Penn Badgley and Meghann Fahy cast in You Deserve Each Other

Penn Badgley and Meghann Fahy have both signed up to star in the romantic comedy film You Deserve Each Other.

Penn Badgley and Meghann Fahy are to star in the romantic comedy You Deserve Each Other.

The pair have signed up for the Amazon MGM movie based on the novel by Sarah Hogle that is being directed by Marc Silverstein and Abby Kohn, the writing team behind the hit rom-coms Never Been Kissed and He’s Just Not That Into You.

The duo have also revised the script that was initially penned by Brett Haley and Marc Basch.

You Deserve Each Other tells the story of Naomi and Nick, a couple who are about to get married and live happily ever after except for one important thing – they’ve fallen completely out of love with each other.

With their wedding fast approaching and the pressure rising, the duo both resolve to secretly push the other into calling off the ceremony by any means possible – including pranks, sabotage and all-out emotional warfare.

Badgley previously starred in the hit teen drama series Gossip Girl in the role of Dan Humphrey but admits that he was “close to broke” before he landed the part.

During an appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast earlier this year, the 38-year-old actor explained: “I was financially independent by 15. I wasn’t always the breadwinner, but I’ve always needed to and wanted to provide support for my parents since then.”

Penn admits that he was “tired of television” before Gossip Girl and only accepted the role because he needed the cash.

He explained: “I was close to broke, although I was looking forward to figuring that out.

“The future was a real unknown and I think the stakes [were] high.”

Penn has reinvented himself by playing serial killer Joe Goldberg in the Netflix series You but accepts that he will be defined by his work on Gossip Girl.

He said: “I’m going to be 39 this year. Next year, I will be 40. I will still be answering questions about this show I decided to do when I was 20. And whatever. That is what it is … It sets you on a certain track that you have to in a sense resist. Work with it, interface with it. Otherwise, it just sort of takes you on its ride.”

Gossip Girl made Penn a household name aged just 20 and he has had to “really grapple” with the downsides of being in the spotlight.

He told The Guardian newspaper: “[Fame is] extremely unnatural, just the way that people want to relate to you. It’s not a new idea that fame has all these nefarious dimensions to it.

“And in order to even appreciate or utilise the privileges that come with it, one has to really grapple with the ways in which it’s completely disabled parts of you or your life, or your relationship to others and society.

“The privileges and the sacrifices are both extreme and obscene, and so you have to take them both. In order to be a decent person, a good father and a husband, a good friend, a responsible colleague, I’ve been grappling with all the ways in which this stuff is just not a good way for somebody to live.”