Taylor Momsen recalls school bullying for her role in 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas'

Taylor Momsen has talked openly about her portrayal of the Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, who was made fun of at school, and how this happened in her own childhood.

The Gossip Girl actress revealed to hosts Penn Badgley, Nava Kavelin, and Sophie Ansari during the most recent episode of SiriusXM's Podcrushed show, “The Grinch changed my life in a multitude of ways — one of them being I was made fun of relentlessly.”

“Every time I would start a new school or go somewhere else, I don’t even think the kids knew my name. I was just Grinch Girl,” she added. “Not even the character name [Cindy Lou Who], just Grinch Girl.”

Momsen said that despite eventually "getting used to it," it was still "alienating."

The pianist, who was only 7 years old when the Dr. Seuss film was shot, claimed that having to attend numerous schools as a young child because of her vocation did little to lessen the bullying she received from her peers. But Momsen claimed she was able to form a friend group after she entered middle school and her life became more stable.

“That was the first year…where I was in school, and I had the opportunity to try and actually make friends,” she said. “I put a band together. It was my first band, my middle-school band, a garage band. We never could settle on a name. But we would jam after school, and that was always fun. I was singing, playing guitar, writing.”

But a few years later, in 2007, she was cast as Jenny Humphrey on the blockbuster teen drama Gossip Girl, where she met Badgley while portraying his younger sister.

“So as soon as I started to find my little groove in school as a normal kid, Gossip Girl came about, and I got uprooted to New York and the band fell apart,” she said. “We were going to be huge. It was a real bummer. And I had to kind of restart it all again in New York, which didn’t take me that long.”

In an interview with the Today Show in 2020, to commemorate the movie's 20th anniversary, Momsen previously reflected on her experience filming the timeless holiday favourite.

“I think that people love The Grinch just simply because the core of the story is so sweet and it’s so heartwarming and it has such a good message,” she said at the time. “Aside from how amazing Jim Carrey’s performance is and the theatrics that went into the shoot, just the way the film looks and moves and is edited is amazing in its own right.”