EP. 169 — Penn Badgley

[00:00:01] Jameela Hello and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, a podcast against shame. So this week I have the Internet’s boyfriend on the podcast. His name is Penn Badgley. You may know him from Gossip Girl or one of the biggest serial killer shows in the world. You. In which he plays an extremely handsome and strange and charming serial killer. And I didn’t really know a lot about Penn Badgley. Like, to me, he kind of felt more of a mysterious member of the kind of Gossip Girl crew. And so I wasn’t super familiar with him until, you know, obviously I’d see like pictures of him on the Internet or videos and stuff. And he would seem like a kind of like, funny, sweet man. But it wasn’t until I went on his podcast Podcrushed, which is incredibly good and incredibly relatable and fun in which they talk about the kind of ways in which your teen experiences shape you. I highly recommend listening to it, but it was when I was a guest on that that I really kind of got a chance to witness him and just totally adored him immediately. He’s such a sensitive, kind, intelligent man. He gives women space to fucking talk and think, and he just seems like he’s really on a journey of constant self-reflection, self-improvement and just a better understanding of the world. And so I asked him to come on this podcast because I think he’s fascinating and I think he’s gone through a lot of fascinating things. I mean, he’s had a wild career becoming so famous and being so objectified at such a young age. And that’s a lens we don’t really talk about a lot because when it’s happening to women, we’re more familiar with what that situation is and a lot of us object to it. And yet when it’s happening to men, there’s no real discourse around how dehumanizing that can also be for a guy, especially a young man who’s going through that. So we sort of get into that in real depth in a way that I think you’ll find incredibly relatable. And I think it’s such an important subject to be able to discuss what that does to the brain. And in this episode, we discuss society’s obsession with romance and the difficulty of being sexy on screen. We discuss how his fame has affected his children’s experiences. We discuss his journey with his mind, his emotions, and where he is with finding peace. We discuss sensitivity within men and thinking within men. It’s just a it’s a lovely, fun, warm and deeply personal chat. And I love hearing these kinds of conversations from men. We need we need so much more of that. We have such a rise as such toxic ideology rising from men on social media. And to have a voice like Penn’s in this world just makes you feel like, Oh, thank God, thank Christ, there’s someone out there who’s sane. And so I think for that reason and just the fact that he’s so interesting, you’re going to really enjoy this chat. He’s a wonderful human and I like him very much, and I think you will, too. If you’re not yet familiar with him the way that I wasn’t before. So without further ado, this is the totally adorable and brilliant Penn Badgley. Penn Badgley. Welcome to I Weigh. How are you? 

[00:03:13] Penn I am good. I’m good. How are you? 

[00:03:15] Jameela Yeah, I’m good. I’m good. It’s so nice to see you. We only met for the first time recently when I was on your excellent podcast, Podcrushed. Thank you for having me. And I was pleasantly surprised as to how well we all got on. 

[00:03:28] Penn Yeah, I think that’s fair. 

[00:03:29] Jameela You never know. I think when you’ve sort of grown up watching someone on TV, you have no idea what their their vibe is like in your your. You have been, until recently, an incredibly private person as far as my perception is. And so I didn’t really have a sense of you. And it’s been really nice to kind of, in bits and bobs, get to know you now. 

[00:03:45] Penn You’re the second person in an interview in the last like week who has said that I am very private and I don’t feel that way at all. I mean, I feel like there is a whole lot of me that is very public. 

[00:03:56] Jameela Yeah. Yeah, we’ll get into that 

[00:04:00] Penn What metric for pirvate are we using here?

[00:04:01] Jameela No, but I think that I maybe it’s also that, you know, when you were coming up, people were less asked about their opinions and feelings on things. You know, they wanted the media trained. You know, I was around at that time. I was an interviewer. I would never have asked for your opinion on anything. We just wanted to play stupid fucking games. 

[00:04:17] Penn Dating advice for Cosmopolitan. 

[00:04:19] Jameela Exactly. So I think it was also a different time for actors. It’s almost become a bit weird how much we ask everyone for their opinions on every single thing. I think it’s kind of ruined. 

[00:04:29] Penn Oh yeah. 

[00:04:29] Jameela It’s ruined the way that we perceive a lot of actors because we can’t see them as the character anymore. We see them as their full identity. 

[00:04:36] Penn I have to say, I think about that. Well, I shouldn’t say a lot, but when I do, the conclusion I’ve come to was like, I think it would be better if we just didn’t have. How could actors not be famous? Is there a way? Can we I mean, surely there’s a way. It just feels like you know. 

[00:04:51] Jameela There was a way, there was a way. 

[00:04:53] Penn But then they were like iconic at the level of a demigod. And that was problematic too. I feel like I can’t for me, I mean, because I come from the world of film and TV and I know everything about how something is made. So it’s already hard for me to to actually watch something and not. 

[00:05:12] Jameela Dissect it. 

[00:05:13] Penn Yeah. Just sort of know how the sausage is made and just not be able to enjoy it. But I think furthermore, when a performance is good, especially by those who are like really, really good and become very, very well known for how good they are. All I can think about is the real person giving a great performance. I’m almost never. Almost never. And I think I mean that, enjoying something that I’m watching, like just for what it is. Just for. And it really suspends my disbelief. You know? 

[00:05:40] Jameela Yeah. Do you like expressing yourself and your opinions and your feelings now or 

[00:05:46] Penn Oh I love it. 

[00:05:47] Jameela I mean some I mean, some people do, I think I think at the beginning I really enjoyed it because I really liked to have a real conversation. I can’t I can’t stand trivial interviews. I can’t stand small talk. It really, like, brings out something almost emotionally violent in me. So I enjoyed being able to have a real chat. What I couldn’t have accounted for is like little parts of my real chat being taken and blown so wholly out of proportion where they no longer become my words and I kind of become quite dehumanized. So I feel like I, I started and I was so open and then have now wanted to kind of start finding a way to pull it back. And that’s why it’s nice that we have our own podcast because we have a kind of safe space where whoever wants to know the context of what we think can opt in. 

[00:06:24] Penn Yes, well, that’s that. Yeah, I mean, theoretically. But I think even that I just recently said to my co-hosts, Navid Kaplan and Sofia Ansari, they’re both former middle school teachers or administrators, and I’m not trying to to bump my show. I’m just giving context here. But it is called Podcrushed and is available on all platforms where ever you. 

[00:06:46] Jameela Alright be cool. 

[00:06:47] Penn I’m terrible at advertising for the podcast, so but I recently said to them we were thinking about a question to ask somebody and this matter of like safe space, I don’t know, I don’t think we have it on our own show either, because it’s still I don’t know how this one works for you, but you can’t make anything if it’s not generating some kind of like interest and income. Right. It’s just not capitalism doesn’t allow for it. The companies that we work for don’t allow for it. And that’s understandable. It’s not even a [inaudible] of judgment. So everything is constantly sort of needing to be exploited in order to generate some kind of interest or income. You know, it’s just is it so, you know, I’ve said things that have felt innocuous or things that are definitely not innocuous on my own podcast. And then there’s this moment where, you know, my co-producer and the PR kind of person at Stitcher will be like, Hey, we’re thinking this is a, you know, a good little sound bite to run with. Are you cool with it? And I’m just like, Oh, fuck. Um, let me think about it. Knowing that everybody wants me to say yes. And I’m like, Sure. And then, you know, invariably there’s there’s been at least several times where a headline from my own show. 

[00:07:57] Jameela Is taken out of context. 

[00:07:58] Penn Is, is something is just something where I’m like, I really wish I didn’t have to do that. I really wish that conversation didn’t have to go so public and and sort of have to exploit it so. 

[00:08:08] Jameela Well, I mean, you know, what part of our chat like one line I’d said went so fucking viral after I went on your podcast 

[00:08:14] Penn Yeah which one? Which one? 

[00:08:14] Jameela It was about how I had not auditioned for you. Your show as in not for you Penn. 

[00:08:21] Penn Oh, right. 

[00:08:22] Jameela  Badgley as in I had not auditioned for your show because I didn’t want to do sex scenes. 

