Penn Badgley Opened Up About How His Wife’s Consecutive Miscarriages Almost Led To Them Separating

This article discusses pregnancy loss and includes details that some readers might find distressing.

Back in 2020, Penn Badgley’s wife, singer Domino Kirke, opened up about experiencing “two miscarriages in a row” ahead of falling pregnant with their first child together.

Announcing that she was pregnant with her second (and Penn’s first) child, Domino — who is a doula — wrote on Instagram: “On the road again... pregnancy after loss is [a] whole other thing. After two miscarriages in a row we were ready to call it. I stopped trusting my body and started to accept the fact that I was done. As a birth attendant, I’ve seen and heard it all. It takes everything I’ve got to detach lovingly from the losses I’ve been present for and be in my own experience.”

Now, Penn — who welcomed identical twin boys with Domino earlier this year — has opened up in more detail about how the consecutive miscarriages impacted their relationship.

Speaking candidly on “book-fluencer” Zibby Owens’s Totally Booked podcast, Penn talked in detail about his recently released debut essay collection, Crushmore: Essays on Love, Loss, and Coming-of-Age.

Sharing an excerpt of Penn’s writing, Zibby read, “This was our second loss together, a time when I did not feel as though the cycle would break. My wife and I neared separation, as many do after losses like that, largely because we felt so isolated in a culture that doesn’t talk much about these things or know how to support those going through it.”

“Seeing our still baby in that tripped-out black and white sono imagery is a dreadful memory I can’t shake every time we go for a sonogram now,” she read.

Clarifying that he wrote this “before the twins were born,” Penn opened up further about how difficult the miscarriages were for both him and Domino. “Especially for us, me at that point not having any biological children, my wife having her firstborn… That was a real inflection point,” he said.

“We did near separation, and of course we didn’t give into the gravity of that… And here we are with three biological children since,” he added.

You can listen to the full podcast episode here, and you can find Penn’s essay collection here.