Penn Badgley and Taylor Momsen Give Fans a Long-Awaited Gossip Girl Reunion

Summary

• Gossip Girl stars Penn Badgley and Taylor Momsen, who portrayed siblings on the show, have reunited for an episode of Badgley’s podcast, Podcrushed.
• Badgley appeared on Gossip Girl for its entire six-season run, while Momsen left after the fourth season. Both have pursued different career paths since then.
• Badgley has found success in the Netflix series You, while Momsen has focused on music and is the frontwoman of the punk band The Pretty Reckless.

Two of Gossip Girl’s original cast members, Penn Badgley and Taylor Momsen, have been spotted together. The duo, who portrayed siblings Dan and Jenny Humphrey on The CW series, have reunited for an upcoming episode Badgley’s podcast, Podcrushed. The reunion was teased through the podcast’s official Instagram, which captioned pics of the two: “A reunion worth waiting for… 👯 but don’t ask us what’s going on in the second photo, we don’t know either.” The second pic, a nod to Momsen’s edgy Gossip Girl aesthetic, features Badgley wearing smeared black eyeliner.

Badgley appeared in The CW’s hit series through its entire six season run, from 2007 to 2012, as an aspiring writer, from Brooklyn, who doesn’t really fit in with his high society peers at first. Momsen’s time on Gossip Girl was a bit shorter, as she exited the series after its fourth season (returning for a cameo appearance during the show’s last season). While Jenny, Dan’s younger sister, initially does everything in her power to fit in with the popular Upper East Siders, she eventually rejects that lifestyle.

Gossip Girl starred Blake Lively, Meester, Badgley, Crawford, Momsen, Ed Westwick and Jessca Szohr, was narrated by Kristen Bell, and was based on Cecily von Ziegesar’s novel series of the same name. The series was quickly embraced, influencing fashion trends and impacting retail numbers. Gossip Girl was revisited in 2021 with a reboot that also followed a group of affluent high-schoolers, some related to the original characters. Although the series opened to record numbers on what was then HBO Max, the series was canceled in 2023 after just two seasons.

Podcrushed, co-hosted by Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari, explores the heartbreak, anxiety and self-discovery of being a teenager, as the trio share stories and conversations with featured guests about middle schools. Other Gossip Girl alum have appeared on the pod: Leighton Meester (who played Blair Waldorf) appeared on the premiere episode followed by Chace Crawford (who portrayed Nate Archibald). Momsen’s episode airs this Wednesday.

Related: Best Penn Badgley Performances, Ranked

Life After Gossip Girl

Warner Bros

Post-Gossip Girl, Momsen retired from acting, shifting her focus to music. Since 2009, Momsen has led the punk band The Pretty Reckless, which released their fourth album, Death by Rock and Roll, on February 12, 2021. The album’s eponymous single hit number one on the charts, making The Pretty Reckless the first female-fronted band to have five number one singles.

Badgley has most recently appeared in the Netflix thriller You as obsessive serial killer Joe Goldberg. The series, based on the books by Caroline Kepnes, premiered in 2018 on Lifetime, but found a larger audience after moving to Netflix. The series was renewed for its fifth and final season this March. Days before the announcement, Badgley told IndieWire that he felt a fifth season was an appropriate conclusion for the series:

“We’re needing to see Joe come to a conclusion. Should there be another season? That to me feels like what is happening. Now Joe has power. There’s a set of circumstances that doesn’t exist before. It’s actually a deeper change. In a way, you certainly don’t think he’s happy. That’s a really terrible feeling. In a way, that reflects reality, like as long as you somehow don’t think Joe is winning. You see a man getting everything he wants but you know that it’s awful. That to me is spiritually resonant storytelling. But I think we’ve got one more in us. But of course, I don’t know.

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