Blake Lively's Ex Penn Badgley Praised Her Professionalism After Their Split

While there are plenty of red flags in Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds' marriage, the couple has lasted longer than Lively's past relationships, including her ex-boyfriend Penn Badgley. Lively and Badgley started dating in 2007, shortly after filming the pilot of "Gossip Girl." Throughout the show's five-year run, Badgley and Lively's characters, Dan Humphrey and Serena van der Woodsen, were involved in an on-again, off-again relationship. The off-screen couple announced their breakup in 2010, but it seems they parted on good terms. Since their split, Badgley has had nothing but good things to say about his former co-star/girlfriend. 

During a September 2023 episode of the "Podcrushed" podcast, Badgley shared that his and Lively's working relationship never became uncomfortable at all, even after their real-life breakup. "I'm pretty sure we were exes for nearly half of the run of the entire series. It lasted for nearly six years, and I don't think we were together longer than two," Badgley said. "We were always very professional ... I don't even think, in my memory, there was not one bit of strangeness. It wasn't even a thing."

"Gossip Girl" executive producer Joshua Safran revealed to Vanity Fair in 2017 that it was months before anyone on the show even knew the couple had split up. "They kept the breakup hidden from the crew, which you could never do now. I don't even know how they did it," Safran said. "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."

The couple kept things on the down low, but it turns out, there was no need. In a 2017 Vanity Fair interview, Blake Lively revealed that while she and Penn Badgley tried to keep their personal and professional lives separate, that wasn't a concern for the show's higher-ups. "We were like, 'Oh no, that's exactly what they want.' They wanted us all to date. They wanted us all to wear the same clothes that we're wearing on the show." Blake Lively, whose own style has transformed as much as her character's, said her bosses wanted fans to really "buy into [the] world" of "Gossip Girl," so when sparks flew between cast members, it mirrored their on-screen romances.

Even though they had the blessing of those running the show, both actors had difficulty compartmentalizing their characters. Badgley admitted that he would "struggle" differentiating himself from his character Dan Humphrey. As a guest on the "Call Her Daddy" podcast in April 2025, he commented that, "When you do a television show, you're doing [things] constantly because of the nature of the show ... you're seen as this person, you're called their name out on the street. You also constantly have to be that person at work." Badgley noted that he didn't always have the emotional bandwidth to separate himself from his character.

With Lively sharing the style and look of her iconic blond character, Serena van der Woodsen, it's no surprise that she and Badgley had to find the line between themselves and their characters. Perhaps those shared struggles are what helped the actors maintain their professionalism, even after they broke up.