Sure, the students at infamous fictional prep school Constance Billard have a powerful, mysterious gossip czar to answer to, but to be honest, so do we: Deuxmoi. Since going viral at the start of the pandemic and racking up over 1.3 million Instagram followers, Deuxmoi has cornered the pop culture gossip market. Want to know which co-stars are hooking up off camera? Deuxmoi has the deets. Need to curb the Sunday Scaries? Swiping through Deuxmoi’s Spotted Stories has become akin to attending church. The account even got name-dropped twice in HBO Max’s Gossip Girl reboot. So much for being anonymous!
On the Upper East Side of things (see what I did there?), the Gossip Girl season 1 finale left us with half-sisters Zoya and Julien fighting over teen “prince” Obie, and Davis Calloway dodging music industry #MeToo accusations. Oh, and I can’t forget to mention fellow faculty member Rafa is attempting to blackmail our beloved GG, Kate Keller, by threatening to reveal her identity.
Yeah, it’s a lotta holiday fear and very little cheer as the Gossip Girl revival wraps. Which is why we asked the IRL gossip expert @deuxmoi to dish via Zoom audio (to protect their phone number) on their Gossip Girl season 1 hot takes and reveal what actually happens when you’re running an influential rumors account, including past threats, and yes, even hints about their true identity. FWIW, even after spending an hour chatting with Deuxmoi, they’re still completely anon to me.
Cosmo: The original Gossip Girl premiered in 2007. Was Gossip Girl as a concept in the back of your mind at all when you started Deuxmoi?
Deuxmoi: The first time somebody sent in a sighting, I wrote in the word “spotted” in direct reference to Gossip Girl. But the concept for the account wasn’t taken from the show because it started just with people sharing anecdotes and stories that they had throughout the years with celebrities. It wasn’t things that were happening currently because everything was closed during the pandemic.
Gossip Girl uploads posts on the feed instead of IG Stories like you do. Why Stories instead of posts? Is it because a real post could become irrelevant or obtuse after the fact?
At first it was just aesthetics. I just didn’t like the way written posts looked on the feed. But as I started posting, I realized it was easier to create a narrative on Instagram Stories than to have a static post on feed, because if I posted something and then I immediately got an update or a correction, I could post that afterwards and help my followers see the narrative develop on a specific tip. The Stories format made it easier to digest.
Can you relate to what Gossip Girl a.k.a. Kate is experiencing emotionally? She’s the one person who has all this power and then she gives the password out and it backfires. Have you ever dealt with ‘heavy is the head that wears the crown of Deuxmoi’ type thing?
Definitely. The anxiety that you see her experience when she posts something and the aftermath is totally realistic, especially in the beginning when I really didn’t know who was following and who was reading the account. That anxiety was through the roof. There were times where I thought, ‘Oh my god, am I doing something illegal? Are the police going to knock on my door?’ I got really nervous to post.
Would you ever share the password to Deuxmoi’s Instagram account, like Kate gave Rafa?
I would never in a million, trillion years do that. Somebody whose mom is convinced that their child runs the account messaged me. They were like, ‘I want to play a trick on my family. I want them to really think I run Deuxmoi. Would you be up for it?’ And I was like, ‘Sure.’ And they were like, ‘This is what I was thinking: You give me the password to your account and I’ll take screenshots…’ And I was like, ‘Wow, I would love to help you out but there is no way I could give you the password to my account.’ So no, I would never do that.
On the show, Gossip Girl is posting about students and Kate knows the whole school is her audience. You’re discussing celebrities. Are you confident that celebs follow your page?
Yes. If I catch it at the right time, I can see which celebrities are watching my Stories. Instagram makes it really easy.
Do you think any of them are submitting blinds?
The celebrities who have submitted, I know because they’ve done so openly. Do I think that celebrities submit anonymously? I mean, I have no idea. Maybe? But how would I ever know?
I also don’t work with agents or PR teams. Nobody ever messages me like, ‘I’m J.Lo’s publicist.’ I don’t know why people think I have those types of relationships when I’ve also posted a lot of stuff that hasn’t come true. If I had the ability to check that information with these PR teams that people think that I work with, wouldn’t I do so? It would make running the account so much easier if I did, but I don’t.
