Penn Badgley on How His Struggle With Gossip Girl Fame Affected His Relationship With Blake Lively

Penn Badgley offered rare insight into his early days on Gossip Girl and how the show impacted his real-life relationship with co-star Blake Lively. Lively and Badgley dated from 2007 to 2010; Gossip Girl aired from 2007 to 2012.

During his April 23 appearance Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy, Badgley admitted he did “struggle” to separate his real life from that of his character, Dan Humphrey, whose love interest was Lively’s character, Serena van der Woodsen.

Cooper had asked, “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. 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 said it was hard, noting, “When you do a television show, you’re doing it constantly [trying to separate your on-screen and offscreen lives]. 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.”

Badgley noted he was really young while filming the series, making it even harder to remove himself from his Gossip Girl character. “There is not enough separation, I think, for anybody,” he admitted. “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.”

Reflecting on the lasting legacy of Gossip Girl, Badgley noted that the show continues to follow him. “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.

Badgley also reflected on how some of his other past relationships shaped his perspective on intimacy. “I’ve had a handful of long relationships. And that’s about the extent of it,” he said. “I really did not date.”

He added that dating felt like “a bit of a performance” to him and shared that he “really longed for that kind of connection, that kind of intimacy.” One past relationship in particular, which he described as “very long and difficult,” ended when he was 19 and left a lasting impression. “I remember thinking when I got out of it…‘That was a way to start it all. I wonder what effects it’s gonna have on me.’”

You can watch the full podcast episode here.