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entertainment

‘You’ Star Penn Badgley Says He No Longer Wants to Film These Types of Scenes on His Show

By: Karelle Mckay
Published: February 13, 2023

Actor Penn Badgley has been playing the love-obsessed Joe Goldberg (or should we say Jonathan?) for four seasons now on the popular Netflix series, You. (Pssst: the first part of season four is now streaming.)

However, when it came to filming particular scenes in the show, the 36-year-old actor had concerns which he voiced to the series creator.

On the latest episode of Badgley’s podcast, Podcrushed, the Gossip Girl alum revealed that he didn’t want to film any more sex scenes in the show. So, he talked to the series creator, Sera Gamble, and voiced his wishes. And as it turns out, she agreed to eliminate the scenes.

Netflix

“I asked Sera Gamble can I just do no more intimacy scenes,” he said on the pod. “This is actually a decision I made before I took the show. I don’t think I have ever mentioned it publicly. One of the main things was, do I want to put myself back on a career path where I’m always playing the romantic lead?”

The idea of Joe having no intimate scenes in the show might be a hard concept for fans to wrap their heads around, simply because the whole show revolves around Joe’s love life, and his (too many to count) failed relationships.

Netflix

Badgley also revealed that he had a personal reason for why he no longer wanted to film those sex scenes: his relationship with his wife.

“Fidelity in every relationship, including my marriage, is important to me,” Badgley continued. “It’s got to the point where I don’t want to do that. So I said to Sera, ‘My desire would be zero, to go from 100 to zero.’ But, I signed this contract. I signed up for this show. I know what I did.”

He added, “You can’t take this aspect out of the DNA of the concept. So how much less can you make it, was my question to them. She didn’t even bat an eye. She was really glad that I was that honest. She was sort of almost, I want to say empowered, it had a really positive response. They came back with a phenomenal reduction.”

We can definitely respect that, Penn.

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Karelle Mckay

Assistant Editor, News And Entertainment

Karelle McKay is the Assistant Editor of News and Entertainment at PureWow. Before she started writing about all things pop culture, she was a literal couch potato who loved...
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