The first post-strike episode ofGossip Girl, the CW show about under-studied, over-sexed prep school kids in New York, is set to air on April 21 amidst controversy about certain cast members. (And not the gay thing!) You may recall the show as being almost exclusively about white people, but think harder: Blair Waldorf, the catty one-time queen bee played by pot-smoker Leighton Meester, was actually flanked by two mute minority sidekicks, one black and one Asian. Now, the Daily News is reporting that the Asian one, played by actress Nan Zhang, will no longer be appearing on the show, perhaps because Meester hated her and had her axed!

But is it true?

The show's creator, Josh Schwartz, claims that Zhang was cut because she decided to follow in the footsteps of such luminaries as Leelee Sobieski and Summer from The O.C. and enroll at Brown University without telling anyone. (She previously attended Tulane and was also briefly a neuroscience major at Asian hotspot Johns Hopkins, but dropped out after being cast on Gossip Girl.) Sources on set, however, are claiming that Zhang was pushed out because "Leighton didn't like her."

A rep for the show denies diva behavior on Meester's part, saying, "I think [Zhang] may have had another opportunity come up, but I know she was big into school. She was really sweet, but she went back to school."

Either way, it's not exactly a big loss—Zhang's character, who for some reason had the white-sounding name Kati Farkas, didn't do much except send the occasional text message from her cell phone. She's probably better off getting her fancy Ivy League college degree! It's what her overbearing immigrant parents want, anyway.