October 10, 2011 Novelist Jay McInerney’s small, recurring role on the teen television show Gossip Girl is not a cameo performance. Although the character he plays, Jeremiah Harris, is also a novelist with some very McInerneyish characteristics, the resemblance has become less clear as the character has evolved: “All I can say is I’m really glad that I did not let them name the character Jay McInerney, because the character increasingly diverges from me,” the former Nashville resident told New York magazine in an article published today.
In real life, McInerney is still the only guy on the set who knows anything about publishing: “Vanity Fair doesn’t even publish fiction,” he explained in response to one recent storyline. “I tried to point this out. This is the kind of consultation I do on the set. You know, ‘Hey, guys, they don’t publish fiction.’”
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