[00:08:28] Penn Oh, right, right, right. 

[00:08:28] Jameela And then and then when the show came out, it turned out you’d also, like, massively pulled back on sex scenes, I was like fuck should have gone for the audition. But they framed it as though I walked away dramatically from your show after being pressured specifically by you to get my tits out. 

[00:08:44] Penn To do a sex scene. Yeah.

[00:08:44] Jameela Yeah. So I was I was really frustrated with the way that I got portrayed. That was such a laughingly like, throwaway comment. 

[00:08:52] Penn Yeah, it was just it was just a moment. 

[00:08:53] Jameela Yeah where I was just saying I didn’t do an audition like big fucking deal, but it made it look like, you know, that role was mine. But you guys were begging for my bum hole and I said no. 

[00:09:05] Penn First it was tits and now it’s bumhole. 

[00:09:07] Jameela It escalated first. Yeah, but it was, it was surreal to see how how viral that when like how much press that picked up. And I, I definitely got like a kind of taste of the machine. So can we can we get into that subject a bit. The one that, you know, has already people have such an out of context idea of because I thought your perspective of that was much more interesting than mine because we so rarely hear men talk about this. I would like to get into this with you on your own. 

[00:09:33] Penn Yeah, sure. 

[00:09:34] Jameela And of terms. But you’ve been speaking, I think, in a bit more detail as well recently about the fact that the reason that you had pulled back so many sex scenes in in your show You which has a lot of sex scenes, given the nature of the character and the story that you finally said because you weren’t comfortable from the beginning, right. You almost walked away from the role. 

[00:09:53] Penn Yeah. I mean, yes. To put it simply, having like an all explicit love scene, something that I am of course, very familiar with, it was just from, back in 2017 when I was considering taking the role. It was something that I thought was possibly for me at this point, a no go in my in my in myself, you know, for myself. And so it, of course, led me to think like, am I going to have a career or how to how do I have a career, considering where I’ve come from and what I’m known for and what the opportunities that are available to me or will be available to me, how am I going to make that work? You know, that was that was a very real question. I mean, such a real question that it was like, wow, what am I going to do? You know, like. 

[00:10:37] Jameela Yeah, it’s make or break. 

[00:10:38] Penn And that wasn’t the only thing, by the way, at all, but it was one of them. And, you know, of all people, my wife encouraged me at the time to among the many things, not not to prioritize that one as much because in a way, the way that I was trying to weigh it all was actually, you know, I was trying to make such moral decisions in a way that that it left me that afforded me very little opportunity to say yes to anything in my industry I think.

[00:11:07] Jameela There were about a billion misunderstandings when you first came out and spoke about it in a way that really stunned me. A, just how many opinions people have about what someone chooses to do with their own body is very odd. But some people were upset because you said that you kind of felt like an element of infidelity and it was around the time of your marriage to your now wife that you were choosing to not you might choose it but you were starting to feel that extra discomfort. Is it because of marriage and the infidelity aspect that you kind of feel around being so physically close to an intimate with someone? Or is it just generally something that you’re a little bit uncomfortable with? 

[00:11:43] Penn I mean, I think it’s both. I think so, like getting away from the and I’m saying this more to me than I am to you, but getting away from like all the intellectual kind of gymnastics that we all have to perform, trying to talk about a lot of this stuff, it comes down to like some very simple feelings. Part of it is love and affection. Part of it is trust and fidelity. Part of it is intimacy and boundaries and physical touch. But it’s just at the end of the day, like how many people know what it’s like for work to have to generate what we call chemistry between yourself and another person who you who you had no real part in choosing, by the way, and then acting like you’re in a relationship and fostering at least some form of those feelings, at least some form, whatever that form is, go ahead. And I challenge anybody to lay out empirically what forms those are. It’s just it’s like what the what is that? 

[00:12:36] Jameela It’s also like it feels very silly to act like that doesn’t have any kind of intimacy because loads of my friends who are in this industry got together. 

[00:12:45] Penn Exactly that’s what I’m saying. 

[00:12:46] Jameela playing lovers or left other relationships 

[00:12:49] Penn Right right. 

[00:12:49] Jameela Because they had to fall in love with someone on screen and then they found the sex scene is really fucking hot, even though of course we’re not supposed to because we are supposed to be eunuchs. Like it’s not not a thing. It does feel fucking mental. 

[00:13:01] Penn Right. Let’s back away from intellectual gymnastics we all perform around this and be like, Come on, guys. First of all, there’s very few people who know what it is to actually do this. So I appreciate your opinion and feelings, but they’re not as valuable to me when I’m making this decision because I know what it’s like. 

[00:13:13] Jameela An intimacy coordinator doesn’t change the biology of your brain that makes everything safe. 

[00:13:18] Penn Not at all, no. It reduces the chance for exploitation is what it does. 

[00:13:21] Jameela 100%. Yeah. And it keeps everyone, you know, working within their own boundaries and you know exactly what’s going to happen. I think. 

[00:13:26] Penn Freestyle. 

[00:13:27] Jameela Freestyle sex scenes truly one of the craziest phenomenons of our time, you know, where people were just sort of told, well, have at it. And that rarely happens anymore, thank God. But I find kissing someone else fucking mental. I find it mental. 

[00:13:42] Penn Yeah. I don’t like it. I mean it’s yeah and by the way, like, let’s stop. Let’s stop performing intellectual gymnastics. That’s fine and normal. It’s fine and normal to not. 

[00:13:52] Jameela Yeah. 

[00:13:52] Penn To feel weird about having to kiss somebody and touch somebody who you are not spontaneously, involuntarily doing it with. Most of all. And then, by the way, I’m still kind of performing intellectual gymnastics. It’s not the person you like. It’s not the person you love. I mean, if if we were the most spiritually enlightened version of ourselves and we were all and our boundaries were exquisite and immaculate, and we all knew every gradation of, you know, like physical and emotional stimulus and response and boundary and consent and all that. Okay. But that’s not the world we live in. That’s not who we are. So, like, it’s just it’s just it’s just kind of preposterous to me that there’s so much intellectual resistance and emotional dishonesty around this very simple matter. Like, who the fuck hasn’t basically felt the most feelings around the tiniest of little things when it comes to love and touch and sex. Show me. Show me a relationship that’s really working. Show me, you know, people who are very happy in their love lives. Show me anybody. Like, come on. 

[00:14:56] Jameela It’s very. It’s. It’s dehuman. It’s dehumanizing for us to think in this way that we can do separate. Like I’m aware that acting is acting. But also then at the same time, we all say that, you know, one of the reasons why it’s important to have people from lived experience be more likely to get cast in the roles that suits them is because it’s more interesting because they’re drawing from themselves. You know, you’re drawing that chemistry and that passion and all these different things from within yourself. I mean, I’ve only kissed six people off camera and so, you know, like it’s something that I am especially like Precious with, you know, we discussed my discomfort even with watching sex scenes that other people are in when I was on your show and so, you know, I’ve only kissed, I think Manny Manny Jacinto like Tim Meadows and Flula. Three, three lovely guys, three lovely guys kissed them. And it was like, the most because I only do comedy roles and I turn down anything that I would be required to be sexy or sexual in. So it massively, like, reduces the amount of work that I can do because so when people look at me and because I, you know, I’m voluptuous or tall or whatever, they think of me immediately in the kind of loving roles. And unfortunately so many of these things involve so much intimacy. And I never know why, because I’ve personally never been that enlightened as to a story by the fucking sex scene. I know that it is important. So I think especially with the new, I could see that within You the show. Like I could see why it would be relevant. 

[00:16:18] Penn Yeah, but I mean. 

[00:16:19] Jameela But it’s so rare that you’d be like what happened to the, what happened to the beginning of the kiss and then cut to the crashing wave or the champagne being, you know, popped open. I like the innuendo days. I don’t want to see everything. It feels like a it feels like a big deal kissing someone who isn’t my partner, you know, And people might mock or ridicule that, but it just is what it is. And a lot of more of us are feeling that way then we say, but we don’t feel like we’re allowed to object. 

