Long before he was Joe Goldberg, bookstore creep turned murder philosopher, Penn Badgley was just a 20-year-old trying to make sense of fame, feelings, and a very public relationship with his Gossip Girl co-star Blake Lively. And according to him? It was a mess.
Appearing on Call Her Daddy, Badgley admitted that dating Lively while playing Dan Humphrey — Serena van der Woodsen’s moody on-again-off-again love interest — blurred every possible line between reality and TV fantasy.
“That’s a great question because it was the struggle,” he told host Alex Cooper. “There is not enough separation… You’re seen as this person. You’re called their name out on the street.”
Translation: when you play Serena’s boyfriend on screen and date Blake Lively in real life, you’re never not performing.
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What’s Fame Without Boundaries? Just Ask 20-Year-Old Penn Badgley
Badgley said that, like a lot of young actors, he lacked the emotional tools to navigate early fame.
“What people seemed to think of Dan seemed to be what people thought of me,” he explained —
And that had real consequences for his self-worth. Even pre-Blake, he’d already been through a formative relationship that left him asking what love even was.
Also complicating things: his parents’ divorce.
“I was starved for many kinds of intimacy,” he said. “I really longed for that kind of connection.”
Which maybe explains the pattern. Three major long-term relationships in his 20s, including the one he now shares with doula and singer Domino Kirke — who, by the way, is currently pregnant with their twins. (Yes, twins.)
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Penn Badgley says dating Blake Lively during Gossip Girl blurred the line between real life and performance, calling the experience “the struggle.”
From Dan to Domino: The Full Evolution
Badgley didn’t drag Blake. This wasn’t a blame game. But he made one thing obvious: he was never built for the fame-meets-romance machine.
“Dating is a bit of a performance,” he said.
He spent most of his twenties trying to find something that wasn’t.
That search ended with Domino Kirke.
“It was immediate,” he said. “We wanted to be together in the deepest way.”
It’s a quiet ending to a loud era—the kind of love story that doesn’t trend, but maybe that’s the point. Penn Badgley survived being America’s indie heartthrob. What he wanted, in the end, was a life off-script.
