Saying goodbye to Gossip Girl after three seasons was not a walk in the park for Taylor Momsen.
“Leaving a career that is so prosperous was not easy,” Momsen, 32, said during her Wednesday, November 5, appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. “It was an easy decision for me. … To actually get out of a contract was not easy.”
Momsen appeared as Jenny Humphrey on Gossip Girl from 2007 to 2010.
“Season 1’s a whirlwind,” Momsen recalled during Wednesday’s podcast, noting that she wanted to leave the show “around season 2” in favor of her band, The Pretty Reckless.
“It started with a ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ but you’re in a lock and key contract with CW, Warner Brothers, you know, all of that stuff,” Momsen explained, saying she didn’t want to be “stuck” in her role on the show. “It was a very long battle of me arguing [with] everyone, ‘Go and get me out of this. I can’t do this anymore. This is killing me.’ I have something else I want to do with my life and it has nothing to do with this.”
She recalled being seen as “ungrateful” for her thoughts about wanting to leave.
“‘How dare you turn your back on something that’s been so successful for you?’ was hard [to hear],” she said. “I just went, ‘F*** you.’ … I was very defensive.”
Momsen couldn’t get out of her contract, so she went to Gossip Girl executive producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage for help. They had “lots of talks” before ultimately writing her out of the show.
“I really have to credit them for doing that for me, because they did not have to,” she continued. “They wrote me out of the show so I could go on tour and be in a band.”
Momsen joked she “kind of Irish dipped” after season 3 and didn’t tell any of her castmates that she was leaving the show.
“They all knew I had a band. I would play them stuff, because I was working on the first record while I was on the show,” she added. “I would come in and play songs and play music. But I don’t think anyone knew how serious I was at that stage.”
Momsen’s final episode as Jenny was the season 3 finale, “Last Tango, Then Paris.” Jenny sleeps with Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick) just before Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) reveals her love for him. Blair eventually discovers what happened between Jenny and Chuck before banishing Jenny from New York.
The last scene Momsen filmed as Jenny was actually her final moment on set.
“I think it’s me on the train going to live with my mom, or whatever the write out story was,” she recalled. “I’m leaning on the window. I think that was the wrap scene, which is very fitting.”
Momsen briefly returned as Jenny for the show’s final episode in 2012.
“I came back for the very finale,” she said. “As a fan of television and a fan of the shows I love, when you have the full cast together again … you want to full circle that and round it out.”
