Last night at an after-party for a private screening of Step Brothers on the roof of the Empire Hotel, 38-year-old Matthew Settle, who plays the young Brooklyn Dad on Gossip Girl, wanted to bum a cigarette. (He was obliged.)

“Well, Rufus is probably going to run into some trouble with his daughter,” he said when The Daily Transom asked him about the future of his character. “The show is about kids finding their identities, and she begins to find hers through her designing. She’s going to have to choose between her trade and her schooling, for which Rufus has sacrificed so much.”

Ooh, interesting. Go on!

“Oh, and Dan gets a mentor. Jay McInerney will play him,” said Mr. Settle, as if this news were less important than Jenny Humphrey’s totally predictable ‘design’ career.

Mr. McInerney was coincidentally at the Beatrice last night one night earlier this spring, chatting up Gossip Girl creator, Josh Schwartz. A Paper magazine reporter overheard the writer talking to Mr. Schwartz about the private school boys on the show, saying, “In my day, our ties were skinnier.”

It all makes sense now! Mr. McInerney is of course married to publishing heiress Anne Hearst, aunt of Lydia, who appeared in the the first season’s finale of Gossip Girl. And Dan Humphrey has already had the whole New Yorker connection, getting a short story published as a promising young author in one of the early episodes.

But back to Mr. Settle. We wondered how he felt about being the Hot Dad on the show.

“It’s weird when people start calling me a DILF at all the wrong times,” he said. (Ed. note: Google it. We’re a family newspaper.) “The producers are standing there and my wife is usually standing right beside me, but she’s pretty cool about it.”

So what about Serena and Dan, and Blaire and Chuck? Will Vanessa and Nate be an item this season?

But before Mr. Settle could answer, the cigarettes ran out. Thanks Romey!