Penn Badgley shared with fans an unboxing video of his upcoming book this week. And for anyone familiar with the actor’s whimsical social media presence, he naturally did so in a creative way.
The Gossip Girl star is releasing the book, Crushmore: Essays on Love, Loss, and Coming-of-Age, which he co-authored with the two co-hosts of his “Podcrushed” podcast, Sophie Ansari and Nava Kavelin. In a video posted to TikTok and Instagram, Badgley is seen waking up to the doorbell while he laid under a pile of scrap paper.
“Doorbell! Doorbell, babies—packages—I can’t do nothin’ so don’t you leave,” he says in the clip, making his way to the door, fearful that the sound will wake up his children. “Don’t leave, I gotta tell you never to come to my house again.”
Badgley’s unhinged demeanor is likely in reference to welcoming two twin boys with his wife, singer Domino Kirke, earlier in Septemeber, in addition to the couple’s 5-year-old son and a son from Kirke’s previous relationship.
Opening the front door, Badgley spies the box on his step and reacts with manic horror when the delivery person had already gone. He then drags it inside and grabs a knife from his kitchen to open it up. Finally, after tearing away the paper inside of the box, he reveals the cover of the new book.
“What does it mean? What does it all mean? Essays on love, loss, and coming of age,” he reads, picking up a copy. “That’s my name. That’s my name! That’s my face, that’s me! I’ve never seen these women before in my life,” he quips, referring to Ansari and Kavelin. “What on earth could this possibly be?” he adds just before the video cuts out.
The book, being published by Simon & Schuster, is described as essay collection that explores what it means to come of age at every stage of our lives.
“Penn, a twelve-year-old, Discman-toting introvert, starts in the solitude of his only-child household where he danced like no one was watching (because no one was watching) before embarking on a neon-lit journey to Hollywood,” read the book’s official description.
“Sophie takes us to her middle school in Beijing where she had to ward off rumors of a boob job, and to the moment loosening her chokehold on love brought her husband straight into her living room,” the description continues. “Nava traces the emotional aftershocks of losing her mother and guides us through the whimsical world of an imaginationship, where nothing is ever as it seems.”
Crushmore: Essays on Love, Loss, and Coming-of-Age is being released on October 14, but can be preordered in the meantime.
