Soul Boom - Penn Badgley Returns to Redefine What Faith Truly Means

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

Actor Penn Badgley (YOU on Netflix, Gossip Girl) joins Rainn Wilson to dive into his lifelong search for meaning. Penn shares how his journey from being a child actor to playing the infamous Netflix villain Joe Goldberg, discussing the challenges of fame, toxic love, and Hollywood's misconceptions about happiness. They dive deep into the role of spirituality in navigating despair, societal change, and the lessons Penn learned through his Baha’i faith. This episode offers profound insights on love, identity, and the power of artistic transformation. Penn Badgley is an acclaimed actor, best known for his roles in Gossip Girl and You. A member of the Baha’i faith, he is also a director, producer and spiritual thinker advocating for a deeper understanding of love and humanity. Thank you to our sponsors! Masterclass (up to 50% OFF!): http://masterclass.com/soulboom Waking Up app (1st month FREE!): https://wakingup.com/soulboom Fetzer Institute: https://fetzer.org/ MERCH OUT NOW! https://soulboomstore.myshopify.com/ Penn's 'Soul Definition' Mug: http://bit.ly/3ZnFyhp God-Shaped Hole Mug: https://bit.ly/GodShapedHoleMug Sign up for our newsletter! https://soulboom.substack.com SUBSCRIBE to Soul Boom!! https://bit.ly/Subscribe2SoulBoom Watch our Clips: https://bit.ly/SoulBoomCLIPS Watch WISDOM DUMP: https://bit.ly/WISDOMDUMP Follow us! Instagram: http://instagram.com/soulboom TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@soulboom Sponsor Soul Boom: [e-mail] Work with Soul Boom: [e-mail] Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: [e-mail] Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Voicing Change Media Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It always will be. And as epic as that is, this unknown creator also has created me and knows me more intimately than anyone ever will and loves me more deeply and with more mercy and kindness and compassion and excitement than anyone ever will, including myself. myself. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. Hi, Penn. Hey, Rain.

So nice to have you here in the Soul Boom universe. Yeah, thank you for having me. I want to get right to it. I know you as like this incredibly sensitive, artistic, spiritual thinker, an artist. And the rest of the world knows you as playing one of the most unusual psychopaths in television history. Maybe second to Dexter, but Joe is an odd character. How do you rectify and have you struggled with

Penn Badgley, sensitive artist, singer, songwriter, actor, writer, meditator, family man with playing Joe. Was that a conflict? Well, how does that work? I'll back up even a bit more. When I was 20 years old and I got Gossip Girl, I was not mature enough to understand

how to separate how I was seen with who I am. So I never got the chance to be in a chance never got the chance to be an adult finding himself like outside of the public eye and a lot of a lot of certain kinds of attention and scrutiny i have learned how to have a more uh maybe detached or dispassionate relationship to the characters i'm playing kind of almost maybe a bit late in the game later than i would have liked because i'm 37 about to be 38 and i feel like i'm just coming of age as an artist, dare I say an artist, you know. I have worked through that. And I don't find any really difficulty with it now. I started out initially thinking that

I wasn't interested enough, do I want to play this man for what now is seven years? This role has undoubtedly defined in my 30s, you know. I did not anticipate it being as big as it is. It's really a huge international phenomenon. Yeah. And I'm really like, If I ever... The story is incredible because it started on... Started on Lifetime. Lifetime and then went away

and then the Netflix algorithm... They knew. They knew it was going to be good. They were just like... They were like that show. Yeah. And they just know. They're so...

They're so good at that. Yeah, it's databaseed. They just knew. All the factors they knew. They knew it was going to get canceled on Lifetime. They knew it wouldn't ultimately be delivered the way it needed

to be on Lifetime. Yeah. They then basically were able to snatch it up for a low price and just, you know, have this built-in hit for themselves. You can't help but have it define you somewhat. Mm-hmm. As you know, just people.

I am, will always be defined by Dwight Shrews. Right. No matter what I do. And that's okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he's not a psycho killer. He's a beet farmer. Sure, sure.

He's psycho, though. I mean, isn't he a little bit psycho? He has psychotic tendencies used for comedy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Maybe Joe should open a beet farm. I think, honestly, there's, there's, I think what saves this show from being insufferable is comedy. I think our show, right, the dark comedy.

I think our show, I've never played him as a, as like a clinical portrait of a serial killer at all. Like I don't even think what defines him most is being a serial killer. I think the actual psychological profile of a more, shall we say, traditional serial killer, isn't, So directly related to this other stuff about like toxic conceptions of love and romance. He's really almost more like a love addict with violent lethal tendencies. I love that. You know what I mean? And the show is more about love than it is about murder. Murder is just kind of like a color in the palette.

Yeah. As it is increasingly in more and more television shows, you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. And just have this conversation with Greg Berlanti, the co-co-com. creator of the show and you know a prolific television producer um and so in that conversation he in passing called it a uh a love story now um anybody who's not seen the show or anybody who has seen the show but maybe he's forgotten in the first episode um he there's there's never a gracious way to say it he uh he masturbates outside of her window on the street in public

And then by the last episode, spoiler alert, he kills her. That's, you know, there's no way to... I don't even know what to say about that. You know, I mean, this is the character, and this is the story. That's the book as well, you know? Sure. Doesn't sound like so much of a love story, but... Right, right. And I stopped them and I said, I mean, I don't think this is a love story, but assuming that it is for a moment,

What do you think this says about love? And he paused. And it was a great pause because it was the pause that got me. And he said, I'm not sure, but I think we'll discover that together. And ultimately, I do think I have, what I've discovered is that I believe the power of collaboration can actually change something and transmute something. And I think a show, which everyone was thinking about, which is why I believe they cast me. I mean, they've essentially said this, like, because I'm so, you know, not this guy.

Of course, no one is this guy. Nobody's a, they're not going to be casting a psychopaths here, but. Let's go through the California State Prison System for an actor who's actually. But, you know, what they, what they saw in me, what they, what I, what I think they wanted was somebody who, um, wasn't going to lean into the most insidious parts of this character unnecessarily. And so I think what I've really learned is that you can change things through collaboration, through what I mean is like digging in and investing. Yeah. You know, I think what I struggled with in my 20s was sort of a cynicism, a very powerful film of cynicism around all the roles that I that I had and feelings of contempt, you know, for the industry, for producers, whatever it may be.

And I still have a little of those. Yeah, I mean, of course, it's my dad. default. It's my default. You know, if I'm having a rough day, haven't slept enough, whatever it is. Like, I will always default to that. But, you know, I think our goal in life is to stop defaulting and to, like, become less automatic in our responses to everything. And so for me, I've learned the most through this role. And I still, to be honest, I'm still struggling how to articulate what it is that I've learned because it just ended. Like, it just ended a few weeks ago. Wow. Just ended.

How does that feel? Again, I don't even really know. I don't have enough perspective yet. I haven't even, you know, it hasn't come out yet. I haven't done the press for it. I think that's when I'll start to. Right. Once it airs.

Yeah. When I really start to do something else. Yeah. It was interesting with the office because we ended after nine and a half seasons or so. And when we ended, we were not very popular. People weren't really watching network TV. Our numbers had been going down, down, down. Even before Steve Corel left, we were really the list.

Really? I didn't recall that. Yeah. So big now. But that's the thing. But there weren't streaming services then when this ended. And maybe Netflix was just starting to percolate along. But it really was gone and I didn't get bothered that much for Dwight. And it wasn't.

So it really was like, oh, that chapter is behind me. Interesting. In 2014, 2015. and then I did some other roles and some things worked and some things didn't and I was kind of struggling to find my next path as an actor or whatever and then all of a sudden I would be at a coffee shop

and 12 year olds were like, Dwight, Dwight can I have a picture? I'm like, what the hell is going on? And it had started the Netflix phenomenon. So that had revived the show. It had always, it was well considered and a lot of people had watched it but they had watched it as like Thursday night TV

And then some people bought DVDs, but then that was it. Yeah. There were some reruns, syndicated reruns out there on Comedy Central, if you really looked. But it had, it was gone. It was done. It was buried for several years before 2018, it started, it came on and became more popular than it ever had. So it was a, it was a weird kind of phoenix from the ashes.

Did it was it, but wasn't it still one of, was it being, because it's kind of like, isn't the biggest show? its spot is really rare and special, right? Isn't it like the biggest... But that has to do with streaming. That is streaming. When it was on the air, in our hit several years, three or four years,

we were, you know, a top 10-20 show and a top comedy on NBC. But then by the time we were done, we were like 40 or 50th down in the Nielsen ratings. But it was, yes, billions of hours watched or billions of minutes watched for the office is up there

with like the Sopranos. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Or breaking bad. Is that when, like, all the merchandise started? Because I feel like I, I feel like, yeah. I was pitching some shows on the NBC lot, like, last summer, I think, and I saw some toys of you.

And I think there was only you. I think it was, like, only the Dwight Shrewd, like, little, you know, you, like press them and they fall down and they come up. You don't I'm talking about these little, like, I haven't even seen that one. It's like, or maybe it was a bobblehead. It was just something where I thought, man, rain. Cartick, get me. one of those little string thingies.

It's such a rare thing. Yeah, that's, people send me all the time my face on all kinds of products. And I, I, it astounds me. Someone sent me, they went to a fabric store. There was a roll of fabric with my face on it. I know that that didn't get approval from NBC. Yeah, definitely not. So do I send out a cease and desist to the fabric store?

Or do I be flattered that somewhere someone is going to, upholster their couch with my face all over it, they're going to be sitting on my face. That's what she said. Thank you so much. Good night, everybody. Good night. Yeah. Let's get back to you. For me, because I think we're kind of in a lot of ways cut from the same cloth in terms of being kind of spiritual thinkers and adventurers and trying to bring that sense of our spiritual beingness to our artistry. One of the things I struggled with early on when I was founding Soul Pancake and writing my first book and talking to Oprah about spirituality. And I was finally like coming out of the closet as like, hey, I'm someone who thinks about

spirituality and I'm a member of the Baha'i faith and I meditate and I have mental health issues and I'm and I'm, you know, wanting to revitalize conversations on these topics. It felt very disconnected and disjointed for me. Not playing a psycho killer, but just being on a sitcom. Like what the hell is the sitcom actor? talking about God and the soul and the meaning of life. And people really, there was a disconnect. People really didn't know how to connect those two.

And something you said earlier really resonated with me where I used to get so much of my self-esteem and my sense of who I was from kind of external validation. Of course. And being an actor, especially where you're kind of in that mode of like, I hope you like me, I hope you cast me, I hope you'll pay me so I can pay my rent. Yeah.

Part of the realization was like, sitcom acting doesn't define me. I'm good at comedy. I can play weird characters. And I had, you know, I got so lucky to play Dwight on the office. That's wonderful. But Rain is who Rain is.

I'm on my journey. Part of my journey, I feel that, to quote J.D. Salinger from Franny and Zui, you know, he says, Zui be God's actor. You know, if you want to be an actor, you do it for the fat lady, and you do it in service to God,

that there is a divinity in the transformation of playing characters and telling stories, like find that divinity. And that really resonated for me that I'm a transformative actors. I play characters. I help tell stories. Sometimes I write and direct as well. That's amazing, but that's a spiritual expression.

If I'm best known for like this dysfunctional paper salesman, and beet farmer, so be it. But that's what gives me the most kind of vibration. That's what gives me the most energy, where I was able to join my spiritual journey with my acting journey. Yeah, yeah, okay, I see what you say? Do you see what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So tell me your, what's your version of that? Yeah, that's interesting. So, I mean, I too am a member of the Baha'i faith, as you are aware, but those who are watching may not be or may be. Unlike you, although I know that you went kind of, shall we say, away from... Rogue.

whatever that is. You had your own journey, as we all do. But you grew up with it. I did not grow up with it at all. No, did I ever think I would seek out something like that you could call a religion. Art was my religion. Music was my religion, if anything.

And I think the most, it's the reason that I always loved, I couldn't have articulated it, but I think growing up gospel music always did something for me that any artist who was bringing gospel into their secular act, and really there's one artist who does it kind of unlike any other, and his name is DiAngelo,

and he is my number one. I welcome anybody to dethrone him, but I've just never found anybody who speaks to me in the same way. You know, the closest I got to spirituality was definitely through music and through art, and so I saw artists as, again, I don't know that I would have been able

to articulate this growing up, but I saw artists as, some version of priests, you know, I mean, I think everybody, I think we live in such a, a world, some form of, like, I get to God through you, through this thing, through that, through, through a channel that is not me in my own pursuit, through a, through a priest, through an imam. So I think we all, like, create priests out of people, in a sense. It's a more Western thing to say, but I think, you know, therapists in some way can become the new priest, not that they're asking for it, not but i think we can we we we give a lot of our um our our our the pursuit of spiritual search

that independent investigation that we should all be performing in life i think we sometimes give that to other people when i became a bahai taking this show was actually the first professional decision i made i was considering you became a bahai i became a bahai i became a bahai and signed up to play a psycho killer yeah it was a two years so so there was two years between the decision to become a high in the decision to play Joe Goldberg. And in those two years, I was questioning whether or not I could ever act again for a number of reasons.

A whole slew of reasons. I'd love to hear those reasons. Well, you know, one of them which I've spoken about before was like, I don't want to feel exploited, whether subtly or viscerally through the use of my body and like

sex scenes I haven't written or believe in. Yeah. You know, with people who aren't cast yet and who I don't know, and I'm gonna have, you know, that was something that was important to me. Did you feel exploited on Gossip Girl?

It would be unfair to say, like, you know, these people exploited me. But the nature of... The system. The system and the machine and the beast. You're doing kind of a salacious teen. It's just what it is. Yeah.

That's looking for viewers and wants to sell advertisement. You're part of that system. Right. And so the short answer is absolutely yes. you know, you might intellectually know that you're not being consciously exploited by anybody. Although you probably are, I think.

But, you know, your nervous system doesn't feel it that way. It's your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, you're, you're, you do feel it. And by the way, whenever I say some like this, it's not a complaint. It's just like, I, I, I, I try to bear witness to it. It's like, it's just, it's just the way that people, young people especially feel on a show like that. How many more pop stars do we need to come? come out with, you know, serious, serious difficulties with addiction of every form of, you know, suicidal ideations, depression, you know, whatever, you name it.

Like, how many more pop stars do we need to come out? Being very vocal and clear about this, that this is a common experience for people on big shows or musicians, you know. Because you were kind of a teen heartthrobish. Yeah, yeah. In my 20s, I was a teen heartthrob. Yeah. Were you in Tiger Beat?

You know what? I think I was back in my teens for like, you know, I've been working since I was 12. I've been professionally working since I was 12. Can we find on eBay a Tiger Beat with Penn Baddley? Probably could. It may not be a Tiger Beat, but it's one of those. But what was the other, what was the other reason? The violence that is, again, as I said earlier, like, it's kind of just a, it's just a tool in the toolkit.

it's a color on the palette of like modern television. It's just, you know, things are violent. Perpetuating violence. Yeah, like, well, you know, this is the thing. I don't know that it's a one-to-one that the depiction of violence perpetuates violence itself, but it's just, it's just, I find it dispiriting. Just plainly watching something very dark and violent.

