Penn Badgley explains how being a stepdad is ‘very different’ than being a dad

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Penn Badgley has opened up about fatherhood and how he was in a position to bond together with his teenage stepson.

The Gossip Girl alum, 37, not too long ago defined how being a stepfather to his spouse’s 15-year-old son and a organic father to his toddler are two “very different” issues. During an look on the New York Times’“Modern Love” podcast, Badgley learn an essay about a father who needed to be susceptible round his sons after experiencing the lack of their mom.

The essay prompted the You actor to talk about the significance of being susceptible together with his personal kids. “I have an interesting situation where I have a biological son and a stepson,” Badgley instructed podcast host Anna Martin about his spouse Domino Kirke’s son, Cassius Riley. The couple, who had been married in 2017, are additionally dad and mom to a three-year-old son.

“And my stepson is – his father is very much in his life, so his father is his father, and I’m something else. So I have two different kind of parental roles,” Badgley continued. “And then my biological son is only three and a half. So, that’s a very different thing, too. I’m going to need to be able to more consciously show him my vulnerability as he gets older in those years, you know?”

Elsewhere through the podcast, Badgley described a second by which he was in a position to bond together with his 15-year-old stepson, who he jokingly admitted “doesn’t want to spend that much time” together with his dad and mom. The Easy A star recalled how he and Cassius had watched the 2014 sci-fi motion movie Edge of Tomorrow collectively, when he immediately realised how “important” it was to spend that point collectively.

“Very recently, we had a rare kind of, like, bedtimes – and when you have such an age spread, it’s kind of hard to make time for everybody. And he’s older, and he doesn’t want to spend that much time with us anyway,” Badgley defined.

“So this was like a night, an evening where I was sacrificing sleep after many nights of not much sleep, I think. Our littlest was sick, but it struck me, and I was like: ‘Hey, we need to watch a movie. We are going to watch The Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt.’”

The John Tucker Must Die star defined how he was decided they had been “going to have a great time together,” although they “didn’t talk that much” through the film as a result of it was late within the night.

“And frankly, I was exhausted, and I was like: ‘I’m going to get maybe four or five hours of sleep.’ And whatever. But I just knew it was important,” he continued. “It was like the stars had aligned so that my wife and youngest son were asleep, and I was just like, this is a good time to do this. You’re not going to play video games right now. We’re going to do this.”

Badgley shared that Cassius “loved” the film, including: “And you want to talk about Modern Love? One of the ways you got to do that is watch things with people.”

Badgley and Kirke, who works as a doula, have been collectively since 2014. The two had been married at a New York City courthouse in 2017 and welcomed their first youngster collectively two years later, after Kirke had suffered from two miscarriages. She shares her son Cassius with former companion and musician Morgan O’Kane.

Last 12 months, Badgley provided followers a uncommon replace about his then two-year-old son throughout an look on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “Well, you know he’s a pandemic kid,” Badgley instructed Fallon in March 2023. “Anybody who has kids, it’s a joy, it’s an immense – I mean, it’s wild. It’s lovely. It’s great. It’s a challenge. Shoutout to all the parents. Keep going! Keep going, it gets better.”

When requested whether or not his toddler is aware of that his father performs serial killer Joe Goldberg within the Netflix drama sequence You, Badgley defined that his son isn’t fully aware of his psycho character however he has seen his dad on display screen earlier than.

“We’re gonna have to break that one to him,” he jokingly replied.

“There was recently a day where I was doing something really sweet with him, you know, like in my lap,” Badgley added. “And then I sat on the remote and… it just went right to Netflix on the TV, and my face was right on the TV. He was like, ‘Daddy!’”.

“I started to race around because the next thing he was going to see was something really crazy.”