If there is one show that the American actress Blake Lively owes her success and stardom to; it has to be CW’s Gossip Girl. With the right amount of mystery, scandal, and blandly attractive characters, the show certainly proved to be very titillating and addictive. And at the heart of it stood Serena van der Woodsen and her couture-clad posse. And well, how can one forget Serena’s popularly shipped romance with Dan Humphrey AKA Penn Badgley? It was certainly something the series used for their benefits.

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The lead actors of the teen soap opera have been rather vocal about how the on-screen drama in the vigilante world of the rich American kids affected their private life. And Blake Lively along with her then-boyfriend Penn Badgley did not back off as well. The two were apparently dating but called it off because of the constant overlapping of their personal and professional life.

CW wanted to incorporate their personal relationship in the on-screen drama

The Shallows actress revealed that at the onset of the series, the two were getting pretty comfortable knowing each other. Both Lively and Badgley notably wanted to keep their relationship private but soon realized that the show wants the two to date so that CW can capitalize on their relationship. Well, the real-life narrative certainly could have brought a little more capital to the show if projected on-screen, but the actors perhaps outwitted the producers.

Lively later stated in an interview, “We were like, ‘Oh no, that’s exactly what they want.’” They wanted us all to date. She further realized that “people could buy into this world.” The Gossip Girl love birds reportedly separated after 3 years of dating because the show did not let them keep their private and professional life different. However, they were successful at keeping their break-up hush-hush.

The showrunners had no hint Blake Lively and Penn Badgley broke up until much later!

They are good actors after all! Since they did not want their personal life to drive the series, they faked it till they made it. However, when producer Joshua Safran got to know, he was “shocked.” He apparently found it out at the set of the season 2 finale about the split that happened months back and admitted that “they kept it from everybody, which is a testament to how good they are as actors. Because they did not want their drama to relate to the show.”

Blake Lively is now happily married to Ryan Reynolds and welcomed her fourth child just a few hours back. As of Badgley, he tied the knot with Angels Crest actress Domino Kirke back in February 2017. Do you think that they did the right thing? Let us know in the comments below.

Meanwhile, you can always stream Gossip Girl on Amazon Prime.