It wasn’t easy for Penn Badgley to leave his “Gossip Girl” character Dan Humphrey behind after the CW drama ended in 2012.
In a recent appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, Badgley admitted that it was difficult to “move on” from the role after starring in the hit series for six seasons.
“It was a struggle,” Badgley said. “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 continued, “I was 20, 21, 22, so I didn’t have the emotional maturity to understand how to differentiate myself in terms of self-worth. What people seemed to think of Dan seemed to be what people thought of me.”
Badgley added that the “celebrity culture” in the late 2000s didn’t help either. During the peak of “Gossip Girl,” the “You” star said he was constantly being asked about his dating life, which made him feel like, “you’re constantly needing to prove yourself in some manner, otherwise what are you doing?”
“Gossip Girl” ran for 121 episodes from 2007 to 2012. Starring Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Ed Westwick, Chace Crawford, Kelly Rutherford, Matthew Settle and Jessica Szohr, the show followed a group of wealthy New York teens whose scandalous lifestyles are repeatedly disrupted by an anonymous blogger known only as Gossip Girl.
In the show’s final episode, “New York, I Love You XOXO,” Badgley’s Dan Humphrey is revealed to be the notorious Gossip Girl, citing his outcast status among the elite as the reason for starting the blog.
