Penn Badgley is looking back at his time on Gossip Girl, more specifically, a pretty great prank Blake Lively pulled on him. Via Entertainment Weekly, on the latest episode of the Podcrushed podcast, the You star recalled a prank that Lively was responsible for, as she convinced her co-star that Steven Tyler was his actual father.
Badgley told his cohosts Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari that he “cannot muster a single eff to give about pranks. I actually really admire people who do. Somebody who may or may not be known for this – Blake Lively is, as I recall, very serious about pranks. She pulled a remarkable prank on me. It is crazy.” He went on to say that that he “will never think about it” when it comes to pulling a prank on him. “I guess I’m trusting; I guess it says something good about me; I just never think that somebody’s trying to pull a prank. So she had that going for her.”
At one point during Gossip Girl‘s six-season run, Lively was able to bring on the Aerosmith frontman’s team of representatives to make the prank even more believable. Badgley shared, “I get an email, just like, ‘There’s this press item that we’re trying to kill, but just so you know, somebody thinks, or Steven Tyler thinks he’s your dad.’ I don’t remember the phrasing, but I remember being like… Didn’t even think about it for a moment because who in their right mind would think that that’s true.”
Furthermore, Penn Badgley explained that his publicist even reached back out about it a few days later to say that the story wasn’t “going away.” He also got a call from Tyler’s manager and publicist to say that the singer was sure of it. While Badgley still wasn’t completely convinced, he didn’t know what else was going to happen. Blake Lively then suggested Badgley hear it from his own mother.
Badgley admitted that his mom is neither an actress nor a prankster, so when she was upset, he for sure thought it was all legit. “I’m like, ‘Mom, why are you upset?!’ And then she takes a pause, that is like, the pause that sold me, and she goes, ‘Why do you think we moved out of Maryland?’ I’m telling you, for something like five to seven seconds, which is a long time, I was speechless, and my world was rearranging. I was like, ‘Are you f—- kidding me? I am Steven Tyler’s son?'”
However, since it all came to a head on, of course, April Fool’s Day, Badgley soon realized what day it was and that’s when the “rationale kicked in.” He had looked over at Lively, who “couldn’t keep a straight face, and I was like, ‘Ah, f—— April Fools.'” It was quite an elaborate prank and had it not been on April Fool’s Day, who knows how long it really would have gone on for. Maybe Lively could have even gotten Steven Tyler himself on board.