As signature CW series "Gossip Girl" gears up for its 10th anniversary next month, its creators and stars are looking back on the show's beginnings. And according to the biggest name to emerge from the series, she almost missed out on the experience entirely.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Blake Lively revealed that she had quit acting at the time she was approached to play Serena van der Woodsen on "GG." As Lively explained, she was burnt out on Hollywood, and wanted to get out of the industry and enroll in college instead.

"I realized that [acting] was a business as much as a craft," the actress told Vanity Fair."People will go see your movie based on your standing and all of that, and it didn't make sense to me because I was 18 and being an artist."

But "Gossip Girl" co-creator Josh Schwartz, fresh off the success of fellow aspirational teen soap "The O.C.," knew he wanted Lively to play Serena, and essentially refused her refusal when she was approached about the part.

"I said, 'No, I want to go to college. Thank you, though,'" Lively recalled. "Then they said, 'O.K., you can go to Columbia [University] one day a week. After the first year [of the show], it'll quiet down. Your life will go back to normal and you can start going to school. We can't put it in writing, but we promise you can go.' So that's why I said, 'O.K. You know what? I'll do this.'"

The rest, as they say, is history: "Gossip Girl" blew up, Lively became a big star, and though she never did attend college, it seems like things worked out okay for the actress. So much so, in fact, that the star says she'd be open to starring in a "GG" reboot/revival, should the right story materialize.

"I'm open to anything that's good, that's interesting, and that sort of feels necessary," she told Vanity Fair. " ... [W]e all owe so much to this show, and I think that it would be silly not to acknowledge that."

[via: Vanity Fair]