With Penn Badgley trending thanks to his hit Netflix thriller, You, fans - and Penn himself - have been looking back at his past star role in Gossip Girl. But the walk down memory lane wasn't so sweet, and Penn had some harsh words for his former character.
The 34-year-old actor sat down with Esquire to chat about his time on The CW's hit drama and the similarities between Dan and our favorite suburban-turned-Parisian psychopath, Joe Goldberg. And while we may have shipped Dan and Serena back in the day, time has taught Penn that his character was full of faults. "He's the worst," the famous actor confessed during his interview. "But what's the actual worst thing he did? Okay," he continued to think. There was a good amount of material to consider. Was it his intellectual superiority complex? Or maybe the fact that he was the face behind the savage gossip platform that plagued his peers...
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It took a second or two, but Penn eventually landed on his number one beef with his old character. "Didn't he - he outed his sister for losing her virginity," Badgley recalled in disgust. "These storylines are twisted." That's right, long-time fans of the show may remember the exact moment that Penn was referring to. And our guess is that if Jenny were real, she would remember too. Especially considering that he spread private details of his sister's romantic life on... You guessed it: the Gossip Girl blog. Safe to say he wasn't winning brother of the year with that move.
And while Penn prided himself on being nothing like Dan Humphrey or Joe Goldberg, the fans submitting questions to the Esquire Q&A couldn't help but point out a growing trend in the actor's career that even made it to Penn's Wikipedia page. "This is the first sentence of my Wikipedia page?" the actor asked in shock. The introductory paragraph described the new dad as an actor "known for his portrayals of villainous and "off-putting" characters." Well... they did have a point.
Want to learn more about Dan and Joe from Penn's eyes? Check out the full segment above. And be sure to come back soon for more celebrity interviews!
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