Penn Badgley Recalls Awkward ‘You’ Masturbation Scene and Director Notes – ‘Why, Why?!’

Actor Penn Badgley recalled shooting the cringey masturbation scene in his Netflix series 'You' and how he was doing it all wrong.

by Gina Ragusa

Published on January 3, 2023

2 min read

Penn used to live on the same street where the ‘You’ scene was filmed – which made it even weirder

Badgley joked about being “famous” now for the masturbation scene. Badgely plays Joe Goldberg, a serial killer who literally wears his heart on his sleeve, and ends up watching the “object of his affection” while pleasuring himself.

Actor Penn Badgley discusses his Netflix series 'You'

Penn Badgley | Jim Spellman/Getty Images

“So first of all, what’s interesting about this is it is on 19th Street in Gramercy, which is the first street I lived on in New York City,” he recalled on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast. “The added surreality for me is that it very much was like a neighborhood street for me. Like I was very much at home, but now surrounded by a film crew at like 11 pm at night.”

Penn Badgley says his approach to the ‘You’ scene was ‘slow’ and ‘eyes open’

“You don’t realize how awkward it’s going to be until you just gotta go ahead and act like that,” he admitted. “And one of the things that I struggled with a lot when I first took the role was like, I don’t want to lean away from the horrific aspects of this person. As we said, it’s hard not to glorify actually almost anything you see on camera. So I’m going to just be conscious of that.”

But then the director had a few notes, which made the scene even more awkward for Badgley. “So there are two things that I did that were – and again –I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I don’t remember what they use so it may not be this way in the show. But what I did up until the director was like, you can’t do that anymore, is I was slow and my eyes were open.

Of course, this sent O’Brien into hysterics laughing and said, “I like how the director came over and said you gotta stop that now.”

The ‘You’ direction left him saying ‘why?’

“And at some point, he comes up and he was trying to be very kind,” Badgley continued. “He was like, ‘Hey, so I think I think we’re going to have to get you to close your eyes.’ And I remember because I was already very conscious of not wanting to be like sexily masturbating outside on the street. It’s like ugh.”

“It’s very intense to play this person and, you know, and I was kind of I was already like, why, why? Why, why? Like, tell me why, why?” he joked. “You know, just being very principled. And this is where, at this point, I don’t know what I was thinking as an actor, but just as a person who was uncomfortable, I just was kind of ready to go. By the way, my version of confrontational, the people pleaser that I am working in Hollywood was like ‘OK.’ But in my mind was like ‘Why, why why!'”