This Blake Lively Character Prepared the Actress to Play Emily in A Simple Favor

When teasers first started rolling out for Paul Feig's 2018 action/comedy, Simple servicefans of a different story that has since been completed. Blake Lively Project participants could be seen nodding their heads all over the world. They wondered about this film, in which the beloved Lively plays someone who clearly reminds them of gossip girlSerena van der Woodsen?

in Simple service — The film was a surprise hit when it hit the big screen six years ago, which makes the decision to skip the sequel all the more puzzling—Lively plays Emily Nelson, a PR executive for a fashion company who is constantly well-dressed, has a beautiful home and a handsome husband, and is also very mysterious. Her new friend, Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick), runs a vlog focusing on crafts and recipes for parents. Despite being an unlikely duo, they quickly become friends. Does this sound like Dan and Serena to anyone else?

How similar are Emily Nelson and Serena van der Woodsen?

Perhaps the simplest connection between Emily and Serena is the easiest to see, and that’s because of their sense of style, a shared taste in fashion that only the wealthiest and most sophisticated New Yorkers can have. (Oh, and that too: both characters live in New York, with Serena living in the big city and Emily in the suburbs, which she despises.) Emily tends to dress like she’s about to audition for a high-end cabaret gig in Las Vegas. She wears suit jackets and Louboutins, things most finance executives wouldn’t dream of spending thousands on. The two characters are likely to be found constantly sipping dry martinis from glasses that never seem to run dry.

But there are deeper connections between the two, connections that may require a psychoanalyst to truly understand. both of them Simple serviceEmily and gossip girlSerena acts like she's the girl everyone wants to be. They have everything anyone could want – a house and/or apartment, clothes, bags, cars, looks. They have a confidence that even the coldest souls can't penetrate. But inside, Emily and Serena are both very complex people.Women who suffer from deep-rooted insecurities that cloud their souls like personal storm clouds that follow them everywhere, day after day.

For example, Emily isn't even Lively's character's real name in Simple service. In reality, her true identity is Hope McClendon, a girl born into an abusive family, with a cruel mother and a father who frequently beat the girls. According to the character’s backstory, Hope and Faith, her twin sister, also played by Lively in the film, turned 16 and set fire to their family home, an act that killed their father and, thanks to some forgery efforts, also killed them. This allowed them to start a new life, one that Hope chose to reinvent herself as “Emily Nelson,” a new woman who just happens to have mysterious, quasi-antisocial tendencies. Anything goes in a genre-defining mystery, right?

Serena van der Woodsen isn't exactly the killer type, and she hasn't changed her identity yet, but she's certainly more complicated than she presents herself to be. Her nickname, “Upper East Side Girl,” fits her perfectly, but she doesn't quite feel like the socialite or heiress she is. Thanks to her family's wealth, Serena has it all, but she never seems to live up to the expectations placed on her, as her reputation as a party girl and the dark secrets hidden within her family history tend to cloud her ability to succeed in school and extracurricular activities.

Serena and Emily suffer a series of disappearances.

In season 6 Premiere of gossip girlThe film revolves around Serena's departure from New York after being rejected by her best friend, Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), and her on-off lover, Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley). Although she eventually returns, the shocking nature of her disappearance sends waves of anxiety through her community, with her friends and family fearing the worst. The same goes for Simple serviceEmily, who disappears without a trace after agreeing to pick up Stephanie's son from school. When “she” turns up dead later in the film, a lot of drama unfolds, including that Stephanie and Emily's husband, Sean (Henry Golding), are sleeping together, and that Sean has taken out a $4 million life insurance policy in case Emily dies after her disappearance.

Where Serena and Emily tend to intersect more than anything else is in the fact that Emily seems to be one of Serena's creations, a new persona she's decided to adopt in hopes of reinventing herself once again. Serena spends a lot of gossip girlPersonal demons have wrecked Emily's six-season run; no one can say how Emily's confidence and charm might have helped her through darker times, even if it was through self-manipulation.

Needless to say, the events of both Simple service and gossip girl Both projects are unknowably complicated, not to mention overly dramatic for the sake of storytelling. But that’s what makes both projects so beloved, especially by their respective fan bases. Perhaps it’s no coincidence, then, that Blake Lively’s most famous character informed a later icon’s creation. Let’s call it a simple favor from Lively to another.