Lively was not completely sold, though. “I said, ‘No, I want to go to college. Thank you, though.’ Then they said, ‘O.K., you can go to Columbia [University] one day a week. After the first year [of the show], it’ll quiet down. Your life will go back to normal and you can start going to school. We can’t put it in writing, but we promise you can go.’ So that’s why I said, ‘O.K. You know what? I’ll do this.’”

When I asked Lively if that arrangement ended up working out (even though I already knew the answer), she responded, laughing: “This is advice to anyone: when they say, ‘We promise, but we can’t put it in writing,’ there’s a reason they can’t put it in writing.” She added, “But no, the show didn’t slow down. It just got more and more.”

If every generation has its one or two shows that prove defining, that essentially everyone seemed to watch as if there were no other choice in the matter, Gossip Girl—which is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its premiere this September—would be that show for anyone who was a teenager or twentysomething (or, in many cases, older than that!) when it first aired. The show premiered before Instagram or Snapchat had launched, and before Facebook and Twitter had become the juggernaut forces they are today. But the premise of the series—an anonymous blogger, who goes by “Gossip Girl,” monitors the goings-on of a small group of glamorous Upper East Side high-schoolers—predicted, to an almost eerie extent, what was to come for our culture. The notion of a group of people being callously gossiped about online by an anonymous troll certainly has resonance in our current climate, in which celebrities (as well as politicians and public figures) are often blogged about with a blithe and biting disregard. As Kristen Bell, who voiced “Gossip Girl” for the show, said to me, “[Schwartz and Savage] were spearheading: ‘What if the Internet is just a place to judge people? What if that’s what it turns into?’ And they turned out to be Nostradamus.” (On a meta level, the actors on the show were among the last wave of young television stars who were not broadcasting their every move on social media—which perhaps helped to create a certain air of mystery and intrigue about them, one that doesn’t exist in the same way for young television stars now.)

The show also debuted at the very end of the period during which people regularly watched shows live when they aired (as opposed to on their DVRs or laptops or phones). As Ostroff put it, “It holds such a place in pop culture and in society where people just really say, ‘I remember everything around that show. I remember where I was [when watching it] and what I was doing in my life.’”

Viewers wanted to dress like the characters; they wanted their haircuts and jewelry and ringtones; they wanted to talk like them and listen to the music they listened to. At some New York City private schools, the show—which featured its lead characters partaking in all sorts of illicit antics—was in fact “banned,” which of course only served, in all likelihood, to make the students want to watch it more. New York magazine featured the (scantily clad) cast of the show on its cover toward the end of the first season, proclaiming in its cover headline (only semi-tongue in cheek), “BEST. SHOW. EVER.”

At its core, though, while the fashion and music and Lively-ness of it all no doubt drew a large swath of viewers, the central, relatable dilemmas faced by the main characters—Blair and Serena, as well as Brooklyn “lonely boy” and eventual Serena boyfriend Dan Humphrey, ostentatious bad boy and Blair soul-mate Chuck Bass, and pinup prepster Nate Archibald—were what kept people tuning in. “Phones get updated, but the inner life of teenagers, and the things that they struggle with, are pretty timeless, regardless of what device they’re on,” Schwartz said.

At many New York City private schools, the show—which featured its lead characters partaking in all sorts of illicit antics—was in fact “banned.”

There was no shortage of high-profile guest stars throughout the run, either, as luminaries from the world of fashion, publishing, music, and art appeared on the series. Lady Gaga performed “Bad Romance” on the show, right as she was approaching the height of her fame; David O. Russell filmed a multi-episode arc, as, yes, a director. And, that’s right, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner made an appearance, in a club scene filmed at the Boom Boom Room. (“They did it for the money,” Schwartz said, with a laugh.) Trump said in an interview at the time that she never missed an episode of Gossip Girl. “I think I’m a cross between Blair Waldorf and Lily van der Woodsen when it comes to the style,” she told InStyle.