Gossip Girl star Taylor Momsen has revealed the reason she quit the hit CW show after four seasons.
Appearing on You star Penn Badgley's podcast Podcrushed, Momsen told host Badgley, who starred as her on-screen brother Dan Humphrey in Gossip Girl, she decided to leave the show in 2010 to pursue her dream of becoming a musician.
According to Momsen, who starred as Jenny Humphrey on the show, acting was something she was pushed into at a young age and as soon as she was old enough to make her own decisions she asked to leave the show.
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"I wasn't making my own choices then. And literally, as soon as I got to an age where I could make my own decision - it was like a click," explained Momsen. "I woke up one morning and went: 'Wait a second. I don't have to do this. I can just play in my band, and tour, and write songs. I can just do that.'
"I have the ability to create and live my life the way I want to live it. I don't know exactly what made that click, but it was like a light bulb went off. And I uprooted and kind of changed my life overnight."
Speaking to Badgley and his co hosts Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari, Momsen said it was "a little more complicated" to get out of the TV show than she first thought but showrunners were prepared to write her out of series 4 providing she didn't act in anything else.
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"They really allowed me to follow my dream, and so I'm forever grateful and thankful to them," Momsen said of the showrunners who wrote her out of all but four episodes of season 4.
Since leaving the show, Momsen has lived out her dream as the lead singer of her band The Pretty Reckless which formed in 2009.
Reporter, Digital Spy
Harriet is a freelance news writer specialising in TV and movies at Digital Spy.
A horror enthusiast, she joined Digital Spy after working on her own horror website, reviewing films and focusing largely on feminism in the genre.
In her spare time, Harriet paints and produces mixed-media art. She graduated from the University of Kingston with a BA in fine art, where she specialised in painting. She also has an MA in journalism from Birkbeck University.
