Wallace Shawn Does "Gossip Girl"

Last week on "Gossip Girl," as Blair Waldorf, the cosseted queen bee of private school society, was excitedly waiting to meet her mother's new boyfriend, she wondered aloud what a dashing stepfather he might make and demanded a floral display to complement his presumably Cary Grantish good looks.

A bell rang, an elevator opened and the mystery suitor was revealed: enter the squinty-eyed Wallace Shawn, wearing a smirk and a smart blue suit.

Cut to the expression of unabashed disappointment on Blair's face. "That must be his driver," she said.

But no, that really is Mr. Shawn, 65, the actor, playwright and emissary from the New York intelligentsia, mixing it up with the pampered kids of "Gossip Girl," the prime-time CW soap opera.

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