Taylor Momsen detailed her Gossip Girl days — and decision to leave the show — during her “Call Her Daddy” podcast appearance.
Momsen, 32, called the first season of the show a “whirlwind,” but things started going downhill for the former actress, who quickly wanted to wave goodbye to her role as Jenny Humphrey and focus on her music career.
“Leaving a career that is so prosperous was not easy,” Momsen said during the Wednesday, November 5, podcast episode. The singer clarified that it was an “easy decision” for her to leave the show, but getting out of her Gossip Girl contract posed an issue.
Momsen played the role of Jenny from the show’s premiere in 2007 through the season 3 finale, which aired in 2010. She made a brief return for the final Gossip Girl episode in 2012.
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“It was a very long battle of me arguing [with] everyone, ‘Go and get me out of this. I can’t do this anymore. This is killing me,’” Momsen recalled when discussing her departure from the show. “I have something else I want to do with my life and it has nothing to do with this.”
Eventually, she got executive producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage to write her character’s exit.
“I really have to credit them for doing that for me, because they did not have to,” Momsen said. “They wrote me out of the show so I could go on tour and be in a band.”
Keep scrolling to read Momsen’s quotes about Gossip Girl from “Call Her Daddy”:
Momsen said she “related” to the character of Jenny.
“I never really auditioned for things that I didn’t understand and feeling like an outcast in a world that you don’t fit in — that’s who I was,” Momsen recalled. “I wasn’t from Brooklyn and all that stuff, but as a general concept of a character, I identified with her.”
Courtesy Everett Collection
Momsen was 14 years old when she was cast and admittedly “grew up real fast,” especially because her costars were mainly in their 20s. She noted that Connor Paolo, who played Eric van der Woodsen on the show, is still one of her “best friends.”
When Chace Crawford was on “Call Her Daddy” in June 2024, he disclosed details about apartment parties with costar Ed Westwick — which Momsen attended.
“Chase and Ed lived together at the time,” she recalled. “We lived, like, two blocks from each other. I would spend a lot of time at their apartment, and it was [a] boys’ club, which was very fitting to me. I’ve always fit in with boys’ clubs.”
Momsen discussed people wanting her to be Jenny in real life and how she separated that by leaving the show. The former actress made it clear that she didn’t “resent” the character, although there were some struggles.
“I treated it very much like a job. I was professional, I showed up, I did my job and then I went to the studio,” Momsen recalled. “When I left the show and I was no longer on it, and I was just touring with the band and just putting out music and I quit everything else and that’s all I was doing and every question in every interview was still about Gossip Girl and Jenny Humphrey.”
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Momsen realized that she’s “never gonna outlive” Jenny, so she just did what she wanted to do.
Momsen’s last moment as Jenny (before returning for the series ending) was the final scene in the season 3 finale.
“I think it’s me on the train going to live with my mom, or whatever the write out story was,” she said. “I’m leaning on the window. I think that was the wrap scene, which is very fitting.”
