Penn Badgley subtly discussed his past relationship with Blake Lively while sharing secrets from the Gossip Girl set secrets on “Call Her Daddy.”
Badgley, now 38, recalled “the struggle” of separating his real life from playing Dan Humphrey when chatting with host Alex Cooper on Wednesday, April 23.
“You’re in your early 20s, and I feel like a lot of the character that you were being, you kind of had parallels. You were, like, living in New York City,” Cooper noted. “You were dating Blake Lively, you were dating Serena on the show. Did you feel like you were able to separate your actual job from your reality and actually able to grow in your 20s or did it all feel like it was kind of merged?”
Badgley noted that it was a “great question” because of the fully immersive experience of filming a TV show. (The actor starred as Dan on Gossip Girl from 2007 to 2012. He dated Lively from 2007 to 2010.)
“When you do a television show, you’re doing it constantly,” he explained, noting that “celebrity culture at that time” meant he was asked a lot of questions about “dating advice” — which he didn’t have.
“I think I’ve been on one date in my life. [I] spent most of my time just sort of either in a relationship or not, and I remember just the feeling of not knowing,” he said. “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.”
He continued, “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 for anybody. 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.”
Because Badgley was in his early 20s, he admittedly “didn’t have the emotional maturity to understand” or “differentiate” himself from the character.
“What people seemed to think of Dan seemed to be what people thought of me,” he said. “I wasn’t losing myself, but it bothered me.”
Keep scrolling for more quotes from Badgley about his Gossip Girl days:
He Almost Turned Down the Role
Badgley initially had no interest in playing Dan.
“I was tired of television by the time Gossip Girl came around,” he admitted. “I initially turned the role down and I didn’t just kind of turn it down, I mean, I said, ‘So grateful you thought of me, wish you well, but no thanks.’ They went on to try and cast the whole thing and cast Dan. They, evidently, could cast everybody but Dan.”
Badgley was “not interested” in playing the character of Dan at first, but a few factors ultimately changed his mind.
“I was close to broke … I was looking forward to, like, figuring that out,” he said, noting that some “key people” in his life were on board. Plus, Badgley loved the idea of filming in New York City.
The Gossip Girl Reveal
The actor was in the hair and makeup trailer when he found out Dan would be unveiled as Gossip Girl.
“I remember just being like, ‘Huh. OK. I’m trying to math it. It’s tough. Alright, and we’ve got a shoot tomorrow. Cool. OK,’” he said. “I mean, I found out real late.”
Badgley wished it was Blair’s maid Dorota (Zuzanna Szadkowski) who was behind the account, but he understood “they needed it to be a series regular.”
The Cast Parties
Cooper referenced her June 2024 interview with Gossip Girl’s Chace Crawford, wondering whether Badgley attended the parties that Crawford and their former costar Ed Westwick hosted during filming.
“I didn’t go much. I was not a partier,” Badgley said. “I just had a different friend circle.”
How He Remembered Dan — Sideburns and All
“He’s TV quiet, the same way he’s TV ugly and poor,” Badgley joked, before Cooper brought up the character’s quite extensive sideburns.
“If I could have seen, in real life, the side of my head, I guarantee you I would have never,” he said.
The Longevity of Dan Humphrey
“Next year I’ll be 40. I will still be answering questions about this show I decided to do when I was 20,” he said. “Whatever, that is what it is. Certainly, that’s fine, but it sets you on a certain track that you have to, in a sense, resist. You have to learn how to work with it, interface with it, otherwise it just sort of takes you on its ride.”
