Adam Brody and Leighton Meester John Salangsang/Shutterstock
Mother knows best. Leighton Meester offered some rare insight into her family life while speaking about her new film, The Weekend Away.
“I really was excited about playing a new mother who’s having a weekend away for the first time, which is the most exciting and really the most terrifying prospect when you have a new baby,” the Gossip Girl alum, 35, told Cosmopolitan UK on Thursday, March 3. “I felt like that was the kind of character that I could very easily relate to, slip into, and have compassion for. When I got the script breakdown it was like a 35-year-old with a 10-month-old and I was like, ‘That is exactly me.’”
Meester, who shares daughter Arlo, 6, and a son with husband Adam Brody, explained that it can be difficult being away from her children, especially when she’s working on location, as she did for The Weekend Away. “The element of being away from your child is very different from when you’re with your child,” the Single Parents alum said. “At least for me. When anything happens, if your kid gets hurt or something happens, that’s your number one concern.”
She continued: “[My character, Beth is] not with her kid, so that would drive me mad. I would be devastated to be in a situation like that and be thousands of miles away from my kid.”
Though Meester prefers to keep her personal life out of the spotlight, she has previously opened up about how she and the O.C. alum, 42, rely on one another while parenting. “I just don’t believe in balance. I think that’s not possible if you’re a working mother — and with single mothers, I cannot even imagine that,” the Date Night actor told Shape in March 2019. “Some days my husband makes dinner, and some days I do. Other days, I’m too tired, and I eat a bowl of cereal for dinner. It’s just the thing we do to make it work.”
Despite the more challenging aspects of balancing work and home, the Roommate star is proud of being a mother and is completely dedicated to her kids. “People started telling me before [I had] a kid, ‘You’re going to really love them,’” Meester told Us Weekly exclusively in September 2019. “Then you’re like, ‘Yeah, obviously, I’ll love them.’ And then you do [have them] and you’re like, ‘Oh. OK. I don’t love anyone else. I just love them. And I don’t even love myself as much as I love them! Not even close.’”
She continued: “I don’t know, would I kill somebody or die for them? Sure. I would.”
Brody, for his part, has been equally effusive about fatherhood, even calling the coronavirus quarantine “blissful” because of the amount of time he was able to spend with his family.
“[It’s] been a pretty — despite the state of the world — it has been a pretty blissful experience. I know a lot of parents who feel that way,” the Shazam star told Entertainment Tonight in October 2020. “So many of my friends that I work with would go to set every day and see their kids on weekends. And all of a sudden, it is like they have spent eight months working from home [and spending time with their family].”
The Weekend Away is currently available to stream on Netflix.