[00:16:45] Penn Right. But this is the thing. Even this the fact that we still feel the need to make disclaimers, you know, first of all, there’s no one present in this conversation other than you and me. And so so unfortunately, in these kinds of scenarios, all we can do is imagine some kind of response of the proverbial them, you know, just like as we all do in our heads, in our minds, which goes back to childhood experience and goes back to a lot of things that we could dig into. But, you know. 

[00:17:08] Jameela We will. 

[00:17:09] Penn Right. I just think that it’s like what you just said is the crux of it. I feel something like I feel weird kissing someone who’s not my partner and, you know, maybe that’s you could you could make all kinds of clarifications. But guess what? What’s the most important thing to everybody? At the end of the day, usually it’s love in some form. It actually in its in its primary forms, which is through family and through partners and through friends. That’s just what matter. If that wasn’t true, we wouldn’t want shows that are all about these relationships. We watch more television than ever. We watch television probably more than anything. And what is it about but love in family in friends and most of all in romance. So if we don’t care about these things as much, we should stop telling these stories all the time and watching these stories all the time. And if we didn’t care about when you kiss somebody other than your partner, when your partner kisses somebody other than you or more than that, if we didn’t think it was a big deal, then why the fuck is every story also about that? You know, why is every love story? And I’m of course generalizing, but why are so many love stories told about that specific feeling, that specific feeling and not any other feeling? 

[00:18:14] Jameela So therefore it’s fair for us to have certain kind of emotions around it. 

[00:18:19] Penn I’m not even saying fair. Can we like we live in such an intellectual and emotional and spiritually dissociated time. 

[00:18:27] Jameela Mm hmm. 

[00:18:28] Penn Is it fair? No. It’s how you feel. There’s no fairness in feeling. It’s how you feel. It’s also how seemingly I believe everybody feels. We could intellectualize around all these things, around other ways of forming relationships. But the truth is, to me, my understanding in all of my experience is that takes such a hypothetically advanced trust and boundary keeping, which in and of itself it’s a snake eating its tail. It’s like if we want to talk about boundaries and trust, it’s between people. Like, again, I’m saying this because we’re in the conversation and I know for myself it was a it was a very clear and simple boundary. It just was not clear and simple how I was ever going to set it or if I could. 

[00:19:09] Jameela Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I also think, you know, I’ve spoken about this in the fucking past plenty of times in interviews, and people didn’t really blink. No one, there was no backlash against me when I said it about myself. But there is, you know, we touched on this a bit on your podcast. There is an extra special double standard that we reserve for especially handsome men who feel this way where we just can’t compute it, because I think the understanding of men amongst far too many people, not all people, is that you’re all just like rabid sex dogs who should will eat what they’re given. And it feels very affronting to some people in a way that really stuns me whenever it happens. It happened to, you know, my friend Lucas Bravo, who’s on Emily in Paris or he was like, I feel a bit uncomfortable with how much I’m being objectified. And the backlash against him was so vile and weird, and people really turned on him and then turned on the character just because the young man said, Oh, maybe it’s just a bit uncomfortable. Like I want to be seen as more than that. Any woman said that we would all rally behind her, but it is especially discombobulating. 

[00:20:14] Penn Yeah, it’s the plight of men. I mean, I would like to just call it the plight of men. 

[00:20:19] Jameela That’s that’s the that’s the entire theme of this podcast. So welcome. But it is. It is it is very strange. And it’s as if men don’t have sensitivity or don’t have any discomfort around these issues. It’s it also feels like some people tried to turn it into, wow, you must not have a very trusting relationship if you don’t feel safe having intimacy scenes when you have a wife. And they were almost blaming her for it. It got fucking crazy.

[00:20:46] Penn I know. No. I mean, she, she she Domino got a lot of hateful sort of messages in her. 

[00:20:54] Jameela Shit. 

[00:20:54] Penn In her inboxes and her various inboxes and, you know, again, that whole thing of the, the inevitable exploitation of all people and things surrounding, you know. And for what, by the way, by the way. But let’s be real. Like, I can feel all my feelings about it. Everybody, anyone who wants can feel their feelings about it. But at the end of day, what happened was I said something in the context of a conversation on my own podcast. It became a news item for a little bit. And then, you know, so many people became invested in what can’t be called a conversation, by the way. It’s more like, let’s all play darts at the same time. And there’s just a bunch of darts being thrown at the wall and everybody’s trying to say something in response to a conversation they weren’t a part of and are still not a part of. You know what I mean? What I’m trying to outline is like what’s actually happening? Like we we call it a conversation, we call it like discourse. But sometimes I’m like, this is all so chaotic. 

[00:21:56] Jameela It turns into Gladiator. It turns into Gladiator. You’ve been a sort of sex symbol, I guess, since you were very young. How old were you when you started on Gossip Girl? 

[00:22:05] Penn 20. 

[00:22:06] Jameela Right. That’s so fucking young. And I knew your name immediately as I did with Lucas, as I do with any of my friends who become the hot love interest on any of these shows. Very few men ever feel safe to talk about what that’s like. But what is what is it like? How does it fuck with your brain? 

[00:22:22] Penn Which part of it? The intimacy part or just the? 

[00:22:25] Jameela No, the objectification. Like because there’s no space for permission for men to talk about the fact that this feels they’re treated like they’re ungrateful. 

[00:22:33] Penn Yeah. 

[00:22:33] Jameela I know that no one actually needs permission, but I’m saying that the backlash implies that you do not have permission to be able to complain because you are being ungrateful for women’s support. And again, that’s just like it’s such a crazed double standard that we all need to really check ourselves for. But can I ask what that was like, the pressure of that much fame and specifically fame around your appearance? 

[00:22:54] Penn Yeah, well, I would say that there’s no overstating really its effect on me in my life. I don’t know how to measure it or explain it entirely, but it’s it’s it’s influenced my life so much. So much. So far, there’s been at least two points where I’ve questioned whether or not I continue doing it. One of them was right before I took Gossip Girl. The other was right before I took You, the show. So if I try to just stay in my feeling. 

[00:23:21] Jameela Mm hmm. 

[00:23:22] Penn Then I can say simply what it feels like we like. 

[00:23:26] Jameela Well, let’s start with the feelings. 

[00:23:28] Penn Yeah. So the feeling really is not a good one. It’s complex. What it feels like. Is is objectification. What that feels like is not good. It feels like I’m being taken advantage of, not being seen and not being understood. It feels like those things, and I’m not again. I know intellectually that it’s not just those things. It contains some of those things. But it’s not just those things. But that’s that’s a lot of times what it feels like. 

[00:24:03] Jameela Do you feel like it’s harder, especially at 20, like it’s harder to get I don’t know other guys or people to take you seriously as someone with brain and sensitivity? 

[00:24:11] Penn I mean, I certainly tried to if that wasn’t happening and I could feel it, I would try to force it. And I did try to speak quite transparently about this back then. And I was called ungrateful and or too serious. And yeah, I think my feelings account for something that is true and maybe objectively true. Like all people experience some of these things. All people in my position experience some level of these same feelings and depending on their experiences, especially childhood experiences, that may or may not be more or less magnified. You know, like I am oriented because of some childhood experience so that I’m especially sensitive to the feeling of exploitation and manipulation. Not everybody is. I think a lot of people are, but not everybody is. And so some people might feel that and be like ehh. 

[00:25:01] Jameela Is that because you started as a child star at like, you know, 11 years old? 

[00:25:05] Penn Well it’s because I started as a child star and then other stuff before that, which is just part of my own childhood experience, you know, like and it’s not like I’m not willing to talk about that. But at the same time, it’s. 

[00:25:13] Jameela I mean you are you are welcome to share. But I also don’t want to overstep any of your personal boundaries. 

[00:25:17] Penn I think for the time being I probably I won’t. But but just because of childhood experience and my understanding of how that shapes people. 

[00:25:27] Jameela It’s also not to horribly generalize actors, but like, you know, very few that I have ever met didn’t come into this strange profession because they. 

