Daddy duty! Penn Badgley and wife Domino Kirke welcomed their first child together amid the coronavirus pandemic — and they are grateful for the quiet moments they got to spend locked down with the little one.
“The great bounty that we got out of it was our son,” the You star said during an October 2021 appearance on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show. “I [also] have a stepson who’s 12, and his experience was, I think in a sense, different because they’re so social at that age, but our baby is, like, chilling. He’s only been with us and he loves it.”
Badgley and Kirke, who wed in 2017, announced in February 2020 that they were expecting their first child together after previous miscarriages. Their rainbow baby, son James, was born the following September.
After James’ arrival, the John Tucker Must Die actor was able to use his pearls of fatherly wisdom on the small screen when his You character similarly became a first-time dad. (In the Netflix show’s third season, Joe and Love welcomed son Henry.)
“I certainly had the great bounty of drawing on my own experience, becoming a new biological parent, and that was quite natural,” Badgley recalled to Elle in October 2021. “There are some definitely sweet moments where I was able to do that, but I think by and large, [Joe’s] paternal instinct is at best primal. I think to be a good father or a parent, you need to really rise several orders above primal, but he’s at least primal, I guess.”
While the Easy A star quickly adapted to new fatherhood after James’ birth, he previously got a taste of parenting while bonding with Kirke’s eldest son, Cassius, from a previous relationship.
“He’s a really good stepdad,” the “Half Blood” songstress exclusively told Us Weekly in October 2019 of Badgley. “He doesn’t have to be ‘dad’ so he can have more fun with him. It’s really nice. The stepparent thing is definitely uncharted territory for me ’cause I didn’t grow up with one, but … he takes care of him really well.”
The DOMINO musician, who welcomed Cassius in 2009, also gushed to Us of watching her son evolve into his own person. She added at the time: “Boys at 10 have the same amount of testosterone as they will have when they’re 18, so there’s a sass, but when I speak to him on the phone, he’ll be like, ‘Hey mom, you sound tired. You should go to bed.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, OK, thanks.’ Like, ‘Whoa, who am I talking to?’”
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Scroll below for Badgley’s rare insights into becoming a father and raising children: