Adam Brody wrongly assumed his now-wife Leighton Meester wasn't a "good person" when they first crossed paths due to her character on hit TV show Gossip Girl.
The TV stars were initially introduced back in 2007 through screenwriter Josh Schwartz, who created The O.C. and helped develop the TV adaptation of Gossip Girl, but their relationship was strictly platonic as they "bumped into" one another at various events over the next few years.
The pair then worked together in 2011 film The Oranges, and a year later, they started dating.
Admitting on the Anna Faris is Unqualified podcast that he was very attracted to Meester from the moment he met her, Brody said he feared Meester would be similar in real life to her vain Gossip Girl character, Blair Waldorf.
"I had no idea whether she was a good person or not," he confessed, recalling: "And, in fact, kind of assumed she probably wasn't for like, the first handful of years that I didn't know her, just because, I don't know, Gossip Girl."
Now Brody is glad to have taken the time to get to know Meester, insisting she is "a heavenly creature".
"I thought she was gorgeous. And even when we did the movie, there was chemistry there, but I was seeing someone," he shared.
"I was like, 'Oh, she's cool.' But I still didn't know (what her real personality was), and that continued even to when we first started dating, I was like, 'I'm not sure,' he went on.
However, after spending time with Meester he discovered his assumptions were wrongheaded.
"(I) come to find out she's literally like Joan of Arc. She is, like, the strongest, best person I know. She is my moral compass and North Star, and I just can't say enough good things about her character. It's crazy," he gushed.
The typically-private couple secretly wed in 2014 and welcomed its second child, a son, last year, and Brody credited his family with helping him mature and change his life for the better.
"Marriage and being an adult and having a family, it was a new frontier for me," he said, adding: "Where, before that, I felt I didn't have to change."
