10 things you don’t know about him

He’s charming and kind Penn Badgleybut it gets so disturbing when he sinks into the obsessions and desires of his stalker and killer Joe Goldberg in the thriller series You, reassuring brown curls, terrifying dark desires. Or when he turns out to be anything but a nice loner and outsider like Dan Humphrey in Gossip Girlthe TV teen drama that launched it.
Ready to see his latest exploits as a menacing sociopath in the second part of the fourth season of You, from March 9 on Netflix, meanwhile let’s investigate his obsessions and desires… as a happy father and anything but creepy actor. Himself distressed by his cult characters.

Here are 10 things you may not know about Penn Badgley.

THEn conflict with his character in You

36 years old, adored for his starring role in You, charming and dangerous, the American actor has a controversial relationship with his Joe Goldberg, an apparently sensitive man who ends up killing all the women he falls in love with. Extreme representative of toxic masculinity, feels like “a straitjacket on him,” he said. No word yet on whether there will be a fifth season of Youbut he waits for Joe’s farewell as a liberation.
When, at the beginning of the immersion process in the series, he was asked to humanize the character, he had already proved to be reluctant. “I didn’t want to do it, it was too much. I was conflict with the nature of the role» he said.
Not everyone wallows happily in the perversions of the mind like Anthony Hopkins or Jack Nicholson.

She is also an indie pop singer

Penn Badgley also enjoys singing. He is the frontman of the Brooklyn indie pop band MOTHXR extensionformed in 2013, with whom he has toured the States and beyond, also playing in Vancouver, Paris, all over the United Kingdom…
It will be less surprising, then, his vocal performance in the film Greetings from Tim Buckley (2012) by Daniel Algrant, in which he plays the American singer-songwriter and guitarist Jeff Buckley, who died in an absurd swim in the Mississippi at the age of 30.

Penn like tennis balls

Curious the story that Penn Badgley did about his unusual name of baptism. Where does it come from? From the name of a brand of tennis balls. In fact, during her mother’s first ultrasound, her father anxiously clutched tennis balls in his hands. Of Penn, of course.

He wrote a song for every woman he loved

It could be the seduction strategy of her ambiguous Joe Goldberg. Penn Badgley reveals he’s written a song for every woman he’s dated. They know it well Blake Livelyco-star in Gossip GirlAnd Zoë Kravitz. He is now married to the singer Domino Kirkewith whom he had a son in 2020.

Penn Badgley in the service of Super Mario

What does Penn Badgley have to do with Mario Golf 64, classic Nintendo 64 sports video game from 1999? The voice of Kid, a young golf player who appears among the four initial characters from which you can choose, is that of a beardless Badgley, about thirteen years old. One of his first works in the entertainment world.

He turned down Gossip Girl twice

Penn Badgley has a controversial relationship with the characters who brought him fame. He even said no, twice, to playing Dan Humphrey in Gossip Girl, then worn for six seasons. How come? She had already done a lot of television in various small roles (including Mommy you become, The Brothers Garcia And The things I love about you) or more weight (the Chance Chancellor of the soap The fever of love) and didn’t want to do any more. He was whipped and broke and turned down the part twice, despite her insistence of parents, managers and of the creator of Gossip Girl Stephanie Savage. But when she came back to propose Dan Humphrey again, and her choice was between being a waiter or accepting, she accepted.
Among the roles of which he is proud, in his curriculum, there is instead that of the analyst Seth Bregman in the film on the flaws of high finance Margin Call (2011).

Taking off on TikTok with Taylor Swift

Not so fond of social networking, Penn Badgley just had a overwhelming debut on TikTok. Which bothered Taylor Swift. Aware of carrying a burdensome image, linked to the two obscure characters of You And Gossip Girlhas decided to let himself be overwhelmed by lightness by singing Anti Hero and awkwardly lip-syncing to Swift’s refrain “I’m the problem, it’s me.” Her post – born while she was exploring the platform with Nava Kavelin, the production partner of her podcast Podcrushed, «basically like a couple of older people» – became viralso much so that the same super singer who has won over a thousand awards has consecrated him by writing an “OMG!!!” in the comments.

He is also director of You 4

Became a producer of You, Badgley also experimented with directing. Of the current season, in fact, the fourth, he directed the penultimate episode entitled She’s not therevisible and judgeable after the release of March 9th.

He was revived several times as a baby

In Penn Badgley’s childhood there is a rather near death experience. Born two months premature, he spent the first two weeks of his life in a neonatal intensive care unit: his heart and lungs stopped every now and then out of the blue, making it necessary to resuscitation. The doctors had taught it to her mother, so that she was also ready outside the hospital to rush to the rescue of little Penn, connected to a monitor that emitted an acoustic warning signal in the event of an arrest. Several times it happened that the mother had to intervene in the first year of her life. Badgley needed a hand touch to collect himself. An experience that marked him.
Today the actor feels like a person very spiritual and meditativeunafraid of death, and also very emotionally tactile, which she believes is due to her childhood background.

Child actor with debut in gay pornography

Penn Badgley knew quite early on what he wanted to be when he grew up: He started acting professionally at the age of 12, after he and his mother moved from Seattle to Los Angeles at his request in order to pursue an acting career. . His debut? In the queer cult film The Fluffer of 2001, set in the world of the gay porn industry. Only by reading the script did Badgley – as well as his mother and her agent – ​​understand what a “fluffer” was, i.e. the person who keeps an actor’s erection active during filming breaks in porn films.
From precocious to life and in acting, he was also in his studies: already at 13 Badgley obtained the Ged (General Educational Development, which in the States roughly corresponds to having concluded high school), so as not to have to have a tutor on set and being able to work hours like an adult.