[00:25:37] Penn Yes, yes. 

[00:25:38] Jameela were not in some way quite fragmented because of their childhoods. Like you’re looking for like love from the world or community or to live as a different person constantly than who you actually are or looking to communicate because you never used to know how to communicate with people, so you find this medium So. 

[00:25:53] Penn Oh I know yeah. 

[00:25:54] Jameela You very much so not alone. And and I have also have very complicated paths in these areas. And so I definitely feel you. 

[00:26:02] Penn Yeah I definitely know that. And that’s why I’m erring on the side of caution and by saying, maybe it’s just me, but I do think it’s most or all people working in this industry in the way that that we work in the industry as actors, specifically as performers, you know. And let me say actually that that’s not about art and performance. That’s just about people who become successful in this industry performing, because this industry looks to a few things. You know, how you look and how you act and how you look while you’re doing it. And I don’t think these things are true about artists, period. But I think it’s I think it’s almost universally true about about actors in Hollywood who are successful. You know? 

[00:26:47] Jameela Yeah. Yeah. That’s what you’re. You’re pulling from somewhere. But you were saying that because it’s, like, amplified because of previous experiences when you were young. And and then also, you know, it it starts to define you. We watch it happen to women all the fucking time. We know. We know what this is. And that’s why I always get so confused when we feel so dogged about criticizing a man who says the same thing. Like it. It’s a tightrope to walk between the fact that it’s flattering and it’s nice and you get lots of attention and you get extra opportunities and you want those extra opportunities and there is a privilege to it. But at the same time, it then overshadows so much of what people see in you then, because you become that character in people’s hearts for a really long time. And Natalie Portman was speaking about this recently that after realizing how much she was being sexualized from kind of Léon onwards, where she was I think like a 13 and that in that film she became like a very, very deliberately, very serious person publicly and became obsessed with getting people to take her seriously and chose the type of roles people wouldn’t expect her to take and was like very, very, very 

[00:27:56] Penn Conscious. 

[00:27:56] Jameela Hyper conscious of every single thing she did and said to to seem as intellectual and as not just that one thing as possible, so that she felt in control of the way that she was perceived and that probably robbed her, I mean, I haven’t spoken to her about this on this podcast yet, but I imagine that’s also that also takes something a little bit away 

[00:28:16] Penn Definitely I mean. 

[00:28:16] Jameela Trying to force this other side of you, do you know what I mean? Because it’s a form of masking. 

[00:28:21] Penn Yeah. I mean my brain goes, yeah, it’s, that’s a lot there. It’s not just a form of masking, it’s not really knowing who you are. I mean when you strip this stuff away, some I think for some people it’s hard to know who you are. It really does become so pervasive in your life and influences every single interaction you have with with everybody around you. 

[00:28:43] Jameela I think anyone can relate to it, regardless of their job. 

[00:28:44] Penn Yeah, exactly. And there are some really interesting universal truths buried down in this stuff, which I meditate on. It’s they’re hard to explain with language. I don’t have enough perspective yet or enough wisdom and experience and but I hope in time to be able to distill it because it is fascinating. I feel like if fame and all of this is it’s some part of real human culture that affects us all, but there’s very few of us who get the experience of being on the other side of it. And so I do feel like there’s some kind of wisdom to be shared from it. And I don’t hear it that often because I think it ends up kind of eating up and clouding most people’s vision. 

[00:29:22] Jameela But also people are afraid to fucking talk about it because they get treated like ungrateful assholes. 

[00:29:27] Penn Yeah yeah yeah. So I mean, I feel like I’ve made it my life’s work in a way in the last 5 years to talk about it in a way that is meaningful and effective and in walks a line successfully enough that I don’t get constantly dismissed as ungrateful or navel gazing. And of course, sometimes it happens. But by the way, it’s coming from a place where I think, like there’s something many things quite wrong with our with our social world, with our society, there’s something quite toxic about our culture. And so I’m being given along with a select few others. This front row witness to an experience of how this part of the sausage is being made. I’m going to reference sausage as many times as I can in this interview. You know, like fame to me is a product of a sick culture. So I’m not a doctor, but I am at least being shown that sickness up close. There’s hardly anyone I interact with where this isn’t a part of it doesn’t influence our interaction in some kind of way. You know, I have two kids. My 14 year old has actually asked for me not to come along to certain kind of things because it will change the experience we all have as a family. My two and a half year old, of course, hasn’t thought to do that yet, but is noticing that people stop his dad a lot. And recently, you know, he’ll say as we pass someone who’s just stopped us as we’re strolling or whatever, he’ll say, Who’s that? He’s been saying that. 

[00:30:53] Jameela Your child is Russian? 

[00:30:54] Penn Oh is he Russian?  They all have accents as they’re coming up. You know what I mean? He does actually often sound like he’s some SNL skit version of an Eastern European accent. He is like, daddy so crazy. 

[00:31:07] Jameela Yeah. 

[00:31:09] Penn But he’ll be like, who’s that? And and I’ll have to think of some kind of genuine answer to give him. Right. And I do. And I’ve started to say. 

[00:31:16] Jameela One of daddy’s worshipers. 

[00:31:20] Penn Yeah, right. And like, you know, I’m not like, I’m not complaining. What I’m saying is like, But look, there it is. 

[00:31:24] Jameela It’s unusual. Yeah. 

[00:31:25] Penn Yeah, it’s unusual. And, like, I have to think about it, and it’s so, okay. There it is.

[00:31:28] Jameela That sucks about your 14 year old. I completely understand where they’re coming from. It’s just a weird thing where everyone. 

[00:31:34] Penn Yeah I it totally yeah

[00:31:34] Jameela No one knows how to navigate this shit perfectly, but that must be a little bit surreal for you. I mean, all of this one thing I would love to talk to you about because you’ve been so open about it in the past, is your mental health. This is a mental health podcast, and I imagine all this kind of like feeds in. But you’ve had anxiety since around the age of 12. 

[00:31:54] Penn I mean, I think it’s probably more lifelong, I guess.

[00:31:57] Jameela Right, right, right. 

[00:31:58] Penn Yeah. Why did you name 12? Did I say that?

[00:31:59] Jameela Because you named 12. Yeah. When you were talking about it. So all I have is your words to regurgitate back to you. But 

[00:32:07] Penn Why can’t, why aren’t you reading my mind? 

[00:32:08] Jameela But I. I Maybe that’s when you were able to, like, name it or when it became really, like, really palpably noticeable. Because also when we’re young, we don’t really know maybe what we’re feeling. I had probably anxiety from the age of about three or four, but didn’t really realize it until it had surfaced alongside the combination of hormones. But generally with your mental health, what has been your journey? What has been your biggest struggles? 

[00:32:30] Penn I mean, I’ll be honest, it matters so much to me, the way I experience it and interpret it. I don’t use the word mental health, but for but for the sake of others, I mean, what is what is mental? If we’re talking about health, like what is mentality? And I’m not going to go into that, I would, but there’s no not enough time and nobody else is probably interested in what I think about that. But it’s. 

[00:32:55] Jameela I always think emotional. I think of when I when I talk about it, I think of emotional stability, right? Things that can rock us off our course of just feeling level. 

[00:33:03] Penn Right. So actually, I love what you did you just so so but what you did though, as you went from mentality to emotionality and you talked about feelings rather than thoughts. And I think, like I said earlier, I think we live in a time that is so dissociated from feeling so dissociated. We let our feelings kind of guide us wherever. But that doesn’t mean that we are mastering them. We’re dissociated from them. 

[00:33:24] Jameela And we’ve never named them more. We’ve never named or pathologized them more. But we’re not actually feeling safe to feel them.

[00:33:31] Penn Right we’re dissociated from like, love, like define love, please. Every story is about it. Every song is about it. Please define love. You know, like it’s a completely confused notion. And yet. We talk about it on one hand, like it’s the most powerful force in the universe and then on the other, like it’s pathetic and can’t accomplish anything. 

