Taylor Momsen On Why Quitting ‘Gossip Girl’ “Was An Easy Decision” & Being Called “Ungrateful”

Taylor Momsen is reflecting on her decision to exit Gossip Girl mid-season to focus on her music career.

The singer and actress starred on The CW series as Jenny Humphrey and left during Season 4 to pursue her aspirations as the lead singer of rock band The Pretty Reckless.

During an interview on the Call Her Daddy podcast, Momsen revealed she didn’t tell her co-stars she was leaving the series, saying, “I kind of just Irish-dipped. I just wasn’t on the script the next week.”

“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,” she said. “I would come in and play songs … but I don’t think anyone knew how serious I was at that stage.”

Momsen had been acting since the age of three. Before landing on Gossip Girl in 2007, she notably starred in films like How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) and Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams (2002), among others.

After being on Gossip Girl since its premiere in 2007, quitting the show amid Season 4 was something Momsen found easy, but she would soon find difficulties.

“It was an easy decision for me,” she said, adding, “To actually get [out of] a contract was not easy.”

Momsen explained that “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.’”

Getting out of her contract proved difficult with the network and Warner Bros. Television, and she was deemed “ungrateful.”

“I just went, ‘F*** you. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re not in my shoes, so how dare you judge this?’” she recalled. “I was very defensive, but it came down to they wouldn’t let me outta the contract. The head of Warner Bros. said, ‘F*** Taylor Momsen. No f***ing way.’”

Momsen ultimately ended up speaking with series creators Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz, who agreed to write her character off. Despite being written off, Momsen was still bound by her contract and couldn’t continue acting for the time being, which was ultimately what she wanted as she pursued her music goals.

“So I really have to credit them for doing that for me ’cause they did not have to, and they wrote me out of the show so I could go on tour and be in a band,” she added.

Momsen says she doesn’t resent the show and even returned for the series finale in 2012 for a cameo.

“As a fan of television and a fan of the shows, I love when you have the full cast together again,” she said. “You want to full-circle that and round it out.”

While touring with the band, the “Make Me Wanna Die” singer seemed unable to escape Gossip Girl, as every interview brought up the subject.

“The first year, you get it. The second year, you kind of laugh at it,” she said on the podcast. “As it kept going, I was going, ‘Oh, I’m never gonna outlive this character,’ and that’s a weird thing to come to grips with, so you just kind of … I ignored it. You live your life.”