Penn Badgley knows exactly what he’s playing with. The You star, now deep into his fourth season of stalking, seducing, and soliloquizing as Joe Goldberg, says the real trick isn’t keeping the show fresh — it’s keeping it dangerous. “You can’t let a character like Joe get tired,” he says. “The stakes are higher when your main guy isn’t just unreliable — he’s hateful, he’s a murderer. You have to keep finding new ways to make people watch that.”
The Netflix thriller’s fourth season, set against London’s elite social scene, flips its own premise yet again, trading domestic suburbia for academic intrigue and old money rot. “After season three, where Joe married the one person who could match him — and then killed her — we realized the only thing left to do was turn it fully on him,” Badgley explains. “He’s finally realizing it’s not about you anymore. It’s about me.”
Badgley laughs about how often he’s been asked whether Joe is redeemable. “He’s not,” he says flatly. “The question is, what’s justice for someone like him? Do we want to watch him suffer, die, change? What would make that feel right? The show’s always been a meditation on love and obsession. I think now it’s a meditation on justice, too.”
The show’s narrative and tonal reinventions — Badgley likens the new season to The Talented Mr. Ripley with a shot of Bret Easton Ellis decadence — have kept him engaged. “This season might have been the most exciting for me,” he says. “Every season we raise the danger level. And this time it’s not just physical danger — it’s existential. When the audience starts to think Joe might actually be winning, that’s when it gets fun.”
Badgley’s vocal performance — that intimate, sinister narration that’s become meme fuel — continues to evolve too. “It’s never really conscious,” he says. “But I think of it musically. There’s a rhythm to Joe’s thoughts, a melody to how he lies to himself.”
That sense of rhythm comes naturally: Badgley fronted a band called MOTHXR (stylized Mother) that toured and released one full-length album before imploding. “The band dynamic wasn’t good,” he admits. “We’re on good terms now, but we just couldn’t record anymore.” Still, music lingers at home. “My son loves Aretha Franklin,” he says, smiling. “He’s three, but he’ll sit and watch Amazing Grace over and over. He likes overtly spiritual, uplifting music. We’re probably doing it wrong, but he’s into it.”
The irony of playing a character as monstrous as Joe while being a gentle, Aretha-loving dad isn’t lost on him. Nor is the fact that You has fully eclipsed his previous claim to fame, Gossip Girl. “I didn’t think it would ever be possible or desirable to outgrow Dan Humphrey,” he says. “But Joe’s done that. People see me now and it’s... intense. I think there’s more appreciation for me as an actor now, not just as that guy from Gossip Girl.”
Both characters, he points out, speak to the culture’s fascination with voyeurism and fantasy. “There’s a conversation between those roles,” he says. “Both shows flirt with camp, break the fourth wall a little. I’m aware that I’ve become part of this meta commentary on obsession and objectification. I don’t think I planned that, but it’s where my career’s gone.”
The fourth season also gave him a new challenge: directing. “I didn’t know which episode they’d give me,” he says, “and it ended up being one of the big ones.” It’s a pivotal, surreal hour, complete with dream sequences and blood-soaked turns. “I loved it,” he says. “Apart from the logistics — not enough hours in the day — I took to it naturally. Directing Greg Kinnear, Charlotte Ritchie, Lucas Gage… that was the best part.”
For all the darkness of You, Badgley himself radiates calm — even gratitude. He sounds both analytical and oddly protective of the show that’s made him a symbol of obsession in the streaming era. “The show works because it’s aware of the audience,” he says. “It’s not just about a killer. It’s about why we keep watching him.”
And when You inevitably ends, Badgley already knows how he’d like Joe’s story to close — though he can’t tell yet. “They pitched me a series finale once,” he teases. “It was brilliant. The only way it could end. But I can’t tell you what it is.”
He smiles. “Let’s just say Joe’s always got a problem. As long as he’s alive, there’s a problem.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the trailer below.
