Celebrity4 min(s) read
Penn Badgley's wife has responded to claims that she asked him to stop doing sex scenes.
The 39-year-old actor, best known for Gossip Girl and Netflix's You, once said he asked for his charismatic serial killer character, Joe Goldberg, to have fewer sexual scenes in the show's fourth season.
Badgley made this revelation on his Podcrushed podcast, telling his co-host: "I asked [showrunner] Sera Gamble, can I just do no more intimacy scenes. This is actually a decision I made before I took the show. I don't think I have ever mentioned it publicly."
"One of the main things was, do I want to put myself back on a career path where I'm always playing the romantic lead?" he asked.
The actor said commitment in every relationship, "including my marriage," was important to him.
"It's got to the point where I don't want to do that, so I said, 'my desire would be zero, to go from 100 to zero,'" he continued.
However, he acknowledged that he had signed up for the show and that sex scenes were in the "DNA of the concept" of the series, which wrapped up its fifth and final season last year.
"So how much less can you make it, was my question to them. She didn't even bat an eye," he continued, adding that the showrunner was "glad" that he was honest.
"She was sort of almost, I want to say empowerd, it had a really positive response. They came back with a phenomenal reduction," he shared.
Badgley met his wife, Domino Kirke, back in 2014, and the couple tied the knot in two separate and intimate ceremonies in 2017.
For years, fans assumed Kirke was the reason why the actor stopped doing explicit scenes, but she has now dispelled those rumors in a video shared Instagram on Monday (September 28).
"A few years ago, the internet decided I’d asked my husband to stop doing sex scenes. The truth is, my husband decided to do this for his own mental health reason," she said.
"After working in the industry since he was just 12 years old, believe me, it was time. In the entertainment world, they call actors ‘puppets’ behind their backs, and it’s even more disturbing when they start out as child actors," she added.
The singer said she still receives direct messages about the decision and called it a major move in an industry where actors are expected to push boundaries.
"They like you to do the most. And the characters that my husband has played over the years, people have come to expect that he will continue to play that guy," she continued. "So, when he decided he didn’t want to do this anymore, I was super happy for him, very proud of him because I understood how major it was."
Addressing those who continue to message her about the subject, she said: "I want to say to those of you who still DM me about my husband deciding to do this for himself and his mental health - get over it."
Kirke, who worked as a birth professional for 17 years, also said she sees similar patterns between the entertainment world and caregiving.
"Caregivers are so ready to be invisible, collapse, disappear, or take direction no matter what," she said. "They’re constantly allowing folks to blaze past their boundaries all in the spirit of being accommodating or in my husband’s case, entertaining. They’re ok with being forgettable."
She said her husband consciously decided to set those boundaries after years in the industry.
"Sometimes I ask people what their doula's name was, and they’re like 'oh I don’t remember!' So finally, after years of trying, Penn decided to take a stand and let the world see him. And guess what, he hasn’t lost fans and he’s still getting hired!" she concluded.
