The Reason Gossip Girl Was Awkward For Blake Lively And Penn Badgley

Almost every Gossip Girl character dated each other at some point, and it seems there was even a bit of life imitating art with some on screen romances translating into real-life relationships between the actors. Case in point? Leighton Meester dated Sebastian Stan. He played Carter Baizen, a character that had a short-lived fling with Meester's Blair Waldorf. However, perhaps the most famous couple to come out of the cast was Blake Lively and Penn Badgley, who played love interests (turned step-siblings), and eventually husband and wife on Gossip Girl. 

Thankfully, Lively and Badgley's real-life romance wasn't nearly as complicated as Dan and Serena's many storylines. However, that doesn't mean the romance came without its fair share of problems. After initially dating in secret, Badgley and Lively became an "it" couple that fans rooted for on screen and off. However, they broke up while Gossip Girl was still filming, which meant that they had to play boyfriend and girlfriend even though they were exes. Yes, even when Lively got married to Ryan Reynolds in 2012, she still had to kiss Badgley as part of her day job. 

That post-breakup era just had to be so awkward, right? Apparently, that actually wasn't the case. In 2013, Badgley told Elle that he and Lively were "ultimately professional." During that same interview he described Gossip Girl as a "six-year endurance test," saying, "Our relationship was a part of that and helped us through it. I mean, like anything valuable, it was good and it was bad and it was a learning experience." 

During a 2015 Watch What Happens Live appearance, Penn Badgley named his best and worst on screen kiss, and he actually had the same answer for both questions: Blake Lively. He said, "I'll say [the best] it was Blake because we actually had a relationship at the time." He added, "And then the worst? Maybe Blake after we broke up." Fair enough. Even so, he described their post-split interactions as "consummately professional," remarking, "I think we should both pat ourselves on the back for getting through it. You know, it's like 'cuz anything is complicated in that way, and we handled it."

During a 2019 Watch What Happens Live episode, Andy Cohen asked Gossip Girl alum Chace Crawford if there was drama after the breakup. Crawford claimed, "Not at all, not in the least" before describing Lively and Badgley as "the most mature people in the world."  

In fact, they were so mature, that they hid their split on set, according to executive producer Joshua Safran, who told Vanity Fair: "I don't even know how they did it." He continued: "They kept it from everybody which is a testament to how good they are as actors. Because they did not want their personal drama to relate to the show." He even pointed out that the secret was something they could "never do now."

Yeah, it was probably somewhat awkward for Lively and Badgley to kiss after their relationship ended. However, it seems like they focused on being professional, sticking to the drama in the scripts and avoiding drama in real life.