Penn Badgley, CRUSHMORE: Essays on Love, Loss, and Coming-of-Age
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[0:45]Penn Bagley is the author of Crushmore, essays on love, loss, and coming of age.
[0:51]Penn is an actor, director, producer, writer, and podcaster, best known for his starring
[0:56]roles in the CW's Gus of Girl and Netflix's U.
[1:01]He lives in New Paltz, New York, with his wife, children, and dogs.
[1:04]He is a co-host of the very popular podcast, Podcrest.
[1:09]Welcome Penn.
[1:10]Thanks so much for coming on Totally Book to talk about your book Crushmore, essays on
[1:14]love, loss, and coming of age, which you co-wrote with your co-host.
[1:19]So there you go.
[1:20]Yeah.
[1:21]Thank you for having me.
[1:22]You guys just don't want to do anything without each other anymore.
[1:25]Oh yeah, we do.
[1:27]Now, well, Nava Kavlin is one of my co-hosts.
[1:32]And she's really the founder of the podcast.
[1:34]It was her idea.
[1:36]She and I have a production company that we had loosely started the same year that she
[1:40]had this idea back in 2020.
[1:44]And so that's sort of, you know, there was like early COVID days where everybody wanted
[1:50]to start a podcast, right?
[1:51]And I mean, I knew well enough being in media as I was, never wasn't at that point.
[1:56]I knew it would be a lot of work, but I did love the idea of loosely as we do starting
[2:03]at 12, you know, that's what we do on the show.
[2:05]We start at 12 years old.
[2:06]We explore this unique period of adolescence.
[2:09]You know, we had all this kind of stuff behind it as to why we thought this period of
[2:14]life was so unique, so incredible and kind of mortifying, you know, it can be obviously.
[2:20]I think what we didn't anticipate, what I didn't anticipate is how much we would have
[2:24]to patiently sideline those ideas and notions because when you're interviewing
[2:31]other people, you're interviewing celebrities, of course, you need to let those celebrities
[2:35]talk.
[2:36]Why do you think I'm listening to you?
[2:38]Exactly.
[2:39]Exactly.
[2:40]No, it's my turn again.
[2:41]Go ahead.
[2:42]Just get back and all those other people right here.
[2:46]And so the book is kind of like returning to the seat of the idea in a way, but then doing
[2:53]it in the form of that we discovered and learned, which is through, you know, telling
[2:59]a story rather than exploring a philosophical concept, you know, so the book is just is
[3:04]essays as the subtitle says or whatever you would call that.
[3:09]The essays on love, loss, and coming of age.
[3:12]That is what it is.
[3:13]You know, it's pretty universal.
[3:14]We actually did him and a lot with our editor, of course, over what that subtitle should
[3:20]be to give people a sense of what this encompasses.
[3:25]And it is that.
[3:26]I mean, love and loss are our universal, universally appealing or interesting, hopefully.
[3:32]And then, of course, coming of ages is too, it's just maybe slightly less.
[3:38]It's not as, it's not always included in the same breath, you know, as love and loss.
[3:42]It's not as a literative, I guess.
[3:45]I actually love that that's your entry point into conversation with people because middle
[3:49]school and I have two middle schoolers right now.
[3:51]It is such a time of change and pain and insecurity, not to out my kids.
[3:58]This is not about them.
[3:59]But, you know, how can you not relate to someone when they share a time like that in their
[4:03]lives?
[4:04]I listened to your Matthew McConaughey episode really recently, like, oh my gosh, right?
[4:08]Like, he didn't think he was like the coolest things in Slice Red.
[4:12]So anyway, I loved it.
[4:13]I love that concept.
[4:14]Thank you.
[4:15]Thank you.
[4:16]And you, of course, share so much of yourself in this book, which I deeply appreciate.
[4:20]I'm sure all readers deeply appreciate laying bare everything from your parents, troubled
[4:25]marriage to your own insecurities, your own body, even your hair.
[4:30]And speaking of my middle schoolers, your passage about your hair, can I read something?
[4:34]I'm so glad that you appreciate that because hair for middle schoolers and what they do
[4:38]to it is insane.
