Actress Reveals Her Hit Show Was ‘Killing’ Her Before Her Shock Exit

Taylor Momsen is looking back on her abrupt exit from Gossip Girl.

The musician, who played Jenny Humphrey for the first four seasons of the hit CW series, revealed on Wednesday’s episode of Call Her Daddy that the show was “killing” her before she made a shocking exit in the middle of Season 4 in 2010.

“It started with a, ‘I don’t wanna do this anymore,’ but you are in a lock and key contract with CW Warner Brothers, you know, all of that stuff,” Momsen revealed. “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.’”

Momsen, who had recently formed her band The Pretty Reckless, was determined to pursue music instead of acting. It wasn’t an easy thing to convince the higher-ups of, however. “You’re called ungrateful and you’re called all the things that come along with, ‘How dare you turn your back on something that’s been so successful for you,’” she recalled.

“I knew I had to leave, but at the same time, leaving a career that is so prosperous was not easy,” the “Make Me Wanna Die” singer continued. “It was an easy decision for me…to actually get out of a contract was not easy.”

Despite the studio trying to keep her to the terms of her contract, Momsen said Gossip Girl writers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage understood her passion and agreed to write her character off the show.

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

As for letting her Gossip Girl castmates know that she would no longer be on set with them, Momsen let her absence speak for itself.

“I kind of just Irish dipped,” she said with a laugh. “I just wasn’t in the script the next week. They all knew I was making music; they all knew I had a band.”