Penn Badgley may be most known to the world as the serial stalker Joe Goldberg from the Netflix drama series You, but Domino Kirke merely refers to him as her “fuzzy baby.”
Although Badgley has been linked to actors Zoë Kravitz and Blake Lively most frequently, the former Gossip Girl star has been married to Kirke since 2017, keeping their largely private union out of the spotlight. Kirke, meanwhile, is a powerhouse in her own right. She co founded the doula service Carriage House Birth and has collaborated on music with luminaries like Mark Ronson.
Who is Domino Kirke?
Kirke is of English and Jewish-Iraqi descent. She was given the name Domino Harvey after the woman her mother first met when Harvey was a young child. The Kirke family is descended from the Gibson-Craig baronets and is a junior branch of a family of Nottinghamshire landed nobility. Kirke had an Israeli grandmother.
Her father Simon Kirke, the drummer for Free and Bad Company, gave Domino musical instruction. Before relocating to New York City, where she attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School to pursue classical voice and piano, she began singing in choruses, operas and plays at the age of nine.
Her sisters, Lola Kirke and Jemima Kirke, are actors, and her mother, Lorraine, owns the Geminola shop in SoHo. Jack Dellal was her maternal grandpa and a real estate investor.
Kirke was signed to the label Fun Machine by producer Andres Levin after being discovered at a Joe’s Pub performance at the age of 17.
Soon after, she teamed up with Jordan Galland to form the band DOMINO. The group toured for three years with artists like Gang of Four and Lily Allen and recorded an EP with Mark Ronson. Additionally, Tiny Furniture, a Lena Dunham film, featured the band. At the 2006 Da Vinci Film and Video Festival, the video for their song “Green Umbrella,” which was directed by Galland, received Best Musical Form.
She retrained as a doula in 2009, months after giving birth to her son Cassius with her ex-boyfriend, singer Morgan O’Kane, and made the decision to leave that lifestyle behind. A skilled non-medical person who assists a woman during her pregnancy and labour, it is a career very different from Domino’s musical roots:
She could have been thrust into the spotlight following her 2017 marriage to Penn Badgley, who played Dan Humphrey in Gossip Girl before going on to create and star in his own hit Netflix series, You, as the psychopath Joe Goldberg. However, she has purposefully stayed out of the spotlight, putting her family first. In October 2020, she gave birth to James, the couple’s first child together.
“The most important thing for me is being available for my kids – everything else is just a bonus,” she told GQ Magazine.
Domino also has a son from a previous relationship.
Although the couple prefers to keep their marriage private, Penn gave his wife a touching birthday message at age 36.
Describing her as “a truly radiant soul” on Instagram, Penn praised Domino: “You encourage others to be honest, and brave, and gentle, and expansive. Your great capacity for empathy is obvious, something anyone can get warm by like a glowing stove.”
He went on to call her “desire” to be of service “miraculous” before adding: “You make others happy by you. For me, it is a joy to witness you when you are happy. For you, I always hope to be a source of joy. I’m really glad we’re married.”
