One person who knew she didn't have a heart for Gossip Girl was none other than Taylor Momsen, the former actress who played Jenny Humphrey in the hit CW series. On the November 5th episode of Call Her Daddy, Taylor pulled back the curtain on why she left the show midway through its fourth season in 2010, even though she admitted she "never watched the show" and thus some of the finer details escaped her.
"It started with a simple 'I don't wanna do this anymore,'" Taylor shared. "But you're in a lock and key contract with CW Warner Brothers, you know, all of that stuff." She continued, "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.'"
At that time, Taylor had formed her band The Pretty Reckless and realized that she wanted to pursue music instead of acting. However, her shifting passions didn't convince the powers that be. As the 32-year-old recalled, "You're called ungrateful and 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.'"
Ultimately for Taylor, who was still a minor at the time, meeting her bandmates "changed everything" and signaled to her that music was the right direction for her to take her career in. "I knew I had to leave, but at the same time leaving a career that is so prosperous was not easy," she explained. "It was an easy decision for me...to actually get out of a contract was not easy."
The "Makes Me Want to Die" singer remembered being "very defensive" of what she wanted to do at the time, especially after studio staff tried to keep her in her contract. To find a workaround, she went to Gossip Girl's writers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who understood her mission and agreed to write her out of the show. "I really have to credit them for doing that for me because they did not have to," she recounted, "and they wrote me out of the show so I could go on tour and be in a band."
As for her cast mates, including Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, and Penn Badgley, who played her brother on the show, Taylor revealed that she didn't give them a heads up that she would no longer be their costar. "I kind of just Irish dipped," she said with a laugh. "I just wasn't in the script the next week. They all knew I was making music; they all knew I had a band."
