Foto: Getty Images
Penn Badgley and Blake Lively dated and broke up in real life while their Gossip Girl characters, Dan Humphrey and Serena van der Woodsen, were going through an entirely separate set of relationship issues.
The You star spoke about the confusing intersection of his personal and professional relationships during the April 23 episode of Call Her Daddy with host Alex Cooper.
"When you do a television show, you're doing it constantly because of the nature of that show. 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?"
Elsewhere in the interview, Badgley commented on how difficult it was to mentally separate himself from "Lonely Boy" in his 20s.
"There is not enough separation, I think, 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, and I was 20. I was 21, 22, so I didn't have the emotional maturity to understand, to differentiate myself just in terms of self-worth. What people seemed to think of Dan seemed to be what people thought of me."
Badgley and Lively called their relationship quits in 2010 and filmed two seasons of Gossip Girl as exes. In a September episode of his podcast, Podcrushed, the star assured fans that he and the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants actress maintained a natural friendship for the sake of the show (per E!News).
"I'm pretty sure we were exes for nearly half of the run of the entire series. We were always very professional. We had to do all kinds of nutso stuff. Having a fake marriage by the end of it. I don't even think, in my memory, there was not one bit of strangeness. It wasn't even a thing."
Listen to the latest episode of Call Her Daddy on iHeartRadio for the full scoop!