Like, doesn't make me feel good. I can't watch John Wick films. Yeah, you know, I've actually like, slaughtering people for no reason. And that's even kind of tongue-in-chevild. cheek. Yeah, that's a little bit. It's like, I think that that's where it's, you know, you don't think of him as a serial

killer, but he technically is. I think it's an interesting point that the political right makes about this, which is like you have like all these Hollywood people speaking out against guns and gun violence and gun registration and stuff like that. And they're in all these movies with like, you know, that's interesting. You know, and they'll take those $50 million paycheck. Because it looks cool. And then talk about like, hey, we need to really limit.

gun violence. It's like, well, put your money where your mouth is, bro. Yeah, so, you know, I had that. Well, I had that. I was sort of like, you know, how principled am I about the things that I believe in? The answer is not enough. No, I really wasn't sure that a role would come along.

Short of me creating it in some way. That I would really be that interested in. And that, you know, the themes of, let's say, sex and violence, like that's not a groundbreaking idea that things, the popular, you know, Hollywood projects are very sexual and very violent. That's a pretty, that's been a truism, I think, ever since the inception of Hollywood. I think I felt initially that I had to sort of go to the mountaintop. I've said this before, but it's, I think the line still really makes sense and works.

That's this image of spirituality that a lot of us have, at least in the West. But I think in really embracing my spirituality, I realize that, like, I have to bring the mountaintop to my life. I can't sort of become reclusive or just, you know, again, so what's the difference between purity and puritanism? Like, where is it good and where is it? Like, what's righteous and what's self-righteous? Like, the line can sometimes be quite fine. You know, I ultimately took this role sort of for as a personal statement, like, in the spirit of saying yes, like figuring out how to make this work, how to fuse these two things. because it did feel really divergent in the beginning,

like really, really divergent. When I had to shoot that scene where my character is masturbating outside of this window, this woman, who he will then engage in a relationship with and then later. You've never done that before? Well, only my teens. You just draw on your personal experiences. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Everybody did. Oh, I'm forgetting there was the one time. The way that I was digging into the character, was to believe everything that he was saying and thinking about love. So I felt like to do that was so clearly like this visceral primal, sort of violent and invasive act.

To me, I was like, so if we do that, then this man is like, he's a more primal character than we're creating. And I was either like, we have to go hard in that direction or like, I don't want it there. Like, and the, and I think the guy that I'm trying to play right now is more of this sort of strangely romantic icon. And so if we're doing all these things,

to me it feels kind of wildly inconsistent in all these things. And so then on set, when we're shooting it, I then was like, okay, if we're doing this, we're doing this. Like, what is, what is the real state of a man who is doing this? Yeah, yeah. It's not sexy. I'll tell you. No, yeah.

And the note I kept getting was, it's a little creepy the way you're doing it. And I was like, you bet your ass it is. And I kept getting a note, close. If I recall, the note I was getting was, can you please close your eyes and go faster? And I was like, no, no, no, I'm not going to do that. And maybe I end, I don't, again, I don't remember

what we ended up doing. I don't remember, I think, look, I'm always a team player and I will give, I will give the director, the producers, at least one take of what they're asking for if I really disagree with it. But my heart won't be in it. Or your cock. Yeah, I was, I was going to say, I don't know how far you go in this show. Too far. Yeah. So that was an instance of me welding these two possibly diversion paths together, ironically, in a scene where you wouldn't anticipate that experience happening. But, you know, I'm like, okay, this isn't me. This isn't real.

What are we doing? What's the purpose of the show? What messages are we trying to communicate? If he's going to do this, let's have him do it. But isn't that, again, that separation between the character and you? It's like, well, then I'm, if I'm going to play this character, I'm going to commit to fully playing this character. It's not Penn Badgley.

It's Joe Goldberg. Yeah. Yes. And then I, but there's something that I don't really know how to, like, articulate perfectly yet or I may never is just that actors talk about and actually people

people who don't act most I think talk most about it this idea of like getting into character you know this idea of what it is what that process is like nobody's able to really separate this stuff from themselves nobody I don't care who it is

you know the greatest of the greats they're themselves and they're accessing parts of themselves to depict these things that they didn't write that they didn't direct you know like you're not even wearing your own clothes you're not you're not saying what you want to say you're not standing where you even want to stand you're not nothing about it is your choice except how you feel about it in the moment and actually some of some of the greatest

moments you have as an actor is when you lose that choice too and you kind of spontaneously feel really what you're meant to be feeling if it's like you have to rage or cry or love whatever it is And so it might sound to the casual viewer, like maybe a little bit immature or like less of a serious actor's position, but I think it's truly hard to separate yourself from the roles that you play. And at the same time, the further a character is from you,

the more fun you can also have. Like I have also had strangely more fun playing this guy than I've ever had before. Way more fun. I got to do a lot of really crazy. crazy things and that can be quite fun. And I think by the end, anybody who worked with me can testify, like, I am not, I might speak about it seriously and give it weight and gravity and press, which I think is the most

responsible thing to do. Uh-huh. But on set, I'm taking at the least serious of anybody there by far, all by far. Okay. You know, like, actually to the point where some of my co-stars have very graciously asked me, they're like, look, can you just, can you stop for a second? Because like, I need to focus. And I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry, sorry.