[4:39]Yes.
[4:40]It's such a process and your words made my fifth grader feel better just so you know, I'm
[4:50]here.
[4:51]Hold down.
[4:52]Let me find this page 117.
[4:53]I just want to read this to make anybody with curly hair feel better.
[4:56]You said, because I was short and squat.
[4:59]I believed my hair was my one shot at appearing tall and thin.
[5:03]When I worked on any TV show or film, I had a minor existential crisis because every hairstylist
[5:08]on every project had demonstrated that they just couldn't handle curly hair.
[5:12]I don't know what it is about curly hair.
[5:14]There are countless millions of people of nearly every ethnic background with curly hair,
[5:18]right?
[5:19]Somehow, though, no one wants to see it in Hollywood.
[5:21]It's unless it's a reconstructed 1920s era finger wave on a blonde bombshell in a sequined
[5:27]period mini dress rather than letting my hair be.
[5:30]I learned all about the things my hair couldn't do without a blowout or being flat-iron.
[5:35]Then you go on to say what you ended up doing.
[5:37]It's actually gratifying to hear you say that because I really thought about cutting that.
[5:42]What is that?
[5:43]That was one of my favorites.
[5:44]I'm glad.
[5:45]I'm glad.
[5:46]It's so interesting when you're writing because you just, I mean, also with deadlines.
[5:50]There comes a point where you're like, I don't care.
[5:52]I don't care.
[5:53]I don't care what stays or goes.
[5:54]I just need to finish this.
[5:57]That was one where, well, I mean, look, to be transparent, I think with that particular essay,
[6:03]that essay is part of, I think I've called it 40 days and 40 nights, which is about
[6:08]how long I went to high school, which is actually true.
[6:10]I only went to high school for, well, less than 40 days and 40 nights, which I did into
[6:15]the book.
[6:16]Because I was professional with all these reasons why, but I didn't know quite what to
[6:21]make of that one because I felt like I should tell the story of high school because
[6:27]the book is essentially about middle and high school, right?
[6:31]But I didn't really go to one of them.
[6:35]And so I'm trying to think like, what did I learn there?
[6:38]What did I do there?
[6:39]And I don't recall really, I don't feel like I have life lessons or any insight to
[6:44]offer anything other than remembering like how I did my hair, to be honest.
[6:50]It's really, it's really, it's really the extent of it.
[6:54]And how this one kid responded to it.
[6:57]And that's just how we remember that time, it's like, a lot of feelings, so many feelings.
[7:02]And I think it's hard to explain to people at that age and at that sort of tender moment
[7:07]that like, no, really, not everybody is looking at you, like everyone is just concerned
[7:11]about themselves.
[7:12]Yeah, yeah.
[7:13]I mean, yeah, it is.
[7:14]You're right.
[7:15]It actually might be, I don't want to say that it's impossible because that's the
[7:19]easiest.
[7:20]But you're right.
[7:21]It is nearly impossible to get through to a fifth through 10th grader, like actually
[7:29]that thing you're freaking out about on your body.
[7:31]It's just like you can have all your feelings about it, but it's not what you think it
[7:36]is.
[7:37]Nobody is thinking about it.
[7:39]And then yeah, I guess there is that one person who thought about it in that moment like
[7:42]you thought, and now you're harping on that, but it's just if you could let that go,
[7:46]you would relax so much.
[7:48]It's true.
[7:49]I know.
[7:50]I mean, some grown-ups are still like that, so yeah, well, of course we all have our, we
[7:55]all have those.
[7:56]We all had driving famous for a little bit of time, but it takes you back back every
[8:01]couple of days probably at least.
[8:03]Actually, I loved what you wrote in the book about fame because a lot of famous people
[8:07]don't like to write about it and I often ask them, I feel like people don't ask them
[8:11]enough.
[8:12]Like whatever.
[8:13]It's a big part of your life.
[8:14]It is an identity marker that you talk about it.
[8:17]Yeah.
[8:18]To be, I've been transparent about the process.