Rafa and Max use the Gossip Girl page to go after each other. Have you ever gotten caught in the middle of a feud between two celebrities?
The fans do it. I don’t think celebrities have done it, and if they have, they’ve done so anonymously. But fans will definitely try to perpetuate narratives about celebrities that they don’t like or have done something to upset them. That happens all the time. I don’t want to post things that aren’t accurate but sometimes you have to throw stuff out there and see what you get back to get the truth.
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The teachers running Gossip Girl know a lot about their students, as they interact with them at school every day. How connected are you to the entertainment industry?
I’m not connected at all. That’s the truth. I read every single one of my messages in my inbox because that’s how I get my tips. If I had a special phone number I could call or someone I could directly reach out to every time I needed to know something, I wouldn’t have to so meticulously go through my inbox every day. That’s not to say that I don’t have different sources, but none of them are PR related, and if they are, I don’t know it. I don’t ask everyone their exact jobs.
Apparently Hailey Bieber claims to know who you are….
No. Listen, if I could call up Hailey Bieber and be like, ‘What’s going on with you and Justin?’ that would make it a lot easier.
Have you ever had your identity threatened to be exposed?
Once I was given an ultimatum like, ‘Either you post this, or I’m going to post this.’ That did happen to me once.
And what happened?!
I said, ‘Post whatever you need to post.’ I’m not going to be strong-armed into posting something by someone who is clearly unhinged. If they’re making that kind of demand, that doesn’t seem like a reasonable person to me. No other threats, but I don’t really respond to threats.
Is there something Gossip Girl does that Deuxmoi would never do?
In one scene, they make all of these rules about following Gossip Girl from their own accounts and liking the posts and watching the videos…that’s a big no no. I was scared for them when they said that! I’d also never creep in someone’s window at night and take a picture of them half-dressed. I would like to go on record saying that I would never do that.
And Kate trying to get in with Zoya’s dad or date him or whatever she was trying to do, I would never do anything like that. I would never try to manipulate someone into giving information. I’m not out there meeting my sources in alleyways in New York City. I don’t pressure people into letting me post something they don’t want me to post. If they say, ‘No, you can’t post it,’ that’s it. I never say, ‘Oh come on, please?’ If they don’t feel comfortable, then that’s the end of it.
I also think that Gossip Girl is pretty hasty. Something happens and they post about it right away, whereas I’m always very mindful of not posting things in real time just for safety precautions.
In the show, Kate talks a lot about brand voice and how difficult it is to maintain tone. Obviously using Stories, you’ll screenshot what people are submitting to you. How do you control your own brand voice when you’re using the voice of others?
In the beginning, I inserted a lot of my own voice into posts and then I found that giving my opinion or saying what I thought about a certain celebrity-related situation would open me up to scrutiny that I didn’t want to deal with because that’s not what the account is about. It was never about the person who was running it. It was always about the information the person was providing. I don’t need to argue with someone in the DMs about my personal opinion.
Do you have a favorite Gossip Girl couple?
Yes, I love whoever Max (Thomas Doherty) is hooking up with. I just think that his character is so hot and whoever he’s hooking up—the teacher, the throuple, whoever he hooks up with in season 2—I’m here for all the Max content. I think he’s so sexy.
I totally agree with you. I’m so anti-Obie, but between Zoya or JC, who do you think should end up with him? Or you can say neither, because he sucks.
I don’t know, that’s so hard. I feel like Obie and Zoya connected over their love of philanthropy but there was never any heat between them, do you know what I mean? It was just like they had that common interest. I’m going to say Julien. I hope he ends up with Julien. I think Zoya can find somebody else who can better suit her.
If you could give Gossip Girl some advice, what would you say?
Listen, at the end of the day, we’re dealing with gossip. You’re already towing the lines of morality with the subject matter. Even though I’m running a gossip account, I try to still have some values. My advice to her would be: Try to maintain some sort of personal morality system even though you’re posting about gossip.
Some people have such a negative emotional reaction to gossip that they forget to take it for what it is: entertainment.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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