Penn Badgley Didn’t Watch The Gossip Girl Reboot & He Has No Plans To

Dan Humphrey may have lived and breathed for Gossip Girl, but Penn Badgley has a much different relationship with the mysterious rumormonger. HBO Max’s recent reboot of the beloved late-2000s teen drama reignited a nostalgic fandom for the show... for everyone except Badgley. The actor admitted he had no interest in watching the Gossip Girl sequel series, simply because the genre isn’t his “cup of tea.”

Badgley confirmed he never watched (and very likely never will watch) HBO Max’s Gossip Girl reboot during his Feb. 10 interview with Rolling Stone. “No shade,” Badgley said after the revelation, stating he just doesn’t prefer to watch teen dramas in his downtime. “I’ve been vocal about what I do and don’t think of Gossip Girl and my own show,” he said. “It’s not been my cup of tea for a long time. It’s probably the genre.”

The actor, who became a household name thanks to his memorable starring roles in high school shows and movies like Gossip Girl, John Tucker Must Die, and Easy A, recognized the irony in his statement, elaborating that he doesn’t need to be a superfan of a genre to act in it. “I’ve been starring in teen dramas for my entire freaking life. [But] I don’t have to be the demographic to be a part of creating it,” Badgley said. “It’s like TikTok. I don’t consume, I just create.”

As Badgley alluded to, he became a surprise star on TikTok immediately after joining the app in October 2022. He shared that the striking similarities between Taylor Swift’s single “Anti-Hero” and his You character, Joe Goldberg, is what finally inspired him to post his first TikTok. “I thought for years, ‘I’ll get a TikTok when the time is right,’” he said. “And then when Taylor’s record came out, it just seemed the song wouldn’t have worked with anybody else. Me. Joe. Anti-Hero. Taylor Swift? It just was the perfect moment.”

While Badgley may be keeping up with Gen Z in the app world, he couldn’t quite get into the new generation of Gossip Girl. The two-season reboot, which was suddenly canceled at the start of 2023, actually name-checked Badgley’s character a few times, roasting that still-controversial finale revelation that Dan was GG and also revealing new details about Dan and Serena’s married life. Unfortunately, it sounds like Badgley will never find out what Dan is up to nowadays. He doesn’t seem too upset about that, at least.