I'm here every day doing this all day. You're kind of coming and going. We share a lot in common. We've both played kind of iconic television characters. Not kind of, bro. Let's own it. It's funny, I had Brian Cranston on the show, and I said the same thing, and that I was reading the comments, and people like, you can't even compare you and Brian Cranston, and he's played the, like.

It's like. All right, guys. Well, you can compare us, at least. Yeah, please. Yeah, yes. The great Brian Cranston. He's on a whole other level. I get it.

But we've played iconic television characters. We're both members of the Baha'i faith. We both have kind of production companies that are also trying to tell stories that make the world a better place. Why is Penn Badgley at all interested in the journey of the human soul and the mystery of existence?

I love it when you put it like that. Why? Ultimately, because I was, for me, and I think you can reach this through many other paths. In fact, of course, many people do. For me, it was because I started, to achieve everything that I'd ever wanted and was still not finding any relief from a kind of despair and sadness that had started that I can recall most at the age of about 12 which is like you know

as you begin the age of spiritual maturity or just you know your brain is developing your body's developing you're going through such a powerful transition like stage of transformation that is unlike any other in life you know before it you're a child after it you're an adult adolescence, like what is going on there, bodily, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. That's the time when I think most people started to become most sad. I think some, I'll at least say. I think a lot of people experience that, too, because I've had these conversations with people because it's something I talk about on my podcast, which is about that time of life.

I'm not here to promote that, though. Although my podcast hosts would... Pod crushed? Yeah, pod crushed. Available on all podcast outlets? Available wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, very awesome. Brought to you by meyundies.

Uh-huh. Yeah. I've not heard of those. Meundies? It's a subscription underwear service. Okay. They used to sponsor all the podcasts. Yeah, I wasn't in the game that early, I think.

Yeah. But I, my hardest years were like 12 to 22. And then we- 22, you're world famous and a millionaire and in Tiger Beat, and you're still feeling, because that, is really hard for people to wrap their heads around like wait a minute you have fame you have money you have sex you know you have accolades yeah you have an amazing apartment in the east village and you're still unhappy what yeah and and i shouldn't say i shouldn't you know i think there's in some

ways this that refrain is so old and tired that like maybe because i guess i can unpack that it wasn't that those things made me unhappy it was that they didn't provide any meaningful relief from an unhappiness that preceded the attainment of those things. So I think a lot of life, we're coming from a state of discontent or trying to attain happiness. And so we go about that a number of ways. Some people don't pursue money. I certainly wasn't pursuing money.

What I was pursuing was success in my chosen field, which I actually loved and believed in. And as I started to get it, not just with Gossip Girl, because that wasn't the end-all-be-all of what I wanted to achieve. that was, you know, in some sense, a means to an end. It was after Gossip Girl, or during the sort of latter half of Gossip Girl, where I started to get roles that I really loved. And I sort of worked with filmmakers and other actors

who I really, really respected and admired. And he was providing what I think ultimately was almost like a distraction from the fact that nothing in here was really progressing and changing. It didn't fill the God-shaped whole. Yeah, only coffee does. Can you plug our merch here? Yeah, here we go. Can you show the camera?

So my God-shaped hole with coffee. But true, I think a big part of the spiritual journey is a realization like, hey, all of these externals are not going to fill me with the rich, meaty stuff of life that I need. They're not going to ultimately fulfill me. And I would even say that, you know, for say like a teenage, or an early 20s person. You know, the stuff of life that fulfills me, what do you even think that is? What is that?

I don't think anybody would outright say money because I think even the most, the greediest of greedy people, given a moment to kind of unpack why they're pursuing money, so maybe sociopathically, is they ultimately want to, what, I don't know, like to protect their family,

take care of it, protect themselves, because they perceive some kind of, yeah? Yeah, what's it for you? Rain. Uh-huh. I have a theory on this. Okay. I have a theory on a lot of things.

Go ahead, go ahead, please. Okay, so there are some basic human needs, right? We need shelter. We need food. We need kind of social capital. Yeah. That's very real social capital. We need to, we have a need for sex or propagating the species.

These are like going back to the caveman days. Okay, so we're going back 100,000 years. these are the basic human needs. When you ask young people what they most want, it shifted from like money and success a few years back, five or ten years back, it shifted to fame, right? Because what does fame do? It fulfills all of those buckets.

