Domino Kirke on baby loss, rejecting the rock n’ roll lifestyle, and being married to Penn Badgley: ‘I didn’t really know what all the fuss was about when I met him’

Domino Kirke is the most ‘celebrity’ person that you’ve, possibly, never heard of. Named after female bounty hunter Domino Harvey (her mother met her once), Domino has little in common with her namesake, but is – aptly  – well-connected.

She’s the daughter of Bad Company/Free musician Simon Kirke, while her mother owns New York vintage boutique Geminola. The boutique name comes from an amalgamation of Lorraine’s three daughter’s names: Domino, Jemima and Lola. The latter two – Domino’s sisters – are both actors. You may well know Jemima for her role as Jessa in Lena Dunham’s Girls, or as the headmistress in season 3 of Sex Education, while she will soon grace our screens in Conversations With Friends, the long-awaited adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel of the same name. Lola, the youngest sister, has starred in Mistress America alongside Greta Gerwig.

As for Domino’s own career in the music industry, after studying classical voice and piano, she was discovered while singing karaoke underage in a Manhattan pub, by record producer Andres Levin. She was for three years at the helm of the band, DOMINO, producing an EP with Mark Ronson and touring with Lily Allen – oh, and the band was featured in pal Lena Dunham’s film, Tiny Furniture. So far, so rock and rock.

But she turned away from that lifestyle back in 2009 when, months after the birth of her son Cassius – with ex-boyfriend, musician Morgan O’Kane – she retrained as a doula. Defined as a trained, non-medical person who helps a woman through pregnancy and labour, it is a profession a far cry from Domino’s musical beginnings: “Doula work rerouted me, in a way that was a gift in the end,” she tells me. Rather than widespread fame, she’s gained local celebrity status within her neighbourhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where she’s known, according to a headline in the New York Observer, as “Doula Darling Domino Kirke, the Hipster Mom’s Must-Have”.

And while her 2017 marriage to Penn Badgley – who played Dan Humphrey in Gossip Girl before going on to become creator and star in his own hit Netflix show, You, as psychopath Joe Goldberg, could have put her freshly in the spotlight, she’s remained purposefully out of it – committing herself first and foremost to parenthood. She gave birth to the pair’s first child together, son James, in October 2020. “The most important thing for me is being available for my kids – everything else is just a bonus,” she tells me.

I get the feeling Domino, now 38, has lived multiple lives, and equally that she has no regrets about the path she’s chosen – finding purpose and meaning in her doula career alongside parenting and making music in her downtime. Her Instagram account – started just months ago – contains a couple of choice shots of her and Penn (including a backstage shot on the set of You), but is devoted predominantly to her work in the pregnancy and birth space. Her bio links to a series of other New York services related to her work, including Carriage House Birth – a Brooklyn and Los Angeles-based doula collective and training service which Domino co-founded. Together with Joanna Griffiths – a fellow actor and founder of Knix, an underwear brand – she has also recently co-published Life After Birth: Portraits of Love and the Beauty of Parenthood, a photography book chronicling postpartum life.