Image Source: Cosmopolitan, ELLE
Most actors get to be remembered for their one iconic role that becomes synonymous with their name, but for Penn Badgley, the honor extends to playing two very strong characters. Notably, these two characters are extremely different from the other, and yet Penn Badgley performed them to precision without lacking a single emotion that the character was supposed to portray.
Recently, the Gossip Girl actor who played Dan Humphrey on the iconic show came to talk with Elle about his role as Joe Goldberg on You. The show is in its third season on Netflix and has managed to enthrall the audience just fine. The series first aired in 2018, portraying Badgley in the role of a psychotic lover, so different from his previous lovable role as Dan. In the new season of the show, Penn Badgley went on to portray a father, goes through a marriage that soon becomes troubled and develops new crushes. The season ended with a pretty troubling twist, shaking the audience to its core.
Speaking of the latest You season installment, Pen Badgley said, “I'm really curious to see how people respond, and I think I've already done my job." He shared, “I don't really feel pressure there, but I've noticed that in doing a lot of these interviews that I've felt something new. I'm not sure what it is. I've felt a little bit of anxiety in a way that hadn't been in a long time around this stuff.”
Apparently, Badgley got to become a real-life father just around the time with his onscreen character, and the interview opens about fatherhood challenges and what season 4 might bring to your screens.
Penn agrees that despite Joe wanting to be a great father, he simply can not be one, being a murder and a psychopath. He shared, "I'm not sure about Joe's paternal side, to be honest. I think with all emotions, he's yearning to be authentic, but I think he, of course, never achieves it because he's essentially a psychopath."
Learning from his own experience of becoming a father, the actor said, "I certainly had the great bounty of drawing on my own experience, becoming a new biological parent, and that was quite natural. There are some definitely sweet moments where I was able to do that, but I think, by and large, his paternal instinct is at best primal. I think to be a good father or a parent, you need to really rise several orders above primal, but he's at least primal, I guess."
Then the actor proceeded to talk about Joe's everchanging romantic muses as he hops from one girl he vows to love to another, all the while being married. The "Impossible" actor revealed, "I think in some ways, Joe is just a metaphor for our inner fantasy judge, whether it's fantasizing about a lover or fantasizing about punishing someone for the way they don't love you. That's who Joe is. I think, actually, in some ways, he always feels the same to me. It's just a matter of applying him to different and new situations."
His kiss with Marienne, played by Tati Gabrielle under the sprinklers in episode 6, became one of the most loved moments from the show, but Badgley shared that producing that moment was very difficult. He said, "That was, I have to say, amongst one of the more constructed and sort of nerve-racking and false feeling moments in all of my...In order to accomplish that, the level of technical rehearsal and all this kind of stuff, it's just really high." He later said, "People may end up really enjoying that moment, but for us, it was like the opposite."
The actor also talked about Joe always perceiving himself as the better person, and with Victoria Pedretti's character becoming more and more cynical with each passing episode, Joe got to feel even more self-righteous. Badgley said, "Joe always thinks he's the good guy, so, to me, it's just this cyclical meditation on the same principles and the same themes for me playing him."
Telling how much he enjoyed working with Victoria, who will not be returning to the show as her character is dead, the actor said, "I really think it was just finding deeper, subtler layers to Victoria's and my chemistry. It was nice. I've always really enjoyed working with her and been grateful for her as a co-lead because it just really demands a lot from her, from the Love character, and she delivers. She grounds stuff so beautifully."
Talking about how Love necessarily painted in a bad light in the third season while Joe was excused with justifications and flashbacks from his past, Penn Badgley said, "In a way, it becomes a sort of social litmus test, or something like that, or a social kind of Rorschach, because for all of our striving, for all of our awakening to the need to empower women—which is great, I couldn't say enough about that—we still want to watch a guy like Joe." He continued, "That says something, and I certainly am not the one to say exactly what that says. I think there are sociologists and brilliant women, and men, who probably could dissect that really well. I'm just fascinated to see how people respond to him."
The actor also got to work with actor Scott Speedman from Felicity, and shared, "I had actually a really pointed experience in the third episode working with Scott because it's a scene like many where most of my lines are an inner monologue. So as an actor on set, what I have the task of doing is sitting and really listening to him and listening to my stand-in, who reads my thoughts."
He also said, "It was just like there's a world where it was just two men talking about the vulnerability of fatherhood. It was one of my most memorable experiences of the season, and it was a very quiet, lovely day of work. We didn't get a lot of that. I think it's not always so quiet and sensitive. Actually, now that I think about it, all of my scenes with him are really that: listening, and really feeling awful, and feigning vulnerability. I don't know, there's a soft spot in my heart for him."
Badgley said that it was amazing to work with Love actress Victoria Pedretti; Credits: Republic World
It would be great to see what season 4 has in store for this brilliant actor.
