Penn Badgley, star of the Netflix series “You,” spoke at the Student Union Building Wednesday night about his faith in the Baha’i religion. The University of New Mexico Baha’i Association along with a variety of volunteers put together this event to draw in students to learn about the teachings of the Baha’i.
Badgley was asked to come through a mutual friend of Stephen Morris, the President of the UNM Baha’i Association. He was not compensated for speaking at the event.
The goal of the talk, the first in their spring series, was to get someone significant to speak about this religion to get students interested in Baha’i, Morris said.
“The turnout we’ve had for our talks throughout the first semester had been low and we thought maybe we would get someone famous who is Baha’i,” Morris said.
Badgley was welcomed with over 900 people, with standing room only after the chairs were filled. The line for the 7 p.m. free event started about four hours earlier. About 400 people were denied from entering after the SUB ballrooms filled up.
During the talk, Badgley described his process from his early twenties when he started acting on the television series “Gossip Girl” and how he wanted to pursue more in life. Originally Badgley said he had no interest in practicing any religion until he found Baha’i.
“I began this path of intense spiritual search. I investigated a lot of different philosophies and systems and religions. I was never interested in religion actually at all,” Badgley said.
Badgley stayed with a native tribe within Columbia called the Kogi tribe and met a Baha’i during his time with them. From that point, he eventually started to follow the path as a Baha’i.
“One of the things that we do as Baha’i is engage in gatherings we call meaningful conversations and we’ll study the Baha’i teachings. We engage in this process of community building,” Badgley said.
Badgley turned to the crowd to answer any questions once he talked briefly about his experience.
“I can’t stress enough how much I believe in this as a meaningful course of action, but it’s not one everyone is going to take,” Badgley said after asked what he hopes for people to take away from his talk.
Athena Cholas, 45, has been practicing the Baha’i faith her entire life and volunteered at the event. She said she was interested to hear about Badgley’s transition.
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“It’s to really find out how he made that jump from the materialistic world to now focusing his attention on being of service to others,” said Cholas.
Amalia Gebitz, a regional development facilitator who helped organize this event, said Baha’i religion is to bring people together of different backgrounds.
“The main goal for us is that people get a spark of curiosity about how they themselves might start a path of service and self-discovery either with us or themselves,” Gebitz said. “Any kind of help that Penn can offer to provide a spark of hope to people who see the world as it is and think about what we can do.”
Senior UNM student Giovanna Gong said she originally came for Penn Badgley and did not know much about the Baha’i faith.
“I think a lot of us came because of his iconic role on ‘Gossip Girl’ and especially with the new season of ‘You,’” said Gong. “I do think that he drew in a lot of people and sparked a lot of interest. I’m not quite sure if I’ll follow Baha’i faith but I am interested in researching more in-depth.”
On Saturday, Jan. 25, Badgley will be attending Arizona State University to do a similar talk about Social Issues and Hollywood.
Bianca Hoops is a freelance reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at culture@dailylobo.com, or on Twitter @bianca_hoops
