Taylor Momsen and Penn Badgley had a long overdue reunion on an episode of SiriusXM’s Podcrushed podcast. The former Gossip Girl brother and sister duo had not seen each other in 10 years. Taylor played Jenny Humphrey in the 2007 drama while Penn played Dan Humphrey, her older brother.
On their podcast reunion, which first aired on September 6, 2023, the 30-year-old former actress opened up about how she had a rough time making friends after starring as Cindy Lou Who in the 2000 film How The Grinch Stole Christmas.
“First of all, ‘The Grinch’ changed my life in a multitude of ways," Taylor started off. "One of them being I was made fun of relentlessly."
“Every time I would start a new school or go somewhere else, I don’t even think the kids knew my name," she went on. I was just 'Grinch girl.'”
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Taylor, who mentioned always having a hard time making friends, was heavily impacted by the teasing. “Not even the character name, just ‘Grinch girl.’ I got used to it, but it was alienating.”
During her break from acting in middle school, she later made friends, though she described herself as a "shy" and "socially awkward" person. “That was the first [full] year where I was in school, and I had the opportunity to try and actually make friends,” she recalled.
“I put a band together. It was my first band, my middle-school band, a garage band," she continued. "We never could settle on a name. But we would jam after school, and that was always fun. I was singing, playing guitar, writing.”
Then, in 2007 she was cast for her role in Gossip Girl when she was 12 years old. “I got uprooted to New York. The band fell apart. We were gonna be huge. It was a real bummer," she joked.
2 years later, though, Taylor started building The Pretty Reckless, the rock group she is currently a part of. “I had to kind of restart it all again in New York, which didn’t take me that long. It took a minute to find the right band members … I really wanted to make my own kind of makeshift family.”
After four seasons of Gossip Girl, she decided to quit the show to focus on her music career. “That’s where music became such a solace for me. Thinking back on my life, it was this place where I could just be — writing songs, emoting how I felt. I was by myself a lot. I didn’t have my own clique.”
