Penn Badgley gives a rare update on fatherhood with a two-year-old son

Penn Badgley has given fans a rare glimpse into his life with his two-year-old son James.

The You Star recently appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallonwhere he gave an update on how fatherhood has treated him since welcoming his son with wife Domino Kirke in 2020.

“Well you know he’s a pandemic kid,” Badgley told Fallon on Tuesday. “Anybody who has kids, it’s a joy, it’s immense – I mean, it’s wild. It is wonderful. It is great. It is a challenge. Greetings to all parents. Keep going! Keep it up, it gets better.”

When asked if his toddler knew his dad played serial killer Joe Goldberg in the Netflix drama series YouBadgley explained that James isn’t fully aware of his psycho character, but he’s seen his father on screen before.

“We’ll have to teach him that,” he replied jokingly.

“There was a day recently where I did something really cute with him, you know, like on my lap,” Badgley added. “And then I sat on the remote control and … it went straight to Netflix on the TV, and my face was right on the TV. He was like ‘Daddy!'”.

“I started running around because the next thing he was going to see was something really crazy.”

Badgley and his wife Kirke, who works as a doula, have been together since 2014. The two married in a New York courthouse in 2017 and welcomed their first child together two years later after Kirke suffered two miscarriages. She also shares 13-year-old son Cassius Riley with former partner and musician Morgan O’Kane.

Although the gossip Girl Alum tends to keep details about his private life private, Badgley revealed in an interview with Access Hollywood last month that his two-year-old son is now “talking a lot”.

“He says ‘you’ instead of ‘I’. Instead of saying, ‘I’m hungry’ or ‘I’m done’, he will say, ‘Are you all done?’ And I will say, ‘Are you all done?’ And he’ll say, ‘Yeah!’ It is very funny.”

The Simply A The actor has also been open about how his past health issues have affected how he views his son James. Badgley, who was born two months premature, said on HypocondriActor podcast with will and grace Actor Sean Hayes and Dr. Priyanka Wali that he had to be resuscitated “several times a day” by his mother during his first year of life.

Through his wife’s career, Badgley has also “learned” much about prenatal and postnatal conditions. Referring to her two-year-old son, Badgley said his childhood health scares may have affected him more than he previously realised.

“When my son, who I know so well now, got laid multiple times a day for the first year of his life, the idea that it wouldn’t affect him is ridiculous,” he shared. “When I think about my toddler now, I realize that it actually influenced me. It affected my sense of what life is and what life is not.”