Kristen Bell turned 41 in July, but she already has an acting portfolio to match many actors nearly double her age.
She made her foray into Broadway in the early 2000s, with performances in productions such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Crucible. At the same time, she began to land her first concrete on-screen jobs, as she made cameos in films such as Pootie Tang and Spartan, and even the famous FX crime drama series, The Shield.
Received Positive Reviews
Her work in Spartan received a lot of positive reviews, and in many ways became the role that put her on the map. Going into the mid and late 2000s, however, she worked on the two roles that would perhaps come to define her as an actor, at least on TV: the titular Veronica Mars in the UPN (later CW) series, and as the narrator of the hit teen drama, Gossip Girl.
Between 2007 and 2008, Bell was also a regular in the second and third seasons of NBC's superhero drama, Heroes. Her stint as Veronica Mars lasted for one season on UPN, before the network shut down and made way for its successor, The CW. The series had another two season-run at its new home before it was canceled.
Creator Rob Thomas, deciding not to give up, wrote a feature film script that continued with the story where the series left off. Bell and Thomas got on Kickstarter to fundraise for the production of the film, given that Warner Bros. had passed on financing the project. They raised a total of $5.4 million on the platform and released the film in 2014. The eventual box office return was disappointing, at a meager $3.5 million.
In 2019, streaming network Hulu rebooted the show for a fourth and final season, which comprised only eight episodes.
A Year Of Revivals
In September 2007, soon after the original cancelation of Veronica Mars, The CW debuted its brand new teen series, Gossip Girl. Bell voiced the eponymous character, who never appeared on the screen and remained anonymous until the series finale in 2012. Nevertheless, it became nearly impossible to think of the show without associating it with Bell's voice signing off with the famous line, "You know you'll miss me. xoxo, Gossip Girl!"
2019 was a year of revivals for Bell. As Hulu were bringing Veronica Mars back to our screens, HBO Max announced that they had placed a straight-to-series order for a reboot of Gossip Girl. Once again, Bell was due to make a comeback in another of her most iconic roles.
In an interview with People magazine, showrunner Joshua Safran explained how easy the decision was for them. "It wasn't really a conversation," he said. "Josh and Stephanie (the creators) were like, 'If she doesn't want to do it, let's all walk away.' We went up to her and she was like, 'Of course I want to do it.' And then, yeah, there's no Gossip Girl without Kristen. I mean, it's not just the voice, it's her whole being."
Steady Stream Of Work
Unlike the Veronica Mars reboot which featured most of the main characters later on in life, the new Gossip Girl brought together a completely new set of characters. The tropes and themes in the story remained pretty similar, all the same.
Bell lent her voice to every single one of the original 121 episodes of the original version, as well as the six of the reboot that have aired so far. The first season still has another six episodes to go, and the show has also been renewed for a second season already.
Suffice it to say, Veronica Mars and Gossip Girl have provided Bell with a steady stream of work - and therefore, income - over the years. This, of course, on top of her other major projects, such as the Frozen films and the NBC comedy, The Good Place. Today, Bell has an estimated net worth of about $40 million. The question is, could she have really earned almost 40% of that sum from voicing Gossip Girl alone?
The rumors of a $15 million payout for Bell from Gossip Girl were born on TikTok. A video on the social media platform went viral in September, which claimed that the actor was paid $125,000 per episode of the show. While there is no official confirmation of Bell's salary, this figure comes across as rather suspect.
The highest known salary for a Gossip Girl actor was $60,000 per episode, paid to Blake Lively, who played the leading character, Serena van der Woodsen. And while it is possible that Bell could have earned a higher figure, it makes no sense that she would have been paid more than double, despite not even making a single screen appearance.
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