Penn Badgley Says He Lacked “Self-Worth” While Filming Gossip Girl
“What people seemed to think of Dan seemed to be what people thought of me.”
Penn Badgley opened up about the challenges he faced while working on Gossip Girl. The CW show, which aired from 2007 to 2012, focused on a group of New York City-based teenagers at an elite private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Badgley was in his early 20s during filming. According to him, it was a “struggle” to play his character, Dan Humphrey, due to feeling a lack of “self-worth” at the time.
During an April 23 episode of Call Her Daddy, host Alex Cooper asked Badgley about his experience on the show — specifically, because his real life had so many “parallels” to his Gossip Girl character’s. (While on the show, Badgley dated his onscreen love interest, Blake Lively, for years. He also lived in New York City, like his character.) “Did you feel like you were able to like 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?” Cooper asked him.
“I mean, that's a great question because it was the struggle,” Badgley said. “When you do a film, you do it once, you know, and you kind of give it your all. And then you move on whether you want to or not. When you do a television show, you're doing it constantly.”
At the time, Badgley also did a lot press for the show, which he felt blurred the lines even more. “You feel like you’re constantly … needing to prove yourself in some manner. Otherwise, what are you doing?” he said.
“So what starts to happen, when you’re in this one role for a long time [and] the aspect of celebrity being a huge part of it, there is not enough separation,” Badgley continued. “You’re seen as this person, you’re called their name out on the street, you constantly have to be that person at work.”
Apparently, that led to Badgley experiencing some confusion in his real life. “I was 20, 21, 22, so I didn’t have the emotional maturity to differentiate myself just in terms of self-worth,” he added. “What people seemed to think of Dan seemed to be what people thought of me.”
