Taylor Momsen ‘Irish Dipped’ Out of ‘Gossip Girl’ After the CW, Warner Bros. Refused to Let Her Leave | Video
Taylor Momsen said that while leaving “Gossip Girl” at the height of its fame was an easy personal decision, breaking free from her “lock-and-key contract” with the CW and Warner Bros. was far more difficult. The actress eventually convinced the writers to write her out of the show — and, as she put it, she just “Irish dipped” from set one day.
Momsen appeared on Wednesday’s episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, and told host Alex Cooper about her experience filming the hit CW series where she played Upper East Side newcomer Jenny Humphrey for four of the show’s six seasons.
“Can you talk to me a little bit about having this hard time between separating yourself from Jenny Humphrey and Taylor and how the did you mentally do that?” Cooper asked.
“Well, I quit,” Momsen said with a laugh. “I left. I went, ‘I can’t do this.’ It was a struggle there for years, but what I did was I treated it very much like a job. I was professional, I showed up.”
The “Gossip Girl” star said she realized early on that she wanted to focus on music but added that, understandably, people didn’t take her seriously as a 14-year-old trying to front a rock band.
“How early on did you actually know I wanna get the f–k out of here?” Cooper asked. Momsen said that while it took her until the fourth season to finally exit the series, she knew she wanted to leave by Season 2 when she started her band The Pretty Reckless.
“I knew I had to leave, but at the same time, leaving a career that is so prosperous was not easy. It was an easy decision for me,” Momsen explained. “Sorry, I shouldn’t say, not easy. Not easy. Not easy in the way of, like to actually get outta a contract was not easy.”
She continued: “This was hard, so it started with a, ‘I don’t wanna do this anymore,’ but you are in a lock-and-key contract with CW, Warner Brothers, you know, all of that stuff and it came down to, it was a very long battle of me arguing everyone and going, ‘Get me outta this. I can’t do this anymore. This is killing me. I have something else I want to do with my life and it has nothing to do with this and I can’t be stuck here anymore.’ And you know, you’re called ungrateful and you’re called all the things that come along with, ‘How dare you turn your back on something that’s been so successful for you.’ That was hard.”
Cooper asked what it was like to deal with such pressure and scrutiny for her decision to which Momsen said, eventually, she told everyone else to simply f–k off.
“I just went, ‘F–k you. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re not in my shoes, so how dare you judge this?” she explained. “I was very defensive, but it came down to they wouldn’t let me outta the contract. The head of Warner Brothers said, ‘F–k Taylor Momsen. No f–king way.'”
Since the network would not let her out, Momsen took matters into her own hands and went to the show’s writers with an idea.
“I go to the writers and Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz, who I love, like genuinely love, and explained the situation. There was, you know, lots of talks about it, but they essentially went, ‘Well, we can’t let you out of the contract because that’s not our job, but we can write you out of the show. We understand what you want, what you’re trying to do here. You’re not gonna be able to act because you’re under contract, so you can’t go take another job and join some other TV show or some other movie,'” she said.
“I’m like, ‘That’s perfectly fine. I’m trying to get out,” Momsen added. “It’s not what I wanna do anyway. It’s good,’ so I really have to credit them for doing that for me ’cause they did not have to and they wrote me out of the show so I could go on tour and be in a band.”
“How did you share this with castmates? Were you close with anyone enough to share it or just kinda say peace out?” the “Call Her Daddy” host wondered.
“Not really. I kind of just Irish dipped. I just wasn’t on the script the next week. I mean, they all knew I was making music. They all knew I had a band. I would play them stuff because I was working on the first record while I was on the show, so I would come in and play songs and play music and you know, that kind of stuff, but I don’t think anyone knew how serious I was at that stage.”
As for her last day on set, Momsen said it was the scene in which Jenny gets on a train to go and live with her mother. However, she came back for the finale because “as a fan of television” it’s meaningful for viewers to have that full circle moment.
You can watch Momsen’s full “Call Her Daddy” interview in the video above.
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