[8:21]I wanted to and intended initially at the outset of that, I say to write way more specifically
[8:27]about what fame is or isn't what it at least my experience of it is because I do think,
[8:33]as you said, I mean, it's not just the huge part of like a celebrity's life.
[8:37]It's a huge part of everybody's life.
[8:39]Our culture is just inextricably undeniably entangled and obsessed with celebrity, right?
[8:48]That's just we live in a celebrity culture.
[8:50]It's so impacted by not just celebrities, but celebrity, you know, like what is that?
[8:56]Why do we do that to people?
[8:58]What is, and I'm not saying like we do it to them like celebrities are all, you know, suffering.
[9:04]I actually think to somebody they might be, but I don't mean it in a, what was me where?
[9:07]I just mean it like look at this phenomenon we're all a part of.
[9:11]We hear a lot about it from people who are not famous, you know, that's, and because there's
[9:16]just comm minting and critiquing and, okay, fine.
[9:20]I think we should hear more also from people who are famous because it just gives us
[9:27]more of the pie of experience, you know, it gives us more of that, of a share of like,
[9:32]all right, let's just examine this from all angles, but I think the weirdness of celebrity
[9:36]is that it at worst, I think it really clouds the vision of the person suffering under it,
[9:41]the celebrity.
[9:43]And or it best that kind of like, you kind of want to not talk about it maybe because
[9:47]of how much you work with it and you're like, I don't want to talk about what somebody's
[9:50]not famous, you know, because it's like, so I do understand that.
[9:53]But personally, personally, like the whatever degree of fame I do have, whatever that
[9:57]is.
[9:58]I'm not, I'm not measuring it, but it's the...
[10:00]Here, it's not the biggest, it's not the right,
[10:02]but it's not the lowest.
[10:03]I mean, it has impacted my life no less than any other thing,
[10:09]you know, being a father, being a man,
[10:12]for me eventually becoming a Baha'i,
[10:14]which is my faith, my religion,
[10:16]you know, when I was in my late 20s,
[10:18]I can't think of any part of my identity.
[10:21]You know, thank God when I die,
[10:22]the celebrity will go, but until then, like,
[10:24]it's a huge, well, you know,
[10:27]as long as my celebrity lasts,
[10:28]it's a huge part of my life, a huge, huge part of my life.
[10:32]So yeah, I did in that essay to try to make it
[10:35]maybe a bit more relatable or interesting by being like,
[10:39]all right, it's not just about my relationship to fame,
[10:42]it's also about my relationship with the camera.
[10:44]That was very interesting.
[10:45]You know, it's like, and then I think also something
[10:47]that I didn't explore as much in the essay,
[10:49]but it was coming from, you know,
[10:50]I'd really do feel like we as a culture
[10:54]have been hugely impacted by the invention of the camera,
[10:58]you know, that's a, you know, it just is,
[11:01]it's like, it's just, it's headed in enormous impact
[11:04]on the way we see things because of how it can manipulate
[11:08]and emphasize just different aspects of whatever,
[11:10]you know, you could, you could think about it
[11:11]in so many ways.
[11:12]And then the part of the camera that no one ever saw
[11:14]not just it becoming a tiny little miniaturized part
[11:17]of a phone, which isn't even mostly a phone,
[11:21]but that people would then turn it on themselves, you know,
[11:25]and then the, like the invention of the selfie,
[11:28]advent of the selfie, that's a huge moment in culture,
[11:31]you know, like in terms of the way we view ourselves.
[11:35]And so yeah, so that's what this essay is doing
[11:37]somewhat loosely, it's exploring all that.
[11:40]Well, in the essay, you talked about the traumatic aspects
[11:43]of fame and to your point, I feel like any celebrity
[11:47]who complains about it is like, people are like,
[11:49]okay, really like the time of my life for a day,
[11:52]but that doesn't, but that is a comparison
[11:55]that's not fair.
[11:56]Everybody has their stuff, right?
[11:58]Like everybody has the stuff they deal with every day.
[12:00]And you still have to contend with the world
[12:04]as a celebrity and whatever that means to you, good or bad.
[12:07]So do you ever feel like, like what, to what extent do you
[12:12]feel you have to give back or you have to do something good
[12:15]with it or like how much do you wrestle with it
[12:18]as its own sort of entity?
