You Saved Penn Badgley From the Gossip Girl Curse: ‘It Was a Struggle’
Before becoming Joe Goldberg, Penn Badgley spent years being Dan Humphrey. And apparently it did him no good. Why is that? Let’s find out.
Gossip Girl was one of the most popular teenage dramas, and probably still is. And Penn Badgley played one of the most important characters, Dan Humphrey. A guy who didn’t belong to the elite society of Manhattan but somehow ended up in the best school with the richest people.
The hit show ran for six seasons and apparently after it ended, it was too hard for Badgley to differentiate his own life from the one of Dan’s. In the Call Her Daddy podcast, he revealed that he was struggling for a long time, because he wasn’t mature enough to handle it all well.
“It was a struggle. When you do a film, you do it once and give it your all, and then you move on… When you do a television show, you’re doing it constantly because of the nature of that show,” he said in the interview.
At the time Gossip Girl was filmed, the actor was in his early 20s, so it was hard for him to understand that his character was different from his real self. And the "celebrity culture" of the late 2000s didn't help, either, because there was too much interest in their personal lives.
Badgley revealed that he was constantly bothered by the idea of having to prove himself to be something in order to feel respected. And it continued even after the hit show ended in 2012. Of course, over the years the situation changed and he was able to fully embrace his Joe character from You, not identifying his real self with the paranoid maniac Joe is.
What Is Gossip Girl About?
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Gossip Girl is still a pop culture staple, even though it ended more than a decade ago. The show ran from 2007 to 2012 and had the most amazing cast full of soon-to-be A-list stars like Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Ed Westwick, Chace Crawford, and some already known names like Kelly Rutherford and Matthew Settle.
The show explored the complicated lives of a group of wealthy New York teens. But their scandalous lifestyles were repeatedly disrupted by an anonymous blogger known only as Gossip Girl.
The concept of the show was based on the fact that nobody knows Gossip Girl’s identity, but the last episode revealed it was Penn Badgley’s character.
Where to Stream Gossip Girl?
Gossip Girl is available to stream on Prime.
