Jessica Szohr on Leaving Gossip Girl: "I'm Ready for a Change"

Actress says she asked show producers to let her move onto other roles...which castmates will she keep in touch with?

Jessica Szohr is leaving Gossip Girl, but she's not too sad about saying goodbye to the CW series.

In fact, the actress tells me that after years of playing Vanessa Abrams on the small screen, she was ready to move on.

So what's next for Jess? And who will she stay in touch with from the cast, who includes her former boyfriend Ed Westwick?

"When I started the fourth season, I kind of had a talk with the producers," she told me this week at SoBe's Try Everything party in NYC. "We didn't know what we were going to do with the characters. After playing someone for four years, it can be a little repetitive. So I was ready for a change."

Basically, she felt she had done all she could with the character, saying: 

"I had so much fun and I made friends I'll have for a lifetime and it was so great to work in the city, but I got the most I could out of Vanessa."

But she says she's still keep in contact with some people more than others.

When I asked her if she thought she'd stay in touch with the cast, she replied: "Probably the people I'm closest to."

Wonder if having to work with the guy she split with had anything to do with decision to move on to other projects?

It sounds like her primary focus will be on the big screen going forward.

"I have two movies that I start in August and July and I have a couple movies coming out in the next couple months," she told me of her post Gossip plans.

But she's making time for fun, too.

"I'm gonna take a trip with all my girlfriends," she told me. "I'll probably go to the Hamptons a few times."

Just probably not the same weekend Ed Westwick is going, we'd imagine.