'Gossip Girl' actor familiar with struggles faced by show's teen characters
HOLLYWOOD - When "Gossip Girl" co-star Matthew Settle was a teenager growing up in Sevierville, he rebelled by cranking up the radio when he drove the church van."Part of that (driving) was to (give me the opportunity to) listen to rock music," says Settle, whose parents are conservative Christians who forbade him to listen to such songs. "The other reason was that I just wanted to drive the van."
Settle has come a long way since those days. He can be seen in the role of former rock star-turned-New York art dealer Rufus Humphrey in the CW hit series "Gossip Girl" (9 p.m. Wednesdays, WBXX, Channel 20).
The series, which premiered in September, has been a particular hit in the Knoxville area. Most weeks, its audience here rivals those in major cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.
The show centers on a group of high-school students attending a posh private school in Manhattan where reputation is everything. The lives of the students are highly dramatic and documented often on a Web site run by a shadowy figure simply known as Gossip Girl.
Rufus has two teenage children attending the private academy. They're middle-class kids and don't fit into this world filled with rich and privileged teenagers.
But Rufus makes sure his kids don't fall into their classmates' materialistic ways. There's none of that "do as I say, don't do as I do" stuff for Rufus. He is straight with his teenage children, Jenny (Taylor Momsen) and Dan (Penn Badgley), about what to expect out of life.
Like his character's kids facing class struggles in the school setting of "Gossip Girl," Settle has also been there and done that.
Reared in a household in which his father's meager salary as a minister kept the family fed, Settle attended Seymour Christian Academy, a private Christian school. His values may have melded with the other students', but he was surrounded by classmates whose families often had larger incomes.
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