Every Time Penn Badgley Admitted He Hated Playing His Character Joe on ‘You’

Credit: JOHN P. FLEENOR/NETFLIX

Every Time Penn Badgley Admitted He Hated Playing His Character Joe on ‘You’

Tell Us how you really feel! Penn Badgley hates his You character, Joe Goldberg — and he can’t stop talking about it. To be fair, it’s hard to like a sadistic stalker — but a lot of viewers of the psychological thriller do, which has rubbed the Gossip Girl alum the wrong way since the series premiered on Lifetime in September 2018. “We can't lead ourselves to believe that if Joe would simply find the right person that he would be happy — because he's a f--king murderer,” Badgley said in an interview with Vanity Fair the following year. When the series based on Caroline Kepnes’ novel of the same name moved to Netflix for season 2 in 2019, the love for the unhinged protagonist only got stronger — and so did Badgley’s disdain for him. [jwplayer 4D9F5OaT-zhNYySv2] The John Tucker Must Die actor told BuzzFeed in 2020 that he felt “immensely” conflicted about the psychopathic role “every time, other than the period I’m acting on camera, which is between action and cut.” To be fair, Badgley wasn’t a big fan of his Gossip Girl character either. “It's not that I don't like [Dan Humphrey]. It's just, after a while, you're known as somebody that you're just not, and this is somebody who I so am not,” the Maryland native told Vulture in 2012. Badgley added that the privileged teen, who he played for six seasons between 2007 and 2012, was “a tool on a show with soap-operatic arcs and he needs to be a judgmental douchebag sometimes. I get that. … But it sucks when people call me 'Dan' and think that I'm him." Dan might have been revealed to be Gossip Girl, but he wasn’t a murderer. Still, Badgley sees a connection between the Lonely Boy and his You doppelgänger, which begins with their creepy social media habits. “When I first read the pilot script for You, I definitely saw the similarities [between Joe and Dan],” the Easy A actor told InStyle in January 2020. “I think I was really caught between being able to appreciate how that’s an interesting progression of things for me, but also how it’s not.” As much as Badgley may loathe Joe, he’s impressed by the show’s ability to surprise its audience — and him as well. “Trust me, as an actor, I find it very challenging to sometimes suspend my disbelief when you’re forced into a position that is just in the literal sense of the word incredible,” he noted. “That’s the interesting thing about this show — it works.” Keep scrolling to see what else Badgley has said about his You character: [podcast_block]

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He Doesn’t 'Enjoy’ Playing Joe

"There's a lot I don't enjoy about him," Badgley admitted in a 2019 interview with Digital Spy. "To be honest, I don't enjoy nearly everything about him.”

Still, the Greetings from Tim Buckley star wants to humanize the character, telling The New York Times in 2019, “Joe is this work in progress in dismantling and dissecting the myriad privileges that a young, attractive, white man carries with him.”

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He Thinks Joe Doesn’t Deserve Anyone's Sympathy

After the release of season 2, Badgley said there was no reason for viewers to root for his You character. “Joe is not actually looking for true love,” the musician told Entertainment Weekly in 2019. “He’s not actually a person who just needs somebody who loves him. He’s a murderer. He’s a sociopath. He’s abusive. He’s delusional. And he’s self-obsessed.”

However, he understands viewers’ fascination with his character, who, at times, is “so impossibly sympathetic and even honest and brave,” The Slap alum explained to InStyle in January 2020, that “he’s actually in some ways made to be the perfect guy that does this really — to even say it’s terrible is kind of an understatement — thing.”

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He Doesn't Want Fans Lusting After Joe

Badgley has fought hard against Joe becoming a homicidal heartthrob — and has gone so far as to shut down suggestive tweets from viewers looking for him to "kidnap" them.

"I struggled greatly with the conflict of playing such a guy and him being partly so likable and having such a, as we say, thirsty response to him,” he said during an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in 2020.

That same year, he told Vice that the crushes viewers had on his deranged character made him feel as if “every one of my greatest fears and hopes for people’s engagement [with the show] came to be fulfilled. There were the reactions of overlooking all of Joe’s faults, which is the whole point of the show, and just being really into him. ... It was both gratifying and troubling."

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He Finds Joe 'Difficult' to Play as a Dad

Badgley welcomed his first child with wife Domino Kirke in September 2020 — just as Joe became a first-time dad in season 3.

“I was curious what my new fatherhood — how that would influence my experience with Joe and acting with him,” the Margin Call actor told Access Hollywood in October 2021.

He continued, "Sometimes it was almost not helpful, because I was having a light and joyful experience — still am. Joe was so petrified. He is so scared.”

While he could identify with Joe’s parental fears, the Bedford Diaries alum found the character to be “just so morbid in his obsessive, sort of, like, self-preservation, primal instinct,” he said. “Sometimes I almost found it harder as a result.”

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He Thinks Joe Can't Be Saved

“Well, I don’t think redemption for [Joe] is, like, possible," Badgley told BuzzFeed in January 2020. “He’s among the worst.”

However, the Here Today actor has thought a lot about how Joe’s story should end. “I think there needs to be a real sense of justice, not for Joe, but for us in this world that has been created,” he said, adding, “That probably means Joe will be unhappy because he’s constitutionally unhappy.”

Creator Sera Gamble revealed in 2021 that Badgley still “checks in” to make sure Joe won’t get a happy ending. “I say ‘No…’ and he goes, ‘Good, just making sure,'” the writer told Bustle.

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He Doesn't Think Joe Can 'Change'

"We have created a character that we want people to be charmed by, seduced by," Badgley told E! News in February 2023 about Joe's journey throughout the seasons. "It's not like it's a clinical portrait of a serial killer and everybody just happens to be obsessed with him. No, it's on us that everybody likes him so much, we've created him that way."

He continued: "Who is anyone to accurately judge whether or not someone can be redeemed? Okay, if you're talking a serial killer, maybe it's safe to say people who've killed that many people cannot be redeemed."

The actor also weighed in on whether his character could find forgiveness in season 4, saying, "Sorry to get kind of heavy, but what about people who go to war and have to do it in a certain context? So where do we draw the line? If we're in power, if we're in the seat of deciding who is redeemable or not, it's a seriously moral question. And I don't know who has that power. I'll go ahead and say Joe can't change, won't change."