Penn Badgley Opens Up About The Challenges Of Dating Blake Lively During Gossip Girl!

What’s it like to date Blake Lively? Very few can say. And only one knows what it was like to do so while they both filmed a HUGE hit show! Thankfully Penn Badgley is the candid type…

The 38-year-old actor opened up about their relationship on a new episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast on Wednesday. The Gossip Girl co-stars famously dated in real life as well as onscreen. Blake and Penn were together for three years, from 2007 to 2010, while fans watched their characters, Serena van der Woodsen and Dan Humphrey, fall in love on their television screens.

Life imitated art at the time — a little too much for Penn! The You star even admitted it was hard to separate real life from the show’s drama! The confession came when host Alex Cooper asked him:

“You’re in your early 20s, and I feel like a lot of the character that you were being, you kind of had parallels. You were, like, living in New York City. You were dating Blake Lively, you were dating Serena on the show. Did you feel like you were able to 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?”

For Penn, that “was the struggle” of that time — to keep those boundaries in place. He explained:

“You know, there are many differences between film and television. One of them is that 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, you do. When you do a television show, you’re doing it constantly.”

Meaning he didn’t get alone time away from Blake? Not enough space? That can definitely be a problem when you s**t where you eat. Unlike romances on a movie set, when you get to keep the real thing but then go work on another project?

Then there’s the added stress of the extra scrutiny. And the pressure was already a lot for him as he was being judged for the work he did on the show every week! The John Tucker Must Die star continued:

“Because of the nature of that show and celebrity culture at that time … You feel like you’re constantly — even though no one may be actually asking you to do this — you feel like you’re constantly needing to prove yourself in some manner. Otherwise, what are you doing? I mean, you know, what is the space?”

He added that fans also started to believe he was his character IRL:

“What starts to happen when you’re in this one role for a long time, the aspect of celebrity being a huge part of it, there is not enough separation for anybody. 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.”

Since Penn was in his 20s, he noted he “didn’t have the emotional maturity to understand” or “differentiate” as much as he needed to, either, adding:

“What people seemed to think of Dan seemed to be what people thought of me.”

That can’t have been good for him trying to be a the real him with Blake. While she was trying to be the real her and not Serena.

Plus, imagine what it must have been like for Penn after fans learned Dan was Gossip Girl! Yikes! If they didn’t like his character (and oddly him by association) before, then we can bet the massive plot twist didn’t help! The whole situation ultimately frustrated the Easy A alum:

“And now I had enough sense, enough intelligence, enough self-worth, enough – I wasn’t like losing myself, but it bothered me.”

Oof.

At the end of the day, Penn is not his characters, not Dan — and especially Joe Goldberg, the stalker/serial killer, from You! What his characters do on a show is not a reflection of him! Glad to know he seemingly figured out how to have that separation in place for his sake! Hopefully, fans also have realized all this and gotten on board!

But one thing we are left wondering: does Blake feel same way about their time together? Did she have the same struggle? Hmm. You can watch the candid conversation (below):