Penn Badgley—who shares son James with wife Domino Kirke—reflected on dating Blake Lively on-and-off amid Gossip Girl’s early seasons.
Penn Badgley knows you love to look back at his past romance with Blake Lively.
However, the Gossip Girl alum—who now shares son James, 4, and is currently expecting twins with wife Domino Kirke—recently admitted it was “the struggle” to have a romance that was so closely interwoven with their television characters.
“When you do a television show, you’re doing it constantly because of the nature of that show,” Penn told Alex Cooper on the April 23 episode of Call Her Daddy. “You feel like you’re constantly, even though no one may be actually asking you to do this, you feel like you’re constantly needing to prove yourself in some manner. Otherwise, what are you doing? I mean, you know, what is the space?”
Of course, Penn’s difficulties went beyond simply the difference between his relationship with Blake and his character Dan’s relationship with Serena, he also spoke to how his lifestyle in general was impacted by the public’s perception of his character.
“There is not enough separation, I think, for anybody,” he continued. “You’re seen as this person, you’re called their name out on the street. You also constantly have to be that person at work, and I was 20. I was 21, 22, so I didn’t have the emotional maturity to understand, to differentiate myself just in terms of self-worth.”
As he put it, “What people seemed to think of Dan seemed to be what people thought of me.”
Luckily, though, Penn has already emphasized that while his relationship with Blake—which ended in 2010, while Gossip Girl continued until 2012—didn’t make it through the entire series, they were very friendly exes on set.
“I’m pretty sure we were exes for nearly half of the run of the entire series,” Penn explained on a September episode of his own podcast Podcrushed. “We were always very professional. We had to do all kinds of nutso stuff. Having a fake marriage by the end of it. I don’t even think, in my memory, there was not one bit of strangeness. It wasn’t even a thing.”
Keep reading to catch up with the rest of the Gossip Girl cast…
Blake Lively
The actress, who portrayed It Girl Serena van der Woodsen, has been keeping very busy since the end of Gossip Girl. A few months prior to the 2012 finale, Lively tied the knot with actor Ryan Reynolds and they’re now the proud parents to four kids: daughters James, Inez and Betty and son Olin, born in 2023. In recent years, she’s starred in hit movies The Age of Adaline, The Shallows, A Simple Favor and The Rhythm Section.
Penn Badgley
Lonely Boy no more! Following his run as Dan Humphrey (who, spoiler alert, was ultimately revealed to be Gossip Girl), Badgley has been making headlines for his turn as stalker Joe Goldberg on the hit Netflix series You.
On a more personal note, Badgley is also a married man. The actor tied the knot with Domino Kirke, the sister of Girls actress Jemima Kirke, in Feb. 2017. They welcomed their first baby together in August 2020. Of course, fans of GG remember Badgley and Lively dated during the show’s early run before splitting in 2010.
Cw Network/Kobal/Shutterstock, Frazer Harrison/Getty ImagesLeighton Meester
The actress—a.k.a. privileged Upper East Sider Blair Waldorf—has been making a splash in the comedy world in recent years, starring in ABC’s Single Parents.
Meester married actor Adam Brody (aka The O.C.‘s Seth Cohen) and they’re parents of a daughter named Arlo, born in 2015, and a son born in 2020, whose name has not been revealed.
