Penn Badgley has cemented his place in pop culture. As Dan Humphrey in Gossip Girl, the actor was part of one of the biggest shows on TV from 2007 to 2012. But now, his latest role – as a psychotic stalker in the twisted thriller You – is garnering even more buzz. Originally made for the US network Lifetime, the series was broadcast in September 2018 but only became a global hit after it arrived on Netflix three months later. The response was rapturous: 40 million households watched the show in the first four weeks, Badgley received thousands of messages via social media and it ignited urgent conversations about abuse and toxic masculinity.

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Based on the novel of the same name by Caroline Kepnes, the story revolves around Joe Goldberg, a New York bookstore clerk played by Badgley who becomes obsessed with a young writer, Beck (Elizabeth Lail). Initially framed as a romantic hero, Joe soon resorts to kidnapping and murder in pursuit of love, leaving the audience conflicted about sympathising with him. His appeal as a character lies in his contradictions: he is a serial killer who believes he is an ally to women.

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Season one ends with a shock twist that sees – spoiler alert – Joe kill Beck and then run into his ex-girlfriend Candace (Ambyr Childers), who the audience presumed was dead. While details for season two are scarce, showrunners Sera Gamble and Greg Berlanti have revealed that it will relocate to Los Angeles and feature both Childers and a new female lead, an aspiring chef named Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti).

Ahead of the next instalment, which drops on Netflix on 26 December, 2019, Vogue meets Badgley to discuss going viral, engaging with fans on Twitter and diving deeper into Joe’s troubled mind.

© Courtesy of Netflix

When You landed on Netflix it became a cult hit. Did that surprise you?

“It kind of makes sense that the show would become a viral hit. There’s something about it that works like a social experiment because as viewers we have to examine why we like Joe and enjoy watching him so much. So, it made sense that so many people across different cultures would respond in this way. Of course, you never know what’s going to happen and I think it was only going to get that kind of response on Netflix. This is a binge-able show and it took off overnight.”

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You responded to a lot of fans on Twitter. Did you expect people to engage with you in that way?

“What I didn’t anticipate was this seemingly unanimous response that people appreciated the person portraying Joe and wanted to engage with me. You wouldn’t ordinarily want an actor to do that and the role wouldn’t ordinarily invite that, but that’s why this show is interesting. People are enjoying it, but at the same time it invites a really unsettling level of questioning. It takes tropes from romantic comedies and subverts them. Suddenly, it has a different subtext because he’s always lying about having killed somebody and people have to grapple with that.”

© Courtesy of Netflix

What did you learn from those interactions?

“I think everyone’s yearning to have deeper conversations about this stuff. We’re used to saying that we watch TV to switch off our brains, but I’m not sure that’s what we need right now. To me, the responses on Twitter were confirmation that people wanted to dive in and think deeply about the things they’re watching.”

After the success of season one, was there ever a risk in coming back for a second instalment?

“With this show, I don’t think we can do the same thing twice. But, I know that even more than me, [the showrunners] Sera [Gamble], Greg [Berlanti] and the writers were all feeling that way too. They’re perfectionists and I knew they’d do it right. When they told me about the arc for this season, I thought wow you guys have really expanded on this concept.”

© Courtesy of Netflix

How does the narrative move forward?

“There are some fundamental differences between seasons one and two, and those come with Love, the character played by Victoria Pedretti. I think we get to see another dimension of Joe’s character, too. He’s in Los Angeles and in a sense his whole vision of the world is different because Candace is alive. Even as an actor, every time I had a scene with [Ambyr Childers] I was short-circuiting and trying to understand how this was possible. That’s the experience Joe is having, and it plays into what he’s doing in LA and what he feels he has to accomplish there.”

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Gamble describes season two as a deeper dive into Joe. What were you interested in exploring?

“What I’ve been struggling with this whole time is how much does Joe really see of himself? And that is the question you’re asking throughout the second season. I want to see how people respond to that. I think we’ll get a sense of it by about 28 December.”

Will you be on social media ready to reply to fans this time around?

“Yes, I’ll be watching from the shadows [laughs]. But seriously, we are participating in a discourse and I want to see how that develops. I’m hoping, at all times, that we can elevate that discourse.”

© Courtesy of Netflix

Fans have compared Joe to Dan Humphrey, your character in Gossip Girl who was similarly bookish and quiet. Do you think You weaponised the impression people already had of you?

“I do think it is weaponizing a lot of these preconceptions people have about the characters I’ve played in the past. In a way, that’s why I was the perfect person for it. Ordinarily, you’d want a piece to speak for itself and this of course does, but there is this other dimension to it where these two pop culture phenomena, Gossip Girl and You, are in conversation with one another through me. I don’t have anything to do with that because it’s down to the writers of the show, but I’m the touchpoint through which it happens because I was on both shows.”

It’s interesting to compare the two because with Gossip Girl, we as viewers rarely delved into the things that were complex or problematic about that show.

“And I don’t think it was made for that. There were people who were able to think-piece their way in and out of that show, but it wasn’t meant to be dissected in that way. That was in 2007, before the financial collapse and before the Obama years. It’s a very different time now. Gossip Girl was representative of this dream of excess and privilege, whereas now we recognise that it’s that very excess and privilege that leads to dire social unrest and inequality. Gossip Girl was fun and aspirational, but we now see that those aspirations don’t lead to fun.”

A Gossip Girl reboot is in development. How do you hope it will address those issues and would you ever be involved?

“I don’t know much about it but I’m interested to see how it will be different. It needs a change and I’m sure they’re thinking about that more than I am. I’m sure they’ll figure it out and make it great. But honestly, if I was on the show now people would just think, ‘He’s going to kill them all’.”

You: Season 2 is on Netflix from 26 December, 2019.

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