy is a very serious business.' The play is set in the 1950s where we see Wodehouse is in his New York state home, writing another Jeeves and Wooster book. We hear Wodehouse's wife Ethel ('Bunny') occasionally ask for a drink as an off-stage voice, while he writes letters to his beloved daughter 'Snorkles' (his affectionate name for Leonora). He is also pursued by a biographer, whom we don't see, keen to write his story. And Wodehouse occasionally breaks into the songs he has co-written. Read more Daws loves the challenge, but he's eminently qualified to entertain an audience, leaping across characters including Bertie Wooster, Jeeves, Lord Emsworth, Gussie Fink-Nottle and the squashily romantic Madeline Bassett. He has long been a natural performer. Born with feet and leg problems, the actor spent the first five years of his life in and out of hospital. 'I didn't walk until I was five, but I was precocious little brat and cast into the women's ward I sang songs like How Much Is That Doggie in The Window.' He grins. 'I blame my early age handicap for introducing me to the joys of comedy. And then at my ordinary secondary school, I was lucky to have a great drama department. But there were showbiz genes in the family tree, such as grandmother who appeared in Marie Lloyd musicals in the West End and played the Fairy Godmother at Drury Lane.' Robert Daws' talent shone through, accepted into RADA aged just 17, he went on to join the Royal Lyceum Company in Edinburgh and work in acclaimed TV productions such as the award-winning Outside Edge by Richard Harris. He smiles as he rewinds, 'I think I'm so lucky to have worked in rep theatre. You really get the chance to find out what you are good at and hearing the gears crunch when it doesn't work.' Daws grins. 'In this play I do almost everything, play so many characters. It's almost like going back to the days when I played the back end of a pantomime camel in Dick Whittington.' But the reason he can shine in this production is because he was that half of a camel. 'Yes, you do learn as you go along.' He laughs out loud. 'I do owe an awful lot to Esmarelda. For one thing, she got me my Equity Card.' Wodehouse in Wonderland, Assembly George Square Studios, until August 24, (excluding 18), at 6:10pm
