Penn Badgley, star of YOU (Netflix’s current #1 TV show) has been the subject of persistent click bait headlines since Season 4 of the show premiered last week. First, entertainment outlets made a big deal out of his admission that he doesn’t like doing sex scenes and requested they be reduced this season (he sees them as a form of infidelity to his wife). Then, he apparently critiqued Netflix and its hit show Dahmer for romanticizing the serial killer. Both points, though valid, were portrayed as biting the hand that feeds him. But after speaking with the actor last week, we’re guessing the statements were out-of-context characterizations, amplified and aggregated to create buzz and get hits. Which is ironic considering the two shows he’s best known for concern presumptions and personas perpetuated online.
Badgley is an engaging interview, even within the confines of a junket slot on Zoom. Soft-spoken and extremely thoughtful when he answers a question, the actor gives off a reserved, keep-it-real energy that’s very much un-like YOU‘s Joe Goldberg, a fiendishly malevolent fraudster with a penetrating gaze and way of pausing in conversation as he obsesses about everything. The gist here is that Joe comes off as a mild-mannered “nice guy” to everyone on the show, but his mind constantly stews with judgment and sinister ideations that only us viewers get to hear. He does a lot of creepy stuff, and in Season 1, set in New York, it quickly escalates into twisted and gruesome territory, all in the name “love.” Possessing the object of his affection, which has changed with each season of the show, motivates everything Joe does and YOU’s writers make sure to lay his psychosis on thick, even as he often makes a lot of sense in his observations about people and world.
Of course, Badgley has to address the conundrum at the heart of the show’s success, because every journalist (us included) has to ask about it: Joe is a psychopath, stalker and…
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