[00:33:47] Jameela Whitney Cummings defined it really well when she said love is being willing to die for someone that you yourself want to kill. 

[00:33:59] Penn Actually, that’s she’s not wrong.

[00:34:00] Jameela She’s pretty good. 

[00:34:01] Penn She’s not wrong. You know, I’ve actually been reading no joke, incredible resource recently. It’s old at this point, but it’s by Bell Hooks called All About Love. And it’s it’s something that I passed by because I sort of thought like it was. You know, things can become so canon that you just you yourself haven’t read it, but you’re like, I guess. 

[00:34:20] Jameela You feel like you’ve absorbed it. 

[00:34:21] Penn Culturally we’ve absorbed it and we’ve moved past it. Well, by the way, no, it’s not the case at all. Like something that’s truly masterful and radical. It’s we have not culturally absorbed it at all. It’s been more or less culturally ignored and dismissed, even as it’s lauded, which is a sign of true genius. I mean, I’m actually going to read to you how she defines love. As best as I understand it, I’m working through the book, but she she starts to give a working definition of love because she suggests that without a universal definition, we’ll all just stumble around and never be able to actually experience and give love. And she she’s echoing the work of of well, she’s quoting M. Scott Peck from a classic called The Road Less Traveled. And he’s echoing the work of Erich Fromm. And I’m saying all of this because this is what they’ll. 

[00:35:07] Jameela All they all got what they’re saying for me. So, yes, I think they forgot to credit it. 

[00:35:12] Penn Yes. And it is. This is how they are defining love, the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. And then explaining further, he continues, Love is as love does. Love is an act of will, namely both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love. So anyway, that’s like maybe a little bit intellectual, but but. 

[00:35:43] Jameela No, I thought that was I thought that felt very relatable. 

[00:35:46] Penn Yeah. I mean, what I understand of this book, one of the things that I’m understanding in life is like how it’s very hard to accept how little love we may have gotten and given. 

[00:35:59] Jameela Mm hmm. 

[00:36:00] Penn It’s it’s very hard. And so as a result, we sort of keep a lot of relationships, if not all of them are very superficial. This is the defining trait of masculinity, by the way. Uh. That this is you know, I was joking earlier about the plight of men. I think this is actually a real plight of men. But which. Men are, of course, we’re all responsible for. So I’m not saying it’s like um. It’s it’s forced upon us. I mean, as human beings, regardless of sex and gender. 

[00:36:31] Jameela Yeah nature and nurture is all. 

[00:36:31] Penn It is technically all forced on us as children. 

[00:36:33] Jameela Exactly. 

[00:36:34] Penn Right. So but like and then as men, we perpetuate it and perpetrate ourselves grotesquely. Awfully so. 

[00:36:40] Jameela Yeah but isn’t a pervasive and constant subliminal and aggressive messaging like So what is anyone supposed to do? It’s the same for all the genders. 

[00:36:47] Penn That’s a good question. No, that’s a really good question. What is anyone supposed to do? And that’s so how do we get on here? Because we’re talking about mental health. And then I brought up. Yeah. I actually think, like I’ve had such a profound mental health journey that I don’t I don’t identify with the phrase mental health personally, but I use it, of course, because it’s the one to use now. But think about how reductive it is. First of all, it assumes that there is a health you’re missing because why? Why is it because of you and your brain? Is it just simply the chemicals in your brain or is it because you haven’t experienced love which you deserve? And what is mentality, by the way, What is the mental what is the origin of our consciousness like? These are very profound questions which, if you want to roll your eyes at, guess what? You’ve got some work to do, you know, like as we all do, by the way. I practically roll my eyes at it, which is why I make the disclaimer. It’s it’s very hard for us to talk about this stuff we currently call mental health. What I think can be boiled down to it is the condition of your soul. It’s the condition of your feelings in your heart. It is. And it influences. 

[00:37:48] Jameela It’s also contextual to like what we at society deem is like the ever changing standard of normal, quote unquote normal behavior. So, you know, women who were gay, people who were gay were considered mentally ill and thrown in asylums for the rest of their lives. Women in particular used to be institutionalized for 

[00:38:07] Penn Hysteria. 

[00:38:07] Jameela Hysteria, you know, or for having any feelings or dissenting in any way for being a bit cold like autistic women who didn’t know they were autistic. All of these people just locked up, thrown away, told that they’re crazy. And now we’ve changed what acceptable behavior is. But I think that that could change again in ten years time where we, you know, have a new way to identify and pathology normal human reactions to our society. I think it was Esther Perel who was talking about the fact that, like, are we all depressed? Do we all have clinical anxiety or are we living in a world that is not designed for human wellness? Are we living in a world that is constantly anxious, constantly makes us feel unsafe? Are we having normal human reactions to a very, very like an increasingly eroding society and then that is being diagnosed and medicated? This is not me saying that the mental illness doesn’t exist. I totally. I think it does. I’ve had it, but I’m just saying that the numbers very reasonably correlate to the decline in our society, and yet we pathologize and medicate it and name it rather than actually looking at the source and fixing the cause of so many people’s feeling over regulation. How can anyone feel regulated in such an irregulated society? 

[00:39:25] Penn Yeah, and again, earlier you asked like, so what does anybody supposed to do in the face of such a systemic and huge problem? And I actually think that’s a very serious question. What are we supposed to do? You know, again, I. 

[00:39:38] Jameela We’re supposed to bully each other and win on social media Penn. 

[00:39:40] Penn Yeah right or start a podcast. 

[00:39:42] Jameela We’re supposed to clap back and slap down. Yeah. 

[00:39:47] Penn I you know I do have answers to that. 

[00:39:48] Jameela We’re supposed to message actors lives and have a go at them for the actors adult decision. 

[00:39:54] Penn I mean I first everyone seems to have to surmise some kind of answer to that question for themselves. So what what do I do. I mean, I yeah, I do have some answers. They’re kind of hard to talk about. Like, I mean, for me, it it is like going back to that definition of love that Bell Hooks offers. And then at least two other men agreed with was it contained the word spiritual in it? You know, for me, it’s it has to do with the human spirit. Like it’s it’s really important and relevant here. You know, for me, meditation and prayer are foundations of my mental health. But, you know, you build on top of foundation. So then beyond that, I mean, let’s go back to that definition. It said it said the will to extend one’s self, extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. So, like actually being a father is really great for my mental health. There’s a razor thin wire to to balance on there because the stress of parenthood in such an unsupportive culture is so great that it, of course, can be quote unquote, bad for your quote unquote mental health. But then, of course, the whole question is like, well, what the hell are we even doing here? If being a parent is that bad for your mental health, what good is your mental health without doing things that you want to do and love doing and being a part of a community, part of a family or a part of a home, whatever, you know, it’s you can’t separate yourself from the whole, but you as an individual can’t single handedly change the whole. So we’re up against a giant, giant, giant challenge. And I don’t think of mental health on the reductive terms of the pop science kind of perspective, which I think it’s just, you know, I mean, I have people very close to me who suffer immensely from mental illness. I don’t think recognizing all of this and also recognizing that mental illness is real are in opposition. 

[00:42:04] Jameela They’re not conflicting. No, they’re not conflicting. I think we’re talking about the phenomena, the explosion of it. 

[00:42:09] Penn Right. There is an explosion and I think it has to do with. 

[00:42:10] Jameela Yeah there is an explosion. 

[00:42:12] Penn This deficit of love that we have. But love as a as a as a as a truly radical force, which we do not understand yet at all. You know something that Bell Hooks says in this book, which I also love, because everything that she’s saying is not a surprise, but it’s like confirming to what I’ve been slowly building of my own perspective and experience. And she says that abuse cannot coexist with love. And that’s very, very challenging to most people’s definition of love, because you would say, I know my parents loved me or Oh, I know they love me. I know so and so love me. But if there’s abuse in that relationship. I mean, if we’re going by this this definition and of course, I think we have to remember that it’s a definition so should be treated like a like a like a hypothesis. So but if it’s true, let’s try and see if it’s true. Like, if love and abuse cannot coexist in the same relationship. That would mean necessarily that we’ve had profoundly less love than we believe we have or that we say we do. And to acknowledge if that’s true, that’s very, very sad. There’s no other word for it. There’s no other word we should try to intellectualize around. It’s very sad. And to really be with sadness is a hard thing that we spend so much time distracting ourselves from and our phones need say no more. You know, like we just spend a lot of time distracting ourselves from our feelings because of how much sadness we carry. 

