Taylor Momsen Opens Up About Leaving Gossip Girl: “I Really Didn’t Want to Be There”

Taylor Momsen is finally sharing what really happened behind the scenes when she decided to walk away from Gossip Girl.

The singer and actress spoke about her tough experience leaving the show during an interview on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast.

Momsen, who played Jenny Humphrey from the start of the hit series, said she had been struggling with her decision to quit and focus on music.

“It was an easy decision for me,” she said. “To actually get out of a contract was not easy. It was a very long battle of me arguing [with] 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.’”

She explained that her request to leave wasn’t well received by studio executives. According to Momsen, some people at Warner Bros. Television called her “ungrateful” for wanting to step away from such a successful show. “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,’” she said.

When she couldn’t get out of her contract, Momsen went directly to Gossip Girl creators Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz to ask for help.

They eventually found a way to write her character out of the story. “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’re trying to do here,’” she recalled. “I really have to credit them for doing that for me because they did not have to, and they wrote me out of the show so I could go on tour and be in a band.”

After leaving during season four in 2010, Momsen began touring with her band, The Pretty Reckless. Although she had already acted in movies like How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Spy Kids 2, she said music was always what she truly wanted to do.

Momsen said her exit from Gossip Girl happened quickly. “I kind of just Irish-dipped. I just wasn’t on the script the next week,” she said. “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. I would come in and play songs, but I don’t think anyone knew how serious I was at that stage.”

Even though she left, Momsen returned for the show’s final episode in 2012, wanting to give fans closure. “As a fan of television and a fan of the shows, I love when you have the full cast together again,” she said. “You want to full-circle that and round it out.”

Today, Momsen is best known for fronting The Pretty Reckless, which has found major success in rock music. Her decision to follow her passion clearly paid off, even if it wasn’t easy at the time.

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