Penn Badgley is reflecting on how his identity mixed with his Gossip Girl character while playing Dan Humphrey in the program.
During its appearance in Alex Cooper’s Call your dad The podcast, the host, asked: “You are in your 20 years, and I feel like much of the character you were, you had parallels. You were, as, living in New York City.”
She continued: “You were dating Blake Lively, you were dating Serena in the program. Did you feel that you could separate your real work from your reality and really capable of growing at age 20 or did you feel that she felt a bit merged?”
He You Star, who played Dan 2007 to 2012 and left with Lively from 2007 to 2010, said it was a “big question.”
“What begins to happen when you are in this role for a long time, the aspect of the celebrity is a large part of it, there is not enough separation for anyone. You are seen as this person, they call your name on the street. You also have to be that person at work,” he explained.
He reflected and pointed out that in his 20 years, “he did not have emotional maturity to understand” or “differentiate” his identity from that of his character.
“What people seemed to think about Dan seemed to be what people thought of me,” he shared. “I wasn’t missing, but it bothered me.”
Penn Badgley has been playing Joe Goldberg’s psycho and serial killer in the successful Netflix program You Since 2018.