[00:43:48] Jameela So what has been your personal journey then, with all of this, like having struggled for a long time? Did you evade it for a long time? Were you all over it? 

[00:43:55] Penn I actually think I tried to look at it pretty directly, and that’s why I was considered a more serious 20 something than most of the 20 somethings around me. And it led to increasingly less sustained friendships. I mean, I was always I always had the capacity to be very social. But, you know, my memory, I don’t know that this is really true. But like my memory of the Gossip Girl days is like everybody wanted to go out and I would always sort of resist it and I’d always get this sort of like, Oh, it’s so fun when you come out bro, like, come out, you know, you never come out with us. And it’s like whether it was in a cast member or a crew member and it’s just there was some, you know, it’s because of this, it was because I that way of socializing and being was has always seemed so coarse and arbitrary to me. 

[00:44:41] Jameela It’s funny, you’re the only castmember I didn’t use to interview all the time. 

[00:44:44] Penn Oh, really? 

[00:44:44] Jameela Yeah. I interviewed everyone else from the cast, like, frequently with every season. And I never got to interview you. I never met you.  

[00:44:51] Penn Well in what context were you interviewing them?

[00:44:52] Jameela We were in England, like over in England, and we would do all these, like, incredibly stupid and reductive interviews. And I’m so sorry to the cast of Gossip Girl and everyone else I interviewed, but it wasn’t my fault. I was 22 and I was made to do it by producers. I would have loved to have had proper chats with all of you. But yeah, I never got to kind of witness that side of you or that period. 

[00:45:09] Penn Yeah. So I mean, I mean, if it was press related, I had to do the press that everyone else had to do. I don’t know that I would have. 

[00:45:17] Jameela Oh, you would have all just been divvied up. You were probably somewhere else. 

[00:45:19] Penn Maybe. Yeah. I mean. 

[00:45:20] Jameela I never got to see you at that point, so I can’t really just sort of listen. But I was just. It just struck me. 

[00:45:25] Penn I remember I was out with most of the cast one time, and there was somebody who was not a part of the cast who I shall not name but was famous at the time and who said it was a it was a woman, a young woman. So I was probably 23. She was somewhere around 25. I don’t know. A lot of people know who this person is. So I’m just giving you just it’s like a moment like this person you think who was Dan Humphrey and this other young famous woman who, you know, you’ve had ideas about. This is our very brief conversation between us went at a club in like the West Village, you know, on some night, some arbitrary night of the week, she asked me. Why are you so serious? And. You know, I had nothing to say to that because it was like all of this kind of sort of where we were was just kind of a dumb place. Everybody was carrying on in the way that you have to in those sort of scenario, which, by the way, like so many people have social anxiety, which I think is an appropriate response to these places we choose to go where you have to yell over da da da. Whatever

[00:46:27] Jameela Very unnatural. 

[00:46:28] Penn I won’t get into the whole thing, you know, and I just remember feeling so deflated then because I was trying to put on a face, I was trying to go out, you know, and. Like, look, fine. You could you could, you could, you could think that I was too serious and that I shouldn’t take it all so serious and get over myself. Okay, fine. But whatever my but my experience was and my feelings were like, Oh, fuck, I’m trying right now. I’m really trying. 

[00:46:58] Jameela I think so many people can relate to that. And they’re told like, Oh, you’re young. You’re in your 20s like, Smile, smile, have fun. It gets harder after this. And you’re like, 

[00:47:06] Penn Yeah but you know, I disagree with that by the way. 

[00:47:08] Jameela I’m not going to be able to handle that. 

[00:47:09] Penn It gets so much easier. And the more older people I talk to agree. We actually just interviewed Julia Louis-Dreyfus the other day for our podcast, by the way, again, Podcrushed on every podcasting platform. 

[00:47:19] Jameela Oh fuck off, Penn.

[00:47:21] Penn There’s the soundbite we’re looking for. 

[00:47:25] Jameela People are going to think that we’ve entered into a really abusive relationship. 

[00:47:29] Penn Love cannot coexist in this. 

[00:47:30] Jameela I know. I knew you were going to say that. Go on, tell me about Julia 

[00:47:35] Penn Louis-Dreyfus. 

[00:47:37] Jameela Yeah, yeah, yeah. National Treas. 

[00:47:39] Penn In her interview with another national treasure, Jane Fonda, on her podcast, which is available on every podcasting platform. Wiser than Me, It’s in the premiere episode. Go ahead and look for it.  

[00:47:51] Jameela It is actually really good. 

[00:47:52] Penn Jane Fonda and Julia Louis-Dreyfus agree, at least that being young is hard. 

[00:47:58] Jameela Yes. 

[00:47:58] Penn I also agree. It sounds like you agree. And again, why is it hard? I think it’s because we’re being introduced to all of these inanities and insanities of our culture, blah, blah, blah, blah. So the world’s fucked up, whatever. Yeah, I grew up very attuned to that sadness. Didn’t feel like it was worth dismissing. Tried to you at one point used a fair amount of weed and alcohol to to administer to that sort of pain. Really didn’t work very well for very long at all. And by the time I was 17, I couldn’t smoke weed. And by the time I mean, I’ve now been and I haven’t had any form of substance for probably eight years or so now. But, you know, I stopped enjoying drinking a lot more or less by the time I was like 22 or 23. I think everybody has these experiences in some form or another, but it gets magnified and fast tracked when you have the celebrity. 

[00:48:56] Jameela Yeah, totally. And it was you know, it was a very specific era where the industry really encouraged you to go out and not get into trouble, but, you know, make the splash. And TMZ, you know what I mean? That was, 

[00:49:08] Penn Oh, totally. 

[00:49:09] Jameela I think they want us to behave a bit better now. 

[00:49:11] Penn 2007, 2008. 

[00:49:11] Jameela Us misbehaving, was kind of like almost better for your name back then, whereas now it’s more encouraged to like talk about green juice on the old Instagram and working out for mental health and being a, you know, a good egg. 

[00:49:23] Penn Yeah right right right. 

[00:49:24] Jameela And, and people really only want to see you out at marches. They don’t want to see you out in the club. 

[00:49:30] Penn I think people care. I love it when people refer to the club, but then also go go the extra thing and go do club. 

[00:49:35] Jameela Da club. Yeah, it’s because saying the club in my accent makes you makes it feel like a tennis club with old people. 

[00:49:43] Penn I don’t know that people really care. I think people are losing interest in what celebrities have to say, so. 

[00:49:50] Jameela Thank God. 

[00:49:51] Penn Yeah. Well, but then we’re gonna lose our podcast, won’t we? 

[00:49:52] Jameela It is what it is, Penn. There’s always going to be casualties. 

[00:49:55] Penn I’ll sacrifice the podcast for the sake of social growth. 

[00:49:58] Jameela Yeah, a bunch of out of tune people speaking on these massive issues. I think we just need to get back to balance. We didn’t have it in the nineties to talk about the good old era. We just need to find more balance. I think that is coming I think that people there’s a there’s more of a like a democracy to it all and I think that’s probably the good side of us all oversharing is everyone’s gone maybe they don’t need to share anymore. 

[00:50:21] Penn I’m pretty sure you already think this and agree that I’m just going to clarify like I don’t think there’s a back to I don’t think there was a balance. I think we do live in a new age. I think like, yeah, you look at we’re just that we’re in and we’re in an age that humanity’s never been in before. We’ve like, and it’s hard to contextualize for ourselves, but like before the mid 1800s, you know, in the first 50 years after, like, you know, 1844, when the first telegraph was sent, there was more scientific innovation and invention than there had been in all of humanity’s history. That’s just the first 50 years that was like barely into 1900. Now we’re in 2023 and AI is happening and it’s like, guys, we’re not at least on a physical evolutionary level, the biological. 

