Penn Badgley reflects on dating Blake Lively while filming 'Gossip Girl'
Penn Badgley is opening up about the challenges of dating his "Gossip Girl" co-star Blake Lively while working on the hit series.
Badgley, who played Dan Humphrey, dated Lively, who played Serena van der Woodsen, from 2007 to 2010, mirroring their characters' onscreen romance.
On the April 23 episode of the "Call Her Daddy" podcast, host Alex Cooper asked Badgley if, while living in New York and dating Lively, he was able to "separate" his work from his personal life, or if the two worlds felt "merged."
"I mean, that's a great question, because it was the struggle," Badgley recalled before first noting the difference between acting for films and television.
"When you do a film, you do it once you know, and you kind of give it your all," he said. "When you do a television show, you're doing it constantly because of the nature of that show."
The "You" star explained that playing the same character over a long period can blur the lines between personal identity and public persona, especially when fame is involved.
"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," he added.
Looking back, Badgley said that in his early 20s, he didn't yet have the "emotional maturity to understand how to differentiate" his real self from his character Dan -- particularly in how others perceived him.
"What people seemed to think of Dan seemed to be what people thought of me," he said. "And now I had enough sense, enough intelligence, enough self worth, enough, just, you know, like -- I wasn't like losing myself, but it bothered me."
Badgley also reflected on a formative relationship he had before dating Lively.
"I also had a very long and difficult relationship in my teen years," he said. "That marked me, and I actually remember thinking when I got out of it at 19, I was just like, 'That was a way to start it all. I wonder what effects it's gonna have on me,' you know?"
He went on to say he had "three different long-term relationships" in his 20s, the third being his now-wife Domino Kirke, with whom he is currently expecting twins.
"When we first met, it was immediate," he said of Kirke. "And before we had time to think, I think we wanted to be together in the deepest way."
When asked how he reacted to the news that he and his wife were expecting twins, Badgley said it didn't feel as overwhelming, since birth is already a "big part" of their world -- Kirke is a doula -- and they were already raising two children.
"Actually, to be honest, when we see the sonograms right now, seeing them together... as an only child, you know, it's very touching to see them already so together," he explained. "They're so together. There's one shot of them where they looked like they were just hanging out in a hot tub because they were both, like, up like this, or at least in the sonogram."
Badgley and Kirke welcomed their first child together, son James, in 2020. When the couple married in 2017, Badgley also became a stepdad to Kirke's older son Cassius.
