How Blake Lively 'Saved' Ex Penn Badgley During Their Relationship

The 'Gossip Girl' alum recalled having a 'spiritual crisis' while starring in the hit teen drama.

Penn Badgley has a soft spot in his heart for ex-girlfriend, Blake Lively, who he recently credited with being a positive influence when the actor needed it most.

While speaking with Variety, the actor revealed that with his Gossip Girl success came a feeling he described as "despair."

"I didn’t want to be in television," Badgley admitted, "I was biding time a lot with Dan—I was not invested. And I’m not saying it’s a good thing! I’m saying it’s just what it was."

The series—which first aired on The CW in Sept. 2007, until its end in Dec. 2012—earned viewers' attention when it debuted, winning multiple Teen Choice Awards and later inspiring a reboot with a new cast.

Recalling those years: "There’s two ways I see them," he said, "Fun and fast-paced" being one and "dark undercurrent that would bottom out in my later 20s," the other.

When asked if his melancholic experience was substance abuse-related, Badgley told reporters that he “never struggled with substance,” partly due to his relationship with Lively. "Blake didn’t drink, and I think our relationship in some ways saved me from forcing myself to go down that road."

The couple began dating at the start of the teen drama's run in 2007, and broke up three years later.

Related: Blake Lively Casually Shows Off Post-Baby Bod in Family Snapshot

"Like anybody who experiences some degree of fame and wealth, I was presented with the universal truth that not only does it not make your life better or easier, it actually can greatly complicate things, and make you quite unhappy," Badgley said. "I was never anything that I would define as suicidal at all, but I was certainly in a despair."

The actor explained that he instead coped with what was "nothing short of a spiritual crisis" by traveling, pouring his energy into political activism, exploring Buddhism, and incorporating "a lot of physical techniques, from breathing to meditation" into his life.

Badgley later found peace in Baha’i teachings, which profess "the crucial need facing humanity is to find a unifying vision of the future of society and of the nature and purpose of life."

“I was thinking a lot about social change, social action, social transformation—but also my own transformation, my own change,” he explained, "I thought to myself, 'If I really want to participate in the betterment of the world, I think that I should become a Baha’i,'" and he did, officially declaring himself Baha’i in May 2015, per the outlet.

Related: Penn Badgley Calls Out Netflix for Making Jeffrey Dahmer Sexy

In the decade since Gossip Girl wrapped up, the actor seems to have taken finding his purpose in life rather seriously.

Not only does he star in and produce Netflix's hit drama You, but he's a doting father to his two-year-old son, James, whom he shares with his wife of six years, Domino Kirke.

Badgley also launched Ninth Mode, a production company with his Podcrushed podcast co-host Nava Kavelin. The two recently secured the actor's filmmaking debut, along with the rights to make David Sedaris' short story Jamboree, for an upcoming full-length feature.