[00:51:06] Jameela Yeah, you don’t need to do sex scenes anymore. People will just make their own. 

[00:51:11] Penn We’re not yet adequately prepared for what we’re going through. And I think that’s why a lot of us feel this way. I’m not saying that we can’t get prepared, but I think we need to take stock of what’s actually happening. And there’s a whole hell of a lot happening. And when people just sort of try to shrug it off and dismiss it like, oh, you know, lighten up, I think that’s disingenuous. I think like like anxiety is at an epidemic level. Or is it do we say and it’s it’s just, at a huge high. 

[00:51:35] Jameela Epidemic, epidemic and then like, loneliness is the highest it’s ever been in a time where we’re the most connected and loneliness is being connected to more health issues than I think smoking and and alcohol. Now, because of the impact it has on your stress and the lack of touch, what that does to your impact. We had Dr. Vivek Murthy on the podcast at the very he was like the first episode and he was talking about it back then and that was before either of us knew that was about to be a pandemic. So it was crazed timing. It was like the first week of March that I interviewed him and two two weeks later, the world to go inside. 

[00:52:10] Penn That’s amazing. 

[00:52:10] Jameela So it was so if those were the statistics and that was the problem before the pandemic. Yeah, he needs to write another book real fast about where we’re at now. 

[00:52:20] Penn Or just a really long um. You know, when there’s like a, like a preface, like for the second edition. 

[00:52:23] Jameela Yes very long asterisk. So prayer, meditation. Have you gone down the medication route? Have you done therapy? 

[00:52:33] Penn You know, I never have. And by the way, like I have a parent who has taken like antipsychotics and had medication. There’s a lot of people in my extended family who 

[00:52:42] Jameela Same. 

[00:52:42] Penn You know, I never have. And I you know. 

[00:52:46] Jameela That doesn’t that you don’t really need to justify or explain any of that. You just haven’t. What about therapy? 

[00:52:51] Penn Therapy. Yes, therapy. Although, you know, the the place I’ve gotten to with my therapist is like we use them as, like, prolonged meditation sessions where I’m again, like I did earlier. I don’t know if it I don’t know if you’ll cut it or if it resonates with anybody. But this like sitting with feeling like, you know, for whatever reasons, I have enough intellectual capacity that I don’t need to figure things out intellectually anymore. Like I don’t need to parse things out intellectually. I need to sit with how I feel. 

[00:53:24] Jameela Yeah. We all do. 

[00:53:25] Penn That’s what I do. I kind of meditate in my therapy these days, is really sitting with feelings, and then I can introduce thought like when I’ve really let the feeling be for a while. 

[00:53:37] Jameela Well, this takes us back to when you were saying, like, you know, this all goes against what it is to be a man. The the plight of man like that is not something that you often hear a man talk about, or hear a man encouraged to do even those the thing they most should do. Do you feel as though that has been especially hard for you to do, which is something that you weren’t told to do to connect, really just set in the feeling, not the thought, because our hemispheres, you know, work slightly different as males and females. 

[00:54:03] Penn Right. 

[00:54:03] Jameela Apparently. Allegedly, according to the old science. 

[00:54:06] Penn Yeah, I have definitely heard things like that. 

[00:54:08] Jameela Yeah. There’s a difference in our connectivity because of white matter between the hemispheres and stuff. 

[00:54:11] Penn Interesting. 

[00:54:12] Jameela You know, so there’s a difference in how we think. Was that something that was hard for you to do? 

[00:54:16] Penn Connecting to feelings? Yeah. Yeah. And I think my parents, if anything, were the liberal leaning sort of people who would have, if they had more ability to like, encourage me to feel, you know, but they did not at all realize how they were perpetuating some of the worst tropes in the way that they understood how and were able to parent. 

[00:54:41] Jameela Right. 

[00:54:42] Penn And so, yeah, connecting. Look, the reason that I speak the way that I do, I’ve become conscious of recently is because I’ve realized how much I’ve had to think my way out of feeling very sad because of a lack of love in my home. That’s just true. I can say that also somewhat confidently on a podcast, knowing that those who were a part of my home may or may not hear it, but I’m addressing it directly enough that this will come as no surprise to them. So, uh. Because this is a part of our relationship now is this acknowledgment. And. I actually have the utmost. I always try to have more and more compassion for my parents because it’s like, look, they say, as essentially all people do, they were trying. 

[00:55:51] Jameela Yeah. Now that I’m at the age that they were when they were doing it, I’m like, Oh, oh, okay. Now it doesn’t excuse everything. Does somewhat explain and I find there to be empowerment in explanation. 

[00:56:01] Penn Yeah, there is some kind of, you know, it’s like if, if they didn’t know how to establish the right kind of boundaries and give their give or give actual love. Well, they did give. There’s something I’m learning now, and I’ll be able to give more to my kids. And at some point they’ll recognize my flaws and do a little bit more. And then in a couple of generations, there will be a lot more, you know, a lot more. Like a few generations ago, the Badgley’s were God only knows what they were doing before World War One. During World War one and two. Yeah. So that’s evolution. That’s social evolution. That’s spiritual evolution. 

[00:56:39] Jameela And so now do you feel like you have a handle on your. 

[00:56:44] Penn Feelings. 

[00:56:45] Jameela Kind of feeling? 

[00:56:46] Penn No, I think I’m. I’m just. 

[00:56:47] Jameela No, I don’t mean handle on your feelings. That’s the last thing I would want you to have. 

[00:56:50] Penn Yeah, You’re asking me to bottlel it up after I’ve just dripped out one drop. 

[00:56:53] Jameela So do you feel like you can stop being such a fucking pussy now Penn? 

[00:56:56] Penn There it is soundbyte number two. I love that one.

[00:56:58] Jameela Oh, my God. 

[00:57:04] Penn Um, no that’s great. 

[00:57:06] Jameela By the way, I really, I. I really rate you. I think you’re. I think it’s so special to hear someone talk about this, it’s so special to hear a man talk about this sort of stuff. I think that we should hang out. I think my boyfriend’s going to fall madly in love with you because I think you’re very similar. It’s very rare that I get to hear people talk from this point of view. 

[00:57:24] Penn Yeah. 

[00:57:24] Jameela And it it means a lot. 

[00:57:26] Penn I’ve never said anything about your boyfriend, but I do love him. 

[00:57:31] Jameela Oh, well, I mean, there it is. It’s a date. 

[00:57:33] Penn I know a lot of people care about him. 

[00:57:34] Jameela It’s a date. I, I mean, I’m going to crowbar my way in there, but, I mean, it’s just that you two are just going to be off off together into the sunset. I can tell immediately, because he speaks a lot like this. And it’s it’s really nice to find more people, especially men who feel safe enough to talk about this off and stay safe enough to go against the you know, there’s this weird pushback against that that’s kind of like spawn during the pandemic of men gaining a lot of traction for speaking the opposite way to this and being like, boys shouldn’t cry. A man should show this kind of weakness. And we need traditional women and success. No man wants a successful woman, we don’t want an alpha woman. We want this and that. And it’s and it’s a gro it’s not a minority. It’s like it might be a minority now, but it is growing in numbers that, like, make me feel physically uncomfortable because it’s the antithesis of what I see boys need. And this is advice is gaining a lot of traction. And so voices like yours are needed more than ever. 

[00:58:27] Penn Yeah, Yeah. It’s interesting. 

[00:58:30] Jameela Cause even the men talking about this stuff, they don’t seem well. 

[00:58:32] Penn Of course not. 

[00:58:32] Jameela They seem like they’re speaking from a large place of fear. I don’t mean that in a judgmental ways. 

[00:58:36] Penn It has to be. It’s pain. 

[00:58:37] Jameela And speaking from a place of fear and pain and disassociation. 

[00:58:40] Penn Definitely. 

