Penn Badgley is getting candid about his parental role, being a father and stepfather in his marriage to Domino Kirke.
The actor recently sat down for a chat on New York Times‘ Modern love podcastand reflected on his role as father to his 3-year-old son — who he shares with Kirke — and stepfather to Kirke’s 15-year-old son, Cassius.
“I have an interesting situation where I have a biological child and a stepson,” shared Badgley, who married Kirke in 2017 after they started dating in 2014.
According to Badgley, when it comes to Cassius, “his father is very present in his life – so his father is his father, and I am something else.”
“So I have two different types of parenting roles,” Badgley explained. “My biological son is only 3 and a half. So that’s also a very different thing. I need to be able to more consciously show him my vulnerability as he ages into these years.”
Badgley said that since Cassius is a teenager, he “doesn’t want to spend that much time with us anyway.” But this also made forming a bond a challenge.
That said, Badgley credited Tom Cruise’s 2014 sci-fi action epic Limit of tomorrow for giving them the opportunity to connect.
“I just knew it was important. It was like the stars aligned that my wife and youngest son were sleeping, and I thought, ‘This is a good time to do this! You’re not going to play video games right now. We’re going to do this!'” he recalled. “He loved it.”
As for your marriage to Kirke, Badgley spoke in February 2023 about how his relationship and his dedication to fidelity led him to ask the showrunner of his hit Netflix drama thriller You to limit his intimate scenes as much as possible.
“I asked Sera Gamble, the show’s creator, ‘Can I just not do any more intimate scenes?’ This is actually a decision I made before I got on the show… I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it publicly, but it’s… one of the main things is, like, ‘I want to put myself back into a career where I’m always the romantic lead?’” Badgley revealed on Pod crushed podcast last year.
“Fidelity in all relationships – and especially in my marriage – is important to me,” he said of performing the scenes. “I told Sera, like, ‘My wish would be zero — to go from 100 to zero.'”
Badgley acknowledged: “I signed this contract. I signed up for this show. I know what I did. You know, you can’t take that aspect out of the DNA of the concept, so, ‘How much less can you do that?’ was my question to them.”
Fortunately, according to Badgley, Gamble was understanding. “She didn’t even blink. She was really happy that I was so honest, and she was kind of, I mean, almost, like, empowered. She had a very positive response. She appreciated my directness and appreciated that I was also being reasonable and practical.”
RELATED CONTENT:
