Podcasts Penn Badgley and Leighton Meester met before Gossip Girl on a horror movie neither has seen XOXO ... Hella-Burger? By Lester Fabian Brathwaite Lester Fabian Brathwaite Lester Fabian Brathwaite is a staff writer at Entertainment Weekly, where he covers breaking news, all things Real Housewives, and a rich cornucopia of popular culture. Formerly a senior editor at Out magazine, his work has appeared on NewNowNext, Queerty, Rolling Stone, and The New Yorker. He was also the first author signed to Phoebe Robinson's Tiny Reparations imprint. He met Oprah once. EW's editorial guidelines Published on May 17, 2022 10:00AM EDT Spotted: Penn Badgley and Leighton Meester, stars of the original Gossip Girl, on the new Stitcher podcast Podcrushed. The erstwhile Upper East Siders had a reunion of sorts on Badgley's podcast, which he co-hosts with Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari as together they explore the awkwardness, anxiety, heartbreak, and self-discovery that defines adolescence. On the inaugural episode of Podcrushed, premiering May 18, Badgley and Meester reminisce about meeting on the set of a horror movie neither of them have ever seen. "I don't think about it hardly ever," Badgley says of their very first introduction, "but then I'm like, oh, Hella-Burger! Well, actually it's called Drive Thru." "I was wondering which title you were gonna shout," Meester adds. "I'm really glad that was the one." Badgley goes on to explain that he and Meester did "a real B-grade horror together" about a year before they started Gossip Girl. Penn Badgley and Leighton Meester on 'Gossip Girl'. Everett Collection Meester claims she doesn't know if she's ever seen it, though Badgley admits he's seen some clips, particularly one scene involving a oujia board and his gruesome death. "I'm cut in the middle, in half," Badgley says. "I'm cut in fully half. And then my body, my torso slides off of my legs." For the uninitiated, the plot of the 2007 film Drive Thru, according to IMDb, goes as follows: "Horror gets Super Sized when Horny The Clown, the demonic mascot of 'Hella-Burger,' starts slashing Orange County teenagers with his meat cleaver from Hell." Meanwhile, the filmmakers really missed a golden (arches) opportunity by not calling this fast food fiasco Horny The Clown. It sells itself! But if you want to see a young Penn Badgley and Leighton Meester get meat-cleavered from Hell, without committing to a whole 83 minutes, the internet created this compilation of their scenes. Despite their time getting cut in half together, Meester doesn't seem to remember Badgley turning up at a party at her house, something Kavelin chalks up to Badgley being "not memorable to Leighton at all." "Fair," the You star concludes. Check out Badgley and Meester's demonic stroll down Memory Lane in the clip below. Podcrushed premieres May 18. Listeners can subscribe now wherever they get their podcasts. Related content: Gossip Girl almost cut Kristen Bell's voice-over in the original series due to test audiences You season 4 heads to London with a new cast of appropriately insufferable characters Leighton Meester and Adam Brody welcome son: 'He's a dream boy' Who's who on the HBO Max Gossip Girl reboot