Yeah. If you have fame, speaking, it should, yeah. You can make money, you know, so that you can have your stockpile stuff in your cave. It gives you shelter. It gives you, you know, sex. It gives you food. It gives you social capital. All of those things are fulfilled by fame, but it doesn't fulfill what's in here. Right. Yeah, you know, it's like if I really think about

what state I was in, I don't remember what I, like what, I wouldn't have called it a God-shaped hole because I was really uncomfortable with the word God. You know, there was a roomy quote, which is, I think, much used, but God enters through the wound. I like that because for me, my path towards satisfaction and happiness and contentment if I've achieved it, which is, of course, you know, it's like you're not always there, but I have a sense of peace and well-being that I did not have. For me, it was through understanding what is making me despair. If I can't name what will make me happy, maybe I can name what is making me sad. So what was making you sad at 22? Lack of community, never having really known what that word could even really mean. Lack of

meaningful family relationships, lack of trust in my friendships, a lack of trust in my romantic relationships. Although the relationships I had in my 20s really healed me, but I had a really, really, really terrible relationship in my teens with a woman who has since died at the age of 32 from the effects of alcohol.

And that was kind of starting when we were together. And it was just a very, It was a very, very, very difficult. Like my teen years were, to me, they were just by far and away the saddest part of my life, 12 to 20, really. And that was in L.A., becoming an actor for the first time. You know, 12 was when I moved to L.A. to become an actor. And so, you know, I think what started happening, I didn't realize this was happening,

but all feelings of self-worth, which is ultimately supposed to be provided you by your parents, who hold you no matter what you say or do, who sue. you no matter what you say or do, you know, so that actually hopefully you won't ever do or say anything too bad, you know, but like even when you do and you're learning, they hold you and they soothe you. And let's be real, most parents are trying to do that but fail, fall really short of it, because their parents didn't do it very well. Right. Back and back and back and back and back and back we go, you know. So ultimately, I'm trying to soothe like the love that my parents weren't able to give me, which they tried. Wow, that's really well put. That's really, I think, what we're all

doing here. Because the only love that can satiate that desire is the love that comes from the divine and knowable essence. And that's what we get in prayer and meditation, but then hopefully taken to the world through action, through service, through commitment to trying to better the world in whatever way we understand how. I mean, there's so many studies. We have applied the tools of science to this. Like sacrificing something for someone else, statistically speaking, makes people happier than most anything else, you know? Wow. So there's the broadest kind of psych one-on-one idea,

like I'm trying to find the love that my parents weren't capable of giving me, but which I want to be careful not to sort of blame them for or fault them for. They truly did the best they could in most instances. And when I say they, I'm not just talking. about my parents I think I think that is by and large most people are trying and if they're failing miserably like that's another thing but like I think they're trying I grew up an only child although I have a half sister who's 17 years older so we both have this experience of being only children we share the same father there's a lot

of isolation and because of the toxicity of my parents relationship there's just a lot of isolation and like kind of figuring things out for myself it was during my years, I was not finding meaningful relationships. I didn't find solace in the people who are closest to me. I didn't have the most trust. I think young people can actually, young people can be really fickle. But what made you turn inward and to think about some kind of spiritual path out of this as opposed to either more substances or just plain old therapy?

I know that what I saw around me, was it substance wasn't working um fame wasn't working money wasn't working yeah to be honest my first experience was psychedelics really okay it's a very popular topic these days very popular and this was back in the day when like people thought maybe mushrooms would like make you crazy forever um but i i remember you know i had the experience at least in my in my brain and my nervous system, my body, a feeling that I had not been shown by my parents, by friends and family, by the shows that I watched in the, because the art, you know, I think there's a lot of nihilism in our modern age of art and television and film and books. A lot of nihilism. The total

assumption that there's no God, it's just, it's a scientific fact and it's, it's just left, you know, unexplored, very unscientifically. The suggestion that there was just nothing was, thing was so chilling just it's it's undoubtedly chilling i don't care who you are like you know it's a chilling notion that that that that all that we're here for no discernible reason or purpose i agree with that completely some people adamantly disagree with that well and it's interesting to me they're like yeah but i don't need that i just that means every day i cherish and i enjoy it and it's like I really tried to be an atheist for a while, and I felt the same way. Like, there's ultimately a despair if at the end of the day your body drops, and, like,

it all was kind of for nothing and a part of nothing other than a random assemblage of molecules. Yeah. You know, to me, I actually think that, like, short of really coming to believe in a profound meaning and purpose to life, you should go in the other direction and really commit to, like, there is none. But then, you know, if you really follow that rationale, there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of logic to it. Science doesn't even really support the notion that, I mean, there's so much collaboration and exquisite balance and symmetry and perfection and universal like laws which govern physical reality. You know, it's unscientific to simply assume that that's all just happens. It really is unscientific.

I mean, in the frontiers of sciences, I understand in quantum mechanics, I mean, whatever, I'm not, you know, there's going to be plenty of smart people who think I sound stupid or something. saying this, but it's an unscientific assumption to make at this point, because we don't understand the first thing about how consciousness originated. Anyway, um, so you took mushrooms and saw God. Yeah. No, no. No, I took mushrooms and was given a glimpse of some kind of satisfaction and contentment, which later, by the way, as I took more mushrooms, was the opposite effect. You know, you know, the psychedelics I was pursuing were destabilizing progressively more and more to the point that, I mean, really, really where I started to cobble myself together, which would lead to for me this kind of like ground I never knew before,

a kind of salvation I never knew before, a kind of inner strength and peace that I never knew before. I was a complete mess because I had Gossip Girl had ended, a relationship that I loved had ended as much as we tried to save it, you know. And then in that state, actually the substances that I was consuming for a kind of the pursuit of the divine were further destabilizing me. And I was really like, I was really. You were a hot mess. I was a, I was a, I was a tepid mess. Okay.

