On a new episode of Unqualified, Penn Badgley joins Anna Faris to talk about love, heartbreak, the science behind relationships, artistic integrity, and much more.
LISTEN NOW: Anna Faris is Unqualified — Penn Badgley
Segueing from the topic of child actors finding the purity in the art form in theatre, Penn connected acting to wanting power, and even more so, desire of love.
“Formative experience are that, for-ma-tive,” Penn expressed, “like the first things that happen to you tend to matter… hmmm not necessarily the most, but they do a lot. And so to me power is actually about love, it’s wanting and needing love. And truly in our culture we have so little understanding of how to express it, how to receive it, how to identify it.”
Though he had crushes throughout his teens, a steady girlfriend from the age of 15-19, Penn admitted the first time he truly felt that he was in love was when he was 21.
Going on to note, “love looks a lot of different ways. We never had the experience falling in love,” he said referring to his teenage relationship. “I can reflect on it now as a really unfortunate formative experience for both of us in a way, and I just knew in some ways it was a really negative and toxic experience for both of us at the time… but also we were clinging to each other cause we were both child actors and surrounded by a lot of chaos.”
On the other end of that, Penn said he feels blessed when it comes to “every relationship I’ve had in my twenties, as an adult, and then finally the one that would turn into my marriage, has actually been so healing and not like that.”
Later on in the episode, Anna and Penn talk with a caller named Shaneen who, after breaking a little boy’s heart twenty-two years ago on Valentine’s Day, wonders if she’s been cursed. For all that and more, press play and listen to the entire episode above.
Anna Faris Is Unqualified is here to give you relationship advice from completely unqualified Hollywood types with new episodes every week.
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