NEWSPenn Badgley Admits Dating 'Gossip Girl' Costar Blake Lively Became a 'Struggle'
Penn Badgley and 'Gossip Girl' costar Blake Lively dated both on and off the screen.
Though Penn Badgley and Blake Lively's Gossip Girl characters found their happily ever after, the costars' romance fizzled out before the series ended in 2012.
The actor discussed the hardships of dating the blonde beauty on and off the screen during his Wednesday, April 23, appearance on the "Call Her Daddy" podcast.
Penn Badgley discussed his past romances on 'Call Her Daddy.'
Host Alexandra Cooper asked the dad-of-one, 38, whether it was easy for him to "separate" his role from real-life or if the two wound up merging together.
"That's a great question because it was the struggle," the You lead confessed of trying to balance things. "When you do a television show, you're doing it constantly."
The actor admitted his romance with costar Blake Lively became a 'struggle' since his real life and TV role merged.
"What starts to happen when you're in this one role for a long time — the aspect of celebrity being a part of it, a huge part of it — there is not enough separation, I think, for anybody," Badgley explained of being on the hit show for six seasons. "You're seen as this person, you're called their name out on the street. You also constantly have to be that person at work."
The star noted that whatever fans "seemed to think of [his character] Dan seemed to be what people thought of me."
Badgley added that his romance with the 37-year-old It Ends With Us star — which lasted from 2007 to 2010 — could have also been affected by a "very long and difficult" relationship he had as a teenager.
"That marked me, and I actually remember thinking when I got out of it at 19, I was just like, ‘That was a way to start it all. I wonder what effects it's gonna have on me,’ you know?" he spilled.
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The 'Gossip Girl' costars dated from 2007 to 2010.
Overall, Badgely — who married Domino Kirke, 41, in 2017 — had "three different long-term relationships," with the third being Kirke, whom he gushed over to Cooper.
"When we first met, it was immediate. And before we had time to think, I think we wanted to be together in the deepest way," he raved of the doula, who's currently pregnant with twins, their second and third child together.
The actor and his wife, Domino Kirke, married in 2017.
The Easy A star confessed he wasn't overcome with nerves when he found out they were expecting two babies instead of one.
"Actually, to be honest, when we see the sonograms right now, seeing them together...as an only child, you know, it's very touching to see them already so together," he expressed.
"They're so together. There's one shot of them where they looked like they were just hanging out in a hot tub because they were both like up like this, or at least in the sonogram," he gushed. "I don't know which direction was north or south here, because you know, it's its own world."
Badgley is also a stepfather to Kirke's son from a previous relationship, Cassius.
