Gossip Girl boss confirms Zión Moreno's Luna is a transgender character
12 July 2021, 16:52
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"Luna is Luna to these people, and that’s that."
Before it was even released, HBO Max's Gossip Girl had been described as "very, very queer", promising a lot more on-screen representation than the original series.
After one episode, we've already been introduced to gay, bisexual and pansexual characters within the show's new main clique. Now, showrunner Joshua Safran has confirmed that Zión Moreno's character, Luna La, is transgender.
Zión Moreno, who is transgender herself, plays Luna La. Luna is a close friend of Julien Calloway's (Jordan Alexander), who acts as Julien's stylist/social media assistant alongside Monet de Haan (Savannah Smith).
In an interview with Variety, Safran was asked whether or not Zión was playing Luna as a cisgender character. Safran then confirmed that Luna is a trans woman in the show.
READ MORE: 10 TV shows with iconic trans and non-binary characters that you need to watch
"No, Luna is trans. I say that, but I don’t know how oblique there is of a reference to it. But yeah, Luna is a trans woman in the show," Safran told the outlet. "We decided as writers that this isn’t a show that’s about how she became her authentic self. That’s just not our story. Luna is Luna to these people, and that’s that."
Safran also added that Luna's identity will not be the subject of one of Gossip Girl's blasts, wicked schemes or exposés, adding: "There is a story later in the season that talks about disclosure. But Gossip Girl is not weaponizing anyone’s gender or sexuality in the show, or race or identity."
luna has been confirmed as trans 🏳️⚧️ pic.twitter.com/POhez7BHWl
— lunet 💭 (@lunetthinker) July 9, 2021
With only one episode of Gossip Girl available to stream at the moment, it's unclear how much of Luna's personal life will be explored within the show's first season. Fans have already fallen in love with the character and the demand for Luna to get some bigger storylines of her own, outside of Julien's narrative, is growing.
In an interview with Elle, Zión teased a little more about what she hopes to see for Luna's character going into season two, should HBO Max renew the series: “I would just like to see Luna fall in love,” she said. “I think that would really humanize her too.”
Zión also reflected on the importance of representation within the new Gossip Girl series, telling Looper: "I think that I'm just really humbled, too, because this is the biggest project that I've ever embarked on. And it's such a large scale, so I think that that has been really exciting for me. And like Savannah [Smith] said, I think that it's going to be really rewarding to be able to make an impact on little queer kids lives, on little Latino kids' lives, and I just hope that we can [use] that representation and inspire them to live authentically and live to the fullest."