[12:20]It's a good question.
[12:21]I mean, I'm not sure.
[12:22]I think if I can maintain humility,
[12:25]which is not to say celebrity, I don't know,
[12:27]but I think it's everybody's duty to give back
[12:31]no matter who they are.
[12:32]And that's a unifying principle.
[12:35]I think what's unfortunate about celebrities
[12:38]how it divides us, you know?
[12:40]And everybody's duty, I think it is,
[12:44]and they're right, their privilege in life is to give back.
[12:49]It's one of, I'm sure there's a stat somewhere
[12:52]about it that's one of the things
[12:54]that makes us happiest and most content.
[12:58]And probably in our culture,
[12:59]we're losing a sense of what that means
[13:01]or we're losing a sense of how to do it.
[13:03]We might know that we want it, but how,
[13:06]I look, I actually struggle with that myself.
[13:09]And so one of the ways I think I do is I'm like,
[13:12]all right, okay, I'm in this position.
[13:14]I'm in this position for now.
[13:15]And I've been in it for a while.
[13:16]I'm about to turn 40.
[13:17]Well, I just turned 39.
[13:19]So when I say that I just me in the scheme of things
[13:21]I'm about to turn 40.
[13:22]I'm 49 and I'm like, don't say 50.
[13:25]Just don't say.
[13:26]Right, right, right.
[13:27]But you know, I once actually, once I pass 40,
[13:33]once I hit 41, I will have been assuming
[13:36]that things stay the way they are.
[13:38]Which even if I became infamous
[13:43]and somehow was corned, that's a kind of fame.
[13:47]I will have been famous longer than I've not been.
[13:51]You know, because it really hit at 20.
[13:53]It hit maybe a bit earlier in my experiences
[13:55]with all this stuff like in Hollywood,
[13:57]but like growing up coming of age 12 to 20.
[14:01]But 20 was when gossip girl happened.
[14:03]So, you know, I do wrestle with it as well,
[14:06]as I think you only can.
[14:08]That's not, that's like the natural state of it.
[14:10]Of it.
[14:11]But yeah, I think as long as I'm here,
[14:15]I want to be forthcoming and transparent
[14:19]about what it is and what it isn't.
[14:21]And I do think that,
[14:25]I mean, how many more times do we need to see a documentary
[14:28]about how one pop star or another is absolutely miserable?
[14:35]And isolated to such an intense degree
[14:41]and exploited and objectified, you know,
[14:45]and they cannot escape it.
[14:46]Because that's, and I don't really include myself
[14:48]in this class.
[14:49]I think for people who are like the Britney Spears,
[14:52]you know, the Brad Pitt, the whomever,
[14:54]they cannot escape it.
[14:57]They are living just in Bieber.
[14:58]Zady Smith explores this really beautifully
[15:00]as somebody who is not that kind of celebrity.
[15:03]I mean, she is her own, you know, kind of icon,
[15:06]but she brilliantly explores this in an essay.
[15:09]Careful of title of it,
[15:10]but she gets into all kinds of stuff.
[15:13]It's really, really interesting.
[15:14]But she refers to like Michael Jackson
[15:17]and Justin Bieber and these sorts of people
[15:20]who've entered into this state of like the love object.
[15:23]And what we do is we objectify celebrities completely
[15:27]in a way that no matter the fact that we are actually
[15:30]believe we're idolizing them,
[15:32]it doesn't really matter if you think it's
[15:35]veneration or degradation,
[15:38]objectification is objectification.
[15:41]And a person who is rendered an object
[15:43]is a person who is rendered an object, you know?
[15:45]And that's the strangeness, I think, of celebrity
[15:47]is that it really, really does feel
[15:50]to the person experiencing it like a form of oppression.
[15:52]But that oppression is, it comes with so many material
[15:55]privileges that it seems insane to call it that.
[15:58]And so it's there for all the more isolating, you know?
[16:02]And that's specifically because we live in an age
[16:05]where material privileges is the privilege is so few.
[16:09]So to be a celebrity in this era of human humanity.