I was a lukewarm unraveling. And I think trying to take responsibility as much as I can for my state and condition, but also knowing like I did not get here on my own. there are many other people struggling in this same way i don't see a whole lot of people you know just being like i'm great yeah you know you saw your internal struggle reflected in society around you yeah and i surely thought that that that's that that was encouraging in some way i mean again i wouldn't have used the word encouraging but it kept me from some kind of bottom that's like maybe a bit to that you can't come back from you know yeah uh uh and then i'll also Ultimately sobriety, you know, sobriety is not something that I talk about a lot because it's not, I don't think of it unto itself.

But I've started to realize it, it provides, as long as you're not white knuckling it, like, you know, yeah, sobriety kind of did a lot for me. I am able to articulate this stuff now, but I wasn't then. It is this finding your life's purpose in the link between your spiritual transformation and that of your community and society. That they're linked, they're inextricably linked. You can't really have one without the other. You can't have a changed society without changed individuals. And you can't change as individuals that much without that much of a changed society. You know, like I'm trying to change my life radically as a Baha'i.

I'm not always getting there because I still live in this society, you know, and I still exhibit so many of the symptoms of somebody who's deeply enmeshed in this very flawed and disordered culture that we have. That's very well said. And I want to echo that because that's one of the themes of Soul Boom is very much that day. that yin and yang between the personal inner transformation what i call the kung fu path and then social transformation the star trek path and that oh i like that they're not um you should read the book it's pretty good the uh the um the joke is that he sent it to me months ago i even signed it um he did the but that these two halves feed on each other and this is a very bahai idea that i

stole, but you articulated it perfectly that you really can't have one without the other. We can't transform society without transformed souls. And you can't transform your soul without engaging with society. Without help. Yeah, without help and without community and without service, you know. So helping, helping others. Because this kind of very L.A., this very coastal idea of spirituality is something that you find in your meditation room or with a crystal or at your yoga And I found that more and more and more, which I ultimately was like, that's not it either. That's not the path. It's really not it. It's, it's, it leads towards the wrong kind of self. Yeah. You know, you know, yeah, with many caveats because I know the people are seeking and searching. I don't want to some, I don't want to anyone to feel belittled by misinterpreting what I just said. I don't mind people feeling belittal. I don't know if you've noticed. I'm still learning. I'm still on my path of people pleasing. So I struggle with it. I'm, I'm a few years behind you. I, I, I, I really got a

over that, I could give a fuck anymore. But people do get scared when you talk about a religion. They're like, oh, they're trying to convert me. I know. I know. I know. And in fact, please be a Buddhist. Yeah.

Please join. Become a Tibetan Buddhism. It's a great path. Don't you ever become a Baha'i. Please don't. Is what we're saying. No, the Baha'i free zone. Just as to you.

I, coming into contact with the writings of Baha'u'llah demonstrated to me over time with more certitude than I had ever found in any other pursuit of any other thing that God is not only real, that's actually a very sort of silly sentence to say. Like the moment you say something about God is, you're sort of getting further away from that ultimately unknowable essence, but that I am here for a reason. We are all here for a reason. It is actually both explicit and implicit. There is not just this sort of general notion of purpose.

There is an explicitly organized, exquisitely long form, gorgeously told, dramatic story of the conception and evolution of human beings on this planet and throughout the universe. It is the state of existence and natural reality. It always has been. It always will be. And as epic as that is, this unknown creator also has created me and knows me more intimately than anyone ever will and loves me more deeply and with more mercy and kindness and compassion and excitement than anyone ever will, including myself. And that when I am struggling, it's because I have lost an intuitive and conscious knowledge of that truth.

And we live in a culture that is, the irony is that we, a lot of, a lot of, you know, I formerly would have called myself a very progressive liberal. And in some ways I am still that. But, you know, I used to lambast religious people and religions for perpetuating, you know, toxic ideologies. And that, of course, is the case in a lot of cases. But my experience was one of total salvation. You know, that word is also historically Christian. It's one that I use having experienced it and really feeling truly like a second birth.

Like saved from a profound despair, which at its core suggested that there was no reason for my existence. So that the lack of love I was shown by anyone in my life, I'm not faulting them. I mean, we all in turn show each other love and lack of love. It was almost like every negative experience I had

was just confirming like there is no reason, there is no purpose. that was so chilling that it just felt the opposite of existence. It's like, why? I ultimately never could, could stand on that soapbox and declare for myself or to others like, there is no reason. And I can embrace that because it just felt like it made no sense. You know, it was like, look, okay, and how does this look? Let me stop speaking in a really intellectual way. How did this look? I'm a 25-year-old somewhat to very famous person, depending on this crowd I'm in, wandering around New York City, trying to, you know, on any given night going to a bar or

staying in because I don't want to go to bars, you know, reading, learning how to meditate, exploring Buddhism, exploring meditation, transcendental meditation every now and then. But, you know, really interested in what, like, harder drugs might do for me, too. Maybe that's the answer. Maybe I just need to really get a movie that's going to, that's going to, that's, It's gonna, maybe I need to play that kind of role. What was, what was Daniel Day Lewis doing at my age? Let me, let me go back.

