The star revealed that when Penn Badgley was a baby, his mother needed to resuscitate him several times a day.
The 36-year-old “Gossip Girl” actor stopped by Hypocondri Actor podcast and shared that he was born two months premature with multiple health issues.
“For the primary few weeks, I used to be within the neonatal NICU [neonatal intensive care unit] because my heart and lungs stopped multiple times a day,” he told podcast hosts Sean Hayes, 52, and Dr. Priyance Wali.
Doctors needed to resuscitate him day by day while he was within the hospital, and his mother learned how you can do that when Badgley was deemed fit enough to return home.
“[She had to do it] several times a day because my heart and lungs were stopping and I used to be on a monitor that was beeping very loudly,” the You star continued. “The primary time she needed to do it was on the way in which home from the hospital after I was discharged from the NICU.”
He then noticed how he would be connected to the monitor even when he was sitting within the automotive seat.
When it exploded, it was enough for somebody to the touch it to bring it back to life. He continued, “Only a human touch would wake me up,” he said, as his cousins told him.
Badgley stated that his condition “disappeared” as he grew up, nevertheless it had a lasting impact on his perspective on death and parenthood. He currently has a two-year-old son together with his 40-year-old wife Domino Kirke, who’s a doula.
“The effect it had on me, not less than in a way emotionally, is that I’m extremely sensitive to the touch, that is what I’ve noticed in my life,” Badgley said. “Each time someone touches me, I’m very aware of it.”
Referring to death, he said it “doesn’t scare him”. “There’s a facet of it where I feel the earliest experiences have a seriousness,” he said.
Badgley said having a son sheds much more light on the impact of childhood health issues.
The Easy A alumnus stated: “If my son, whom I now know so well, used to jerk off several times a day in his first yr, the concept that it would not affect him is absurd. Fascinated by my infant now, I know it really affected me. It affected my sense of what life is like and what it’s not.”