[16:14]You know, it's crazy.
[16:16]It's frankly it's just, it induces craziness.
[16:19]Look, it does.
[16:20]It induces craziness, just straight up, how could it not?
[16:25]And you know, and so I'm just always a little bit like,
[16:28]oh, all right, how am I gonna do this today, you know?
[16:33]I mean, of course I don't think about it directly like that,
[16:36]but it's, man, one of the greatest struggles
[16:39]and lessons in my life, you know?
[16:41]But then on the other hand, your a dad
[16:44]and congratulations on your twins.
[16:46]It's so exciting.
[16:47]I have twins, if you ever need any advice, I do.
[16:49]Wow, well, I'll go through your middle schoolers
[16:52]you're saying, I have 18-year-old twins.
[16:53]18-year-old twins.
[16:55]Yeah.
[16:56]Two middle schoolers.
[16:58]And two middle schoolers.
[16:59]You usually have four children.
[17:00]I do, you did the math, there you go.
[17:02]Oh, yeah.
[17:03]I also think you-
[17:04]And you say you didn't go to high school.
[17:06]I did with my fingers slowly.
[17:08]Um, wow.
[17:10]Okay. All right.
[17:11]Two shake.
[17:11]Yeah. But anyway, you're starting out and it's.
[17:14]Oh, my God. Wow.
[17:15]Yeah. That's a lot.
[17:17]Yeah. But I felt particularly excited.
[17:21]Having read the book and knowing the struggles that went into it.
[17:24]And thank you for sharing your, you know,
[17:26]your lost pregnancy because so many people have gone through that and the loss
[17:31]and the effect on a marriage and all of that that you, you know,
[17:34]you could have written are more on that.
[17:36]It was kind of slid in at the end.
[17:37]But if I keep writing, that's where basically, honestly,
[17:40]that last essay lineage is kind of where I would start anything else.
[17:43]I'm writing. It's that that was going to be an essay of much greater
[17:47]proportion that had to do with identity and all the embrace.
[17:50]Because I don't find a lot of white people talking about whiteness.
[17:53]And I just thought that I want to do that.
[17:54]I've always wanted to do that.
[17:56]Don't do that as your last essay.
[17:57]That's not easy.
[18:00]Just a heads up.
[18:01]Anybody else who was trying. Yeah.
[18:03]Didn't have time for that one.
[18:04]But yeah, I got into it.
[18:05]So I got into that's when I started to find some ability as a writer
[18:09]and like, including the things that are really, you know,
[18:11]I think what, what I want to write about.
[18:15]Yeah. Well, I'm sorry that you went through that as a family.
[18:18]And I'm so happy for you that your family is taking, taking shape.
[18:22]And that sort of loss, as you said, is really common.
[18:25]And we should know of talking about it alone is what we need.
[18:28]We're leasing to start by talking about it more.
[18:30]And of course, I'm speaking about miscarriages.
[18:33]They do happen all the time.
[18:34]And they can be, and they can be really, really painful.
[18:37]I thought, well, I would say that universally are painful.
[18:39]Maybe not everybody's fully allowed to feel that way.
[18:43]But.
[18:44]And you wrote, um, you said, my wife and I,
[18:48]you said this was our second loss together.
[18:49]A time when it did not feel as though the cycle would break.
[18:52]My wife and I neared separation as many do after losses like that.
[18:55]Largely because we felt so isolated in a culture that doesn't talk
[18:59]much about these things or know how to support those going through it.
[19:02]Seeing our still baby and that tripped out black and white sono imagery
[19:06]is a dreadful memory.
[19:07]I can't shake every time we go for a sonogram now.
[19:12]Yeah, no, it's there.
[19:13]It's definitely one of those things.
[19:15]Yeah, I mean, it's funny because I wrote this before the twins were born.
[19:19]And now I feel like I am.
[19:21]I mean, it's with love, but I feel like I'm drowning in children.
[19:25]So I it's harder to get in touch with that feeling of loss.
[19:29]Because my cup truly runeth over.
[19:31]Yeah, yeah, but I mean, especially for us.
[19:35]Me at that point, not having any biological children.
[19:38]My wife having her first born, who's now 16,
[19:42]almost 17, yeah, that was a real inflection point.
[19:47]You know, I mean, yeah, one of the greatest of life because of my life and my wife's
[19:52]because we did near a separation.
[19:54]And of course, we we didn't get a given to the gravity of that.
[20:00]the sort of entropy of that, and here we are with three biological children since, and we're engaged in...
[20:11]It's funny, I feel like no matter how ready you, even when you're quote unquote ready, you know, ready with air quotes for children, if you've had them already and you know, I mean, you can't, there's no way to really be ready.
[20:26]There's no readiness that makes any sense or does anything.
[20:30]It's phenomenal how much care children take.
[20:36]And you know, as a spiritual person, I believe in the soul and the existence of God and stuff, to me, it's such a sign of how actually tender and spiritual we are.
[20:52]How noble and dignified and careful we are, because when you go through pregnancy, okay, conception.
[21:02]I mean, these are all delicate processes.
[21:04]Like, some people, it's not delicate, and it's like, oh my God, how did we do this? Where?
[21:08]Where'd you open ourselves? But then, you know, for some people, it's tenuous, you can barely get pregnant.
[21:12]Right? Can you carry to term? Can you raise? Can you latch?
[21:17]Right? Can you latch just to provide milk? Are you going to need a formula? Can you stay up every night?
[21:23]Like, and that doesn't stop for like ten years.
[21:27]I would say longer. Yeah, but at least the physical tenuousness of it.
[21:33]Like, the mortality of it, the sensitivity of it. Like, oh my, literal God. That is so crazy.
[21:41]And so to me, I feel like when you have children, and it's hard to maintain. I mean, I say this now.
[21:47]Meanwhile, like, I'm sure within the last 72 hours, I've looked at one of them and been like, can you just go?
[21:55]But when I'm of my best mind, to me, it's just such evidence that we are going to make it.
[22:07]And by us, I mean, like humanity through this really challenging period of transition, we're in, we're not sure that we're going to make it.
[22:14]A lot of people doubt the future, right? I'm like, if you raise the child, and you just actually stop and think about it, which is hard when you're raising a child.
[22:21]Just stop and think about it. It takes so much care for one human being to make it to maturity.
[22:31]I mean, insane amount of care. More care than you can't. It's immeasurable. It's the most immeasurable thing in existence.
[22:41]To me, I'm like, yeah, we have made it so far. We have made it so far. There's no way when I'm making it through the road. I mean, it's going to be hard, undoubtedly.
[22:52]But my God, we have made it so far so far. Like, it just don't forget that. Don't forget how much care is taken, how much like collaboration and social evolution.
[23:04]It's taken to get here. Okay, that I'm done with that.
[23:07]See, I told you, I was just going to, you know, give you, give you this celebrity.
[23:11]I just, you know, you told me, I'm doing it.
[23:13]I do think, though, that your point about how can you ever be prepared. I mean, isn't that the case for all human things?
[23:20]You can't be prepared for death when even though somebody's older, there is no way to prepare for things because we think we're the smart evolved species, right?
[23:29]But really, we're when we have something emotional happen. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, we just, yeah, we just don't.
[23:35]I actually think that's, that's the, that's a, that's a real beauty of life.
[23:39]Because if you could be ready for, let's say birth or death. I mean,
[23:42]boring. You're ready for those things and everything else would be boring would be rendered boring.
[23:49]I mean, we have, so we have, well, we have no control over as much as we try. That's, yeah, it's, it's really amazing.
[23:57]Well, well, I could go on forever, but we only have 30 minutes.
[24:03]I know. So I guess I won't.
[24:05]But congratulations on your book and your show. And I see you're at the strand tonight. So good luck with that.
[24:12]I'll be looking forward to part two where you really dig in there and, and go the rest of the way with the stories you started.
[24:20]Keep going, please.
[24:22]All right. Best of luck. Good luck. Take care. Bye.
[24:26]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi, formerly momstone have time to read books.
[24:32]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens and spread the word.
[24:39]Thanks so much. Oh, and bye the books.