Penn Badgley's Toddler Recognized Him When the Actor Accidentally Turned on You : 'Really Crazy'

Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images Penn Badgley

Penn Badgley is sending a message to all fellow parents of pandemic babies: it gets better.

Appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday, the You star, 36, talked about life at home with his 2½-year-old son, whom he shares with wife Domino Kirke.

"Well, he's a pandemic kid, so anybody who has kids, it's a joy," he said carefully. "It's an immense — I mean, it's wild. It's lovely."

Starting to laugh, he added, "It's great. It's a challenge."

"Shout out to all the parents. It gets better," Badgley — who is also stepdad to Kirke's 13-year-old son — laughed.

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Fallon asked if the toddler "knows his daddy plays a serial killer," which prompted the Gossip Girl alum to recall a recent incident with his son.

"There was recently a day when I was doing something sweet with him, on my lap. And then I sat on the remote. You wouldn't think this, but it goes right to Netflix on the TV, and my face was right on the TV," he explained.

"And he was like, 'Daddy!' while I started to race around because the next thing he was going to see was something really crazy."

Courtesy of Netflix

The actor rushed and was able to prevent things from getting worse, while Fallon joked he should have yelled at Siri to play Bluey.

Speaking with PEOPLE ahead of the Netflix hit's fourth season last month, British actor Ed Speleers said that there were plenty of similarities for him and Badgley to connect over from the very beginning.

"I can't speak for Penn himself, but I absolutely loved working with him from start to finish," the Downton Abbey alum told PEOPLE. "I feel that we got on very well. We were a similar age. We're both dads. We connected a lot over that and music and football. And I feel that we pushed each other and we respected each other."

Speleers shares a daughter, born in 2018, and son Jude, 8, with wife Asia Macey.