Penn Badgley has never been one to overshare about his time as a 2000s heartthrob. But in a rare moment of candour during his recent appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast, the former Gossip Girl star offered a glimpse into his off-screen romance with co-star Blake Lively, revealing just how entwined their love story was with the fictional chaos of the teen drama.
Badgley and Lively, who dated from 2007 to 2010, portrayed the endlessly complicated characters of Dan Humphrey and Serena van der Woodsen on the show, which had a generation in a chokehold over the lives of Manhattan’s Upper East Side from 2007 to 2012. Speaking with host Alex Cooper, Badgley admitted that he struggled to separate his performance from his personal life.
“What starts to happen when you’re in this one role for a long time, the aspect of celebrity being a huge part of it… There is not enough separation, I think, for anybody,” he reflected. “You’re seen as this person, you’re called their name out on the street… and I was 20. I didn’t have the emotional maturity to differentiate myself in terms of self-worth.”
It’s a poignant revelation from an actor who has long been reluctant to disparage his early fame. For Badgley, it seems the reality of dating in the spotlight wasn’t as glamorous as one might think—it was confusing.
“Dating felt like a bit of a performance,” he confessed, adding that he craved true connection and intimacy, something that eluded him during those whirlwind years.
Now, nearly two decades on, Badgley has accepted that the show was a cultural phenomenon and will thus follow him around throughout not only his career but his life.
“Next year I will be 40,” he lamented. “I will still be answering questions about this show I decided to do when I was 20.”
In an interview with Vanity Fair, the show’s producer, Joshua Safran, revealed that the couple refused to let their personal drama interfere with their work.
“I found out on the set of the season two finale that Blake and Penn had broken up months before,” he told the outlet in 2017. “They kept the breakup hidden from the crew, which you could never do now. I don’t even know how they did it. They kept it from everybody, which is a testament to how good they are as actors. Because they did not want their personal drama to relate to the show.”
Watch the full interview below.
This story first appeared on GRAZIA International.
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