Gossip Girl actor Penn Badgley on playing Jeff Buckley, leaving LA and his attempt to bring the World Cup to America

Hi! Where are you right now and what are you doing?

I am home in New York, eating oatmeal. It's one of the first beautiful days of the year, so I think I may go to the park. Lay in the sun, on the grass, get some fresh air. That's really all I have planned.

I thought movie stars were too busy to do that sort of thing?

When you're working hard and the hours are long, yeah. You're not sleeping much, you don't have the time or energy for anything else. But when you're not …

You can be a bum?

Exactly. It's a beautiful balance.

Your breakout role was playing Dan Humphrey in Gossip Girl for six years, where you became a tabloid fixture (1). What was the best thing about it?

I look at Gossip Girl as an endurance test of all kinds. Six years … I think the best part was a lot of what I have now – the lifestyle, the people in my life, living in New York – because otherwise I might still be living in LA.

Is it true that you don't like LA much – you grew up there but don't love it?

I think that's probably pretty common for actors. Over time we all become very cynical and depressed, having to audition endlessly in LA. It's such a singular mindset: everyone has a script to sell you, which is fine – everyone has to pursue their dream – but it makes the town a very strange place.

Is it hard to be taken seriously once you've done teen stuff for a while?

I think this film has helped. It was something I was always aware of, that was part of the test of Gossip Girl, but it's something I don't really worry about now. Doing a film like this and going where I want to go, it all takes time.

Let's talk about your new film, Greetings From Tim Buckley. There was a lot of buzz about you playing Jeff Buckley – some of it surprised, some negative. (2) How did you deal with that?

It was on my mind, but it was something I left to everyone else to discuss. Taking on a role like this, and the story itself, will surprise people. It's a strange, quiet meditation on two artists, and I was much more worried about the responsibility of playing a dead artist than worrying about what people would think about the kid from Gossip Girl playing Jeff. I'm well aware that no one would have any reason to think I could do it. But I knew this slice of Jeff that we were trying to convey, I could do. I felt it could be easy.

Were you always a Jeff Buckley fan?

Yeah, since I was 17. I loved his live stuff. His cover of Strange Fruit, in particular, because of the guitar playing, his singing and emotion. He wasn't really a songwriter in the way people often paint him to be, he only wrote a handful of songs, but his real power as an artist was electric.

I haven't heard that cover.

You should. He takes a song that to my knowledge only black women had sung, and as a white man he gives it such an unbelievably raw soul. That's just as impressive as writing a good song.

I read that you had your own pop single back in 1998?

It wasn't released! How did you know that? (3) It was a little song. When you first go to LA as a kid, there are all these things you have to do, all these workshops you have to take, and a producer found me in one of them. I wanted to make music but as a 12-year-old, you have no idea.

Was it good?

It was terrible.

I bet it was quite creepy.

A 12-year-old boy singing about the beautiful night we spent together? Ha ha, yes. I didn't know what the hell it was about. It was … misguided.

Did you sing any of the parts on the film?

I sang it all.

Really? I didn't realise that. I'm sorry, I thought it was just dubbed. Wow.

We sang it all live too.

Even that scene in the record shop? (4)

Yeah, we did three takes of that. I woke up thinking: "This is the worst day." I tried not to speak beforehand, I barely breathed, but it was pretty spontaneous.

You were quite precocious as a child. You moved to LA at 11 to be an actor and graduated from high school at 13. How does that even happen?

It sounds a bit more bizarre than it was. When you move to LA as a child actor – which you never see yourself as, but you are – you're thrown into this machine of managers and people who are doing all the pushing, who tell you what to do. You end up doing all of this shit, graduating high school, spending your life on sets.

But graduating at 13? Are you a genius?

No! It's just this test that is a substitute for a high school diploma in the state of California. It's really just a bunch of immigrants taking the test who need that qualification.

Oh, that's almost disappointing.

Yep, me in a room with some older Mexican people looking for work. It happens.

Can you tell me about Gossip Girl and why Dan Humphrey became such a sellout?

Dan is a hard one to nail down. He started out as the theoretical moral centre of the show but then the whole point of the show, and what the writers very quickly realised, was that the show doesn't require a moral centre.

And it turned out he was Gossip Girl! That was just made up at the end, wasn't it?

No, there was a very ambiguous, shapeless idea that Dan might be but I think they probably decided … they must have known early on.

When did you find out?

Ah … I didn't know until the last episode.

Hmm! OK. Your cast was quite unique in that you all had insane real-life names: Penn Badgely, Leighton Meester, Blake Lively, Chace Crawford, I mean –

We definitely noted that. In the pilot shooting we we were like – yeah, our names are crazier than the actual characters. Gossip Girl was like a bizarre college experience. By the end it was time to move on, but I'll always think of the first couple of seasons with nostalgia.

At one point, you were involved with Blake Lively on the show and the tabloid frenzy was insane …

It was intense, but it served to make everything feel pretty strange. It felt electric all the time. We all fell in and out of love a lot at that time.

You're seeing Zoe Kravitz now aren't you?

Yes.

Sorry – I was being excessively nosy.

No, it's OK. But that's very personal.

Unlike, say … voicing a Mario Kart game for Nintendo!

Ha ha. It was Mario Tennis and Mario Golf, though. I had to do all the [makes bonkers yelps and video game SFX] noises, all that shit.

That's a good gig! As a kid, surely it's cool to get paid to make weird sounds?

It was surreal because there were all these Japanese businessmen from Nintendo behind the glass telling me what to say, and one American intern talking into the microphone. You know, I've never seen it or played it.

You're a big football fan and were part of a project with Brad Pitt to bring the World Cup to the US. (5)

I did … yeah, I totally forgot about that. I'm a huge soccer fan, I can't believe I've just managed to forget that whole "bringing the World Cup to America" story.

Because really, it was just you and Brad kicking a ball around, wasn't it?

Sure, ha ha, in his backyard, just messing around. No big deal.

What's next for you? Another biopic? You could play Prince, maybe?

Let's put that out there. I'd love to play Prince. Or do the vocal dub. I could confidently play his hair.

Footnotes

(1) Badgley dated his co-star Blake Lively for three years.

(2) The idea originally seemed too preposterous even for the film's co-producer Orian Williams, who told the Los Angeles Times two years ago: "Penn is not involved in the film at all."

(3) The internet.

(4) Badgley wigs out in this scene, free-jazz singing his guts out and writhing on the floor as Jeff Buckley. It's a bit intense.

(5) It was the bid for the 2018 World Cup, which ended up going to Russia.

Greetings From Tim Buckley is available now in the UK via Tribeca Film on iTunes, Virgin Media and PlayStation.