Taylor Momsen Reveals The Creative Way She Quit Gossip Girl
"To actually get out of a contract was not easy."
Taylor Momsen had to channel a bit of Jenny Humphrey’s rebellious spirit when she was ready to say goodbye to the Upper East Side. The actor was adamant on quitting Gossip Girl midway through Season 4, but because of her "lock-and-key contract" with Warner Bros. Television, she couldn’t easily walk away. So, when she found a unique solution to her problem, even her co-stars were surprised to suddenly no longer see Momsen on set one day.
“I kind of just Irish-dipped,” Momsen said during her Nov. 5 Call Her Daddy interview. “I just wasn't on the script the next week.”
While Momsen said her co-stars were aware she wanted to pursue music instead of acting at that time, they didn’t realize she was ready to suddenly disappear. “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,” Momsen said. “But I don't think anyone knew how serious I was at that stage.”
Part of that surprise may have been the fact that Momsen was under an iron-clad contract to continue playing Little J. Momsen recalled being incredibly frustrated by the studio keeping her in a place she no longer wanted to be. “To actually get out of a contract was not easy,” Momsen said. “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.”
To get around the contract, Momsen asked showrunners Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz if they could write Jenny off the show. The writers obliged, having Jenny move to Hudson, New York and eventually cut all ties with the Upper East Side schemes midway through Season 4.
As retribution, Momsen’s contract barred her from appearing in any other shows or movies at the time — which she was totally OK with.
“I'm like, 'That's perfectly fine. I'm trying to get out. It's not what I wanna do anyway,'" Momsen said. "So I really have to credit [Savage and Schwartz] 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.”
