Gossip Girl star Chanel Maya Banks breaks silence on 'missing person' filing and slams family

A frantic search took place after Gossip Girl star Chanel Maya Banks was reported as missing by her family members, but the actress has now hit back at the claims in a video

The Gossip Girl star who sparked a frantic search after going "missing" has hit out at those who made the sensational claims.

In a case that continued to throw twists, actress Chanel Maya Banks has now released a video to confirm once and for all she was alive and safe after mixed reports. Taking to Instagram, the 36-year-old shared a video of herself getting her makeup done and saying: "As you can see, I am alive. Interview loading."

She captioned the post: "I heard you were looking for me, now what?" before seemingly taking a dig at her family members with the hashtag #dumbanddumber.

The upload comes after actress' cousin and mum raised the alarm earlier this week saying they hadn't heard from her in two weeks. They frantically began searching for Chanel, who has also featured on Blue Bloods, and hit out at her husband for not helping with their search.

Danielle-Tori Singh and Banks' mum had been looking for the American actress, who portrayed Sawyer Bennett on Gossip Girl and had even set up a GoFundMe page. They fundraiser, which has since been taken down, was set up by Singh in a bid to pay for a private investigator to help with the case.

It came after police said they weren't going to investigate further. They had soon became involved in the case and carried out a number of welfare checks at Banks' home. However, they admitted she wasn't home on any of the four visits. Officers later confirmed Banks had been found in Texas, but her cousin refused to believe the announcement.

Taking to Instagram on Thursday, she claimed the body cam footage of her cousin wasn't actually the actress. She urged people to continue looking for her cousin, saying she was still missing. In a video, she explained that she had been made aware of the Texas encounter, stating that she'd "seen the bodycam footage, heard the audio, I can positively tell you 1,000% the person in the bodycam footage" was not Chanel. The person found in Texas had, as Danielle-Tori detailed, had Chanel's "ten-year-old expired New York city driver's license with her name and date of birth."

However, Singh has since confirmed she now knows her cousin has been found and admitted they found out before the actress uploaded a clip - that Singh had previously pleaded for. On her Instagram Stories, Singh wrote: "Chanel has been found. We identified her 3 hours ago, before she posted on YouTube."

Hours earlier, Singh had been showing "evidence" that she and her cousin had shared a close relationship after claims had been made to suggest otherwise.

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