Let me look on IMD and see, like, huh, you know, I mean, I've actually never done that, but I'm just saying this is like, these are the kind of trains of thought that were reflected in my state, right? And then I have this guy, this long-haired dude, who would invite me to these spaces where I was like, I'd never seen quite what I was finding there.

Like, I saw... Diversity. Genuine diversity, like, in both in body and mind, you know, and heart. Like, weird groups of people. we use this word soul a lot but like what does that mean? Yeah. Like what does it mean?

What does it mean to you? It's that level of identity I won't know until I die and which I come into glimpse with which I come into contact with every now and then hopefully I come into contact with it at least once a day in prayer and meditation. I want to get that put on the mug.

Can you get all of that put on the mug? It's a source of identity that we can try that I won't know until I die but I occasionally come in contact with and I try and come in contact with hopefully once a day. Yeah, that's pretty good. That's a good recall.

Boom. Yeah. So you is wrapping up final season. There's a new chapter ahead of you. You've got ninth mode productions, but a bunch of things in development. What's next on your journey? Where is this taking you?

Yeah, so there's a screenplay that I'm writing, which I'll not even some. summarize until it's real in which I intend to direct. So there's that. I directed the ninth episode of the fourth season of my show you, which is a great experience. Really, at heart, I'm more of a director and a writer, not necessarily a writer and director.

That's a specific thing that I may only try one or two times. So I want to try my hand at those things professionally, you know, more. And what issues do you want to take on? on your kind of spiritual artistic Hollywood journey. You know what I think? What I'm learning the most about is like love and sexuality. In my own life, that's been sort of somehow what I've learned the most about where I've struggled the most and where I,

through my relationships and then, of course, really mostly in my marriage, now with my partner, my wife, my really, in a lot of ways, best friend and like confidant and so many things we're learning together we've been together for 10 years we've been married for seven uh we both come from a lot of chaos and disorder in love and family relationships what what i seem to be most interested in conversational and creatively is where we talk about love and we seem to be really not an not understanding what we're talking about yeah like what the hell are we talking about like that's that word soul another word we use a lot. Love. What do you mean, bro? What are you saying? Yeah. You know, it's like the, the, it's, it's, it's such a

confused notion that is more and more confused by our most popular media, like pop songs and pop shows and pop movies. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Pop books. Are we doing ourselves a disservice in some ways, in some way. It's not in every way, but we're doing ourselves a huge disservice in terms of understanding what love is for. Actually, you know, in preparation for a podcast interview of my own with Demi Lovato, she says something loves a means to an end. And I thought, yeah, that's one of those things being said that I love. It's a means to an end. A lot of us are just think we're in pursuit of love. But for what? Same way, freedom. It's maybe a little bit more of a controversial and loaded thing to say because there's freedoms that are actively denied, you know, so many people.

And ultimately all of us, but some people more than others. What is freedom to what? You know, same with love. What is love for? What is love doing? It's not just, it's not an end unto itself. Yeah. Just, oh, I just want to be in love.

I want to love somebody. What does that mean? You very well could have had that or you might even have that ability. that opportunity open to you right now if you understood what love was doing and how it's created and how it's cultivated you know there is science behind that too so there is it doesn't explain literally everything about love and happiness but there is there is a lot of data there you know the sort of shows and films i'm known for um either consciously like in my current show which is kind of cool it's like we're we're consciously representing toxic misconceptions of love in order to say something about that

or in the case of other things I've been a part of, it's like trying to say it in a way that's even more mature than I've said in the past. I don't know. You've seen Gossip Girl. If you haven't, you can go ahead and watch it. You know, what is that saying about love? Two young people.

What is the average person watching that show gleaning, whether they want to or not? If aliens were looking down on planet Earth and they saw Gossip Girl. Scouring needy, I'm not kidding. And watching Gossip Girl. Yeah, what would they think? And, uh, yeah, they would be like, why don't these six people just take a break

from each other? Can one of them say sorry? Just ever, just say it and then stop hanging out. You know, I think young people have an obsession with love that is really unhealthy. Um, it's insatiable. It's actually an insatiable and unsatisfiable. It's an impossible need. I had it myself.

Penn, this is, we're a brother's from another mother, uh, as different. as we are we have so many similarities and i've just loved uh hearing your story and thank you man no it's so thank you for having me and walking this walk with you and uh i've gotten so much out of our conversation and i wish you the very best with this next chapter post joe and post you and uh post me in into the ninth mode of being thanks for sharing your I like that. Artistic and mystical and mental health journey with us. Thank you, man.

Thank you for having it. It's been a sincere pleasure. The Soul Boom Podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.