[00:58:41] Jameela They sound disassociated. And they think there’s safety in disassociation, I think we’ve all felt that you and I have both gone through that when we were younger. There is a safety in disassociation for a while 

[00:58:49] Penn In the moment. 

[00:58:49] Jameela But then you become so numb and far away. Yeah. 

[00:58:51] Penn That’s right. That’s what trauma is like. It’s it’s not what happens in the moment. We in the moment there’s actually a really lovely built in response to dissociate which helps you through it’s that for the rest of your life if you haven’t really recognized and processed that event, the trauma is again not what happened. It’s what it’s the way you feel and respond to events that have nothing to do with that original event. And you’re constantly imagining it and having this the same response throughout life, that’s my understanding of, uh, done a lot of reading of Gabor Maté also been on my podcast, Podcrushed.

[00:59:29] Jameela Oh my good. 

[00:59:30] Penn Oh hey comedy comes in threes, that was third.

[00:59:30] Jameela If you’re trying to get me to swear at you for the third time on my own podcast because you are entrapping me into some sort of a scandal. I love, I love him. I think he’s so fantastic. 

[00:59:42] Penn He’s brilliant. 

[00:59:43] Jameela Yeah, I’m going to get him on my podcast. 

[00:59:44] Penn You could definitely get him. 

[00:59:45] Jameela I’m going to get him on my podcast, start a podcast, but also let’s be in a movie together and play asexual. Let’s do it. Let’s start that fucking trend. 

[00:59:56] Penn That’s interesting, that’s an interesting idea. 

[00:59:58] Jameela I think. I think it would be great. James can do the music. 

[01:00:00] Penn It might be a little bit like the Jonas Brothers wearing purity rings though. 

[01:00:03] Jameela That’s fine. You know what? 

[01:00:05] Penn Is it fine? Ok. Sure. 

[01:00:07] Jameela I’ll take it. Let’s shake shit up let’s shake shit up. I so appreciate this chat. Please come back. Truly, any time. I’m happy oh wait. Did you answer the question as to whether or not you feel more levels? Because we keep going in like 9000 directions. 

[01:00:22] Penn I didn’t really, uh, I’ve just begun to. To really take account of of the lack of love and, you know. Yeah, I’ve just begun. And so. But that’s the beginning of being able to to love. 

[01:00:44] Jameela Well, you know where the problem is so you now know where to pour in. 

[01:00:47] Penn Somewhat. It still makes it sound so much easier than it is. But. Yeah. 

[01:00:51] Jameela Mm hmm. Well, I’m. I’m happy that you have a supportive home, and I, uh. I’m happy that you’ve even got to the place where you can identify what’s really going on. And I’m. I feel. I feel confident with absolutely no education or schooling that, uh, you. 

[01:01:09] Penn That’s where confidence comes from. 

[01:01:10] Jameela Yeah, exactly. That’s how you become the president of the United States. But I. I think that you have a good chance of finding that peace because you are coming at it from a place of such focus on love. And I think if we could all focus more on that rather than just like, labels and pathology, I think that we would all find ourselves in a better state to be able to together take on the cause of most of our problems, which is the sickness in our society. We just have to get ourselves. We have to love ourselves before we can start to love each other that way. 

[01:01:44] Penn You summarize things really well. You summarize. I noticed that when you were on my podcast, I won’t do it again. I notice that you summarize things very, very well. Yes, that is happening. 

[01:02:02] Jameela Thank you. 

[01:02:02] Penn What you just said. 

[01:02:03] Jameela I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Yeah. And 

[01:02:07] Penn Oh you know what? One thing I did want to add about that is, is that it’s not a linear process at all. And there are moments throughout every day where I glimpse and feel, you know the handle that you were talking about. It’s not at all like it is in a container. And you pour it out a pour some in. It’s it’s it’s a far more multifaceted experience. And that’s where I think the the reason prayer and meditation even does anything is because it’s a it’s a really vast, expansive kind of landscape. Our interior and those things are are tools that are suited to it, you know, and. Yeah, I just. I just think that it’s like it’s for for all of us, like, a little bit of encouragement. Maybe I can sort of, like, adorn this with is it really happens in the smallest of moments and you can have utter clarity like utter clarity. I was working with a professional who specializes in like trauma recovery, and he said and he’s been doing it for 40 years. He’s like, he’s a he’s a real master. He said, uh, you know, much earlier in life when he was like in his thirties or something, he had this moment where he, like it all came into focus. And the work that he was studying, which he has now been doing his whole life. You know, all of basically everything we’ve tried to cover in this interview, he was like all of it, you know, kind of came into clarity. And I had such peace and such and such like and these are man my words. But what I understood is like, you know, it’s just like a confidence and stability and groundedness in this moment of clarity. And guess what? I never became that person. Like I didn’t just suddenly have that and become that person. Who is that all the time and wields it, you know, for themselves. 

[01:03:56] Jameela It’s nice to know what it looks like, isn’t it? 

[01:03:57] Penn Yes exactly. Yeah. It’s. And so I’d say that’s what it is. It’s like we glimpse these things, you know, it’s it’s. 

[01:04:03] Jameela We glimpse enlightenment. 

[01:04:04] Penn Yeah, we glimpse enlightenment. And by the way, just throw I’ll throw in a little bit of perspective. You know, my understanding of our spiritual reality is that the the reality of our essence continues beyond the transition we call death. There is some sort of experience in reality to to recognize and speak to. Yet we, of course, cannot know it, but for glimpses. And we are in some sense preparing for that reality in these moments, You know. 

[01:04:37] Jameela I mean, I’m going to hell, but sure. 

[01:04:39] Penn Yeah. So you’re preparing in those moments.

[01:04:41] Jameela Yeah, I’m preparing. I’m preparing. 

[01:04:43] Penn Yeah just bring sunblock. 

[01:04:45] Jameela Yeah. I have a hot water bottle on me right now to get used to those hot, hot temperatures. But yeah, I, I agree. I agree. And, and I think this has been wonderful food for thought. Will you please tell me, Penn Badgley, what do you weigh? 

[01:05:02] Penn What do I weigh? You know, it sounds so trite to people who I think to people who don’t have kids. It’s family for me. Like, it’s specifically like there are three things that I weigh myself by. And sometimes I’m coming off real emaciated. I’ll recognize is my relationship with my my stepson kind of first and foremost, actually, because it’s the most challenging. My. Wife and my my biological son. And they’re all in such completely different ages. And they’re all it’s also different that, you know, it’s like a great Venn diagram if they’re all in some kind of good place. It’s a really great sign and a great feeling. And then, I suppose. So another thing that I’m. Feeling my worth through is converting all of this kind of stuff we were talking about earlier in terms of fame and my career. I really want to convert that into something lasting and meaningful. And, uh, you know what that means? We’ll see in time. I’m trying to do things. But yeah, you know, try really trying to convert all of this because I’ve put so much time and energy into into this. Whether or not I’ve wanted to, I’ve kind of had to at points and. I really would love for it to mean something to others. That’s like that’s really helpful and valuable even just for these special little moments. So that’s yeah, so those are those that’s four things. That’s solid. 

[01:06:40] Jameela I think you’re doing a pretty bloody good job, especially of that last one. I can’t speak to your family life, but everyone’s still alive bonus points. 

[01:06:47] Penn You know, my phone’s been on airplane for a little bit. We’re not sure. 

[01:06:49] Jameela No don’t say that for fucks sake, Jesus Christ. But I think I think you are doing something meaningful. And thank you for being so thoughtful today. And let’s all hang out soon and I’d love to meet your wife. 

[01:07:01] Penn Yeah, that’d be great. 

[01:07:03] Jameela All right, then. Bye bye. Thank you.

[01:07:04] Penn Bye. Thank you. 

[01:07:08] Jameela Here’s an I Weigh from one of our listeners. I weigh discovering that I’m autistic and holding onto that identity even when everyone around me seems to question it. I weigh my strong sense of justice and my desire to help others. I weigh giving myself a break to recover from burnout. I weigh taking medication for my mental health and fighting the stigma around it one step at a time. And I weigh my love for nature and for our beautiful planet.