Penn Badgley and Domino Kirke’s complete relationship timeline explored as actor reveals near-separation after 2 miscarriages

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Domino Kirke and Penn Badgley attend the Netflix's "You" Season 5 New York Screening at The Plaza Hotel - Source: Getty

Penn Badgley revealed that he and his partner Domino Kirke, experienced two consecutive miscarriages, which brought their marriage to the brink of separation.

The Gossip Girl alum detailed about his experience during his recent appearance on an episode of Totally Booked with Zibby podcast.

Fashion Island's 14th Annual StyleWeek OC In Partnership With The Newport Beach Film Festival - Source: Getty
Fashion Island's 14th Annual StyleWeek OC In Partnership With The Newport Beach Film Festival - Source: Getty

He said:

"That was a real inflection point—one of the greatest of my life and my wife’s. We did near a separation. And of course, we didn’t give into the gravity of that, the entropy of that.”

In September this year, Penn Badgley announced the arrival of his twin boys with his wife with whom he also shares a five-year-old son. He further shared about the immense strain these losses placed on their relationship in his new book of essays, Crushmore: Essays on Love, Loss, and Coming-of-Age. He added that the separation largely came as the couple felt “isolated” in dealing with the losses.

Continue reading for more information.


Exploring the relationship timeline of Penn Badgley and Domino Kirke

When Penn Badgley and Domino Kirke began dating, she was a single mother to Cassius Riley, her son from previous relationship with Morgan O'Kane.

They were first seen together in New York City in July 2014. However, it is not clear as when they began to date. In a podcast, Kirke stated that they met in a meatball shop and offered Penn Badgley a place to stay when he was couch surfing. Although he declined the offer but they exchanged numbers.

Kirke is a singer, songwriter, and professional doula born in 1983 in London, England. She is the daughter of Simon Kirke and Lorraine Kirke. She studied classical piano and voice at a young age, later attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in New York City.

In an interview with People magazine in 2018, Penn Badgley said that their relationship deepened because of their Baha’i faith. He told the outlet:

“I don’t think I could truly value human love until I developed divine love. [Domino and I] very much had a romantic beginning, and I think that you discover in marriage that what sustains a marriage for decades—there are less and less people who can tell us this but I think it has something to do with [divine] love.”

The couple had two different wedding ceremonies in 2017. Their first ceremony was an intimate ceremony in Brooklyn, New York. After the ceremony, they celebrated with dinner at Maison-May, a French-American restaurant in the presence of their friends and family. The second ceremony was more planned and a larger reception which took place in June 2017, held at Domino’s mother’s home in Waccabuc in New York.

In February 2020, Kirke and Badgley announced in an Instagram post that they are expecting their first child after they endured “two miscarriages in a row.” She wrote in a since-deleted post:

“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. When I was pregnant at 25, I knew nothing. I had no community. I dove in blissfully unaware about birth and its mysteries.”

In August of the same year, the couple was blessed with their first child and son. They became parents to their twins in September this year.

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Edited by Aastha Dass