Gossip Girl reboot: Kristen Bell is back as iconic narrator in first teaser

Rise and shine, Upper East Siders! Gossip Girl is back, and she still knows everything. Actor Kristen Bell returned as the elusive, sharp-tongued voice of New York City's Upper East Side social scene in the first teaser for the upcoming HBO Max series.

On Friday, HBO Max released the first-look teaser of its Gossip Girl reboot, which is set to premiere on the streaming service on July 8. While the faces may have changed, the intrigue about the scandalous lives of Manhattan's elite remains the same.

Watch the teaser here

The teaser offers the first peek at the new cast, including Jordan Alexander, Eli Brown, Thomas Doherty, Tavi Gevinson, Emily Alyn Lind, Evan Mock, Zion Moreno, Whitney Peak and Savannah Lee Smith.

The characters attempt to go about their highly glamorous lives, but the letters "X" and "O" keep showing up in unexpected ways in the teaser.

And gone are the tights and headbands of yesteryear, the class of 2021 has a whole new vibe. The teaser promises to deliver Gossip Girl's usual sultry shenanigans but all now set in the smartphone era, where beautiful influencers carefully police their image on social media.

With the exception of Kristen's voice, the teaser does not include any familiar faces from the original Gossip Girl.

"You've gotten so comfortable -- thinking you're in control of your image, your actions, the narrative -- that you forgot one thing: I can see you," Kristen says in that classic, mischievous tone.

"And before I'm through, I'll make sure you see you, too," she continues before multiple overlapping voices speak out her iconic line: "You know you love me." "Xoxo, gossip girl," she signs off as the teaser comes to a dramatic and intriguing close.

Developed by showrunner Joshua Safran, who previously worked as an executive producer and writer on the original series, the new iteration of this teen staple returns the viewers to an updated Upper East Side of New York.

While plot details are scarce, Variety reported that the new version of Gossip Girl will take place "nine years after the original blogger's website went dark."

The series also promises to explore how social media "and the landscape of New York itself" has changed in almost a decade.

The new episodes will continue to pull inspiration from both the novels by Cecily von Ziegesar and The CW series developed by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who are also serving as executive producers on the reboot, reported Variety.

Gossip Girl is produced by Fake Empire and Alloy Entertainment in association with Warner Bros. Television and CBS Studios. The series is written, executive produced and was developed by Joshua Safran of Random Acts.

The original Gossip Girl ran for six seasons between 2007 and 2012, starring Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley, Chace Crawford and Ed Westwick.