Penn Badgley Revealed Doing ‘You’ Takes Its Toll
You star Penn Badgley will be finishing up his megahit Netflix series with its upcoming fifth and last season. Given how exhausting playing killer Joe Goldberg could be, a part of Badgley might be relieved to get his darker counterpart off of his back.
Penn Badgley revealed how Joe Goldberg lingers in him in ‘You’
To many, Badgley has been giving a convincing performance as the love-struck but deadly killer Joe Goldberg. But immersing himself in the role of such a complicated character doesn’t come without a price. When he first came across the project, he admitted that he initially had concerns playing someone as dangerous as he was fascinating.
“I first started reading the script,” Badley said in an interview with Awards Daily. “I was compelled by the project as a whole. I think I was uncertain about Joe, and that uncertainty was increased by reading the book. The book is unrelenting because you never get outside of his mind. The things you’re able to do in the eco-system of the mind are very different on the page than showing it on camera. The more I read the book, the more certain I was — for all of the graces of the project — I knew I didn’t really want to embody this guy.”
Given the praise he’s gotten for the role, however, Badgley has done more than a great job embodying someone he didn’t want to. So much so fans genuinely latch onto Goldberg, to the point where they romanticize him. But even after four seasons, Badgley admitted that playing Goldberg could often be an exhausting exercise. He’s spent the past several years pretending to stab, strangle, and dismember innocent people and fake bodies on the show. Although he knows it’s make-believe, sometimes that doesn’t help shake the role off.
“The way that it lingers is in the energy that it takes. When you fake-strangle somebody, your nervous system doesn’t quite know that you’re not [actually] strangling someone. When you see fake blood and you’re [pretending to] stab someone – your physical system isn’t used to seeing something visceral like that and it being fake. It does take a toll,” he said to Radio Times.
Penn Badgley was told how ‘You’ was going to end even before season 4
Season 4 of You ended with Badgley’s Joe Goldberg seemingly getting everything he ever wanted, and embracing his true self. Joe’s newfound friendship with his lover Kate Galvin may already mean big changes for the upcoming season. But the actor felt the season finale could’ve been a satisfying conclusion to the series as a whole. However, he believed it was necessary for Goldberg to face consequences for his actions, which would’ve required at least one more season.
“It feels to me like we need to do another season. It feels to me like Joe needs to get what’s coming to him, and now he has further to fall because he has all this power and wealth,” Badgley said in a 2023 interview with IndieWire. “But of course, that’s not up to me. I don’t know where it’s going. But to me, with this concept and with this character, we always wanted to be responsible and it’s not just the kind of thing we can let keep going because it’s doing well.”
According to the publication, Badgley also once revealed that he signed a six-year contract for the show. So, You could’ve gone on for two more seasons. But it was recently announced that the show would be ending at season 5, which Badgley felt is a good end point. Especially after he heard what the producer had in store for the show’s conclusion.
“Now, I will say [executive producer] Greg Berlanti pitched me on an end and I thought it was brilliant. I can’t tell you what it is. He pitched it to me like a year and a half ago before I knew it was happening, season 4. He also told me how he thought it would end in season 5 and I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s great,’” he said in an interview with Entertainment Tonight.
“Joe, at this point, he’s like a post-modern icon. He’s such a popular dude but… there’s gotta be, to me, a more thorough, satisfying conclusion,” Badgley added.
