Yahoo News You star Penn Badgley on the season 4 scene that almost didn't make the final cut
Warning: This post contains spoilers from You season 4, part 1.
This season of You, we see Joe Goldberg take on the role of detective.
When we last saw Joe (Penn Badgley), he was dealing with the aftermath of his fatal relationship with Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) and faking his death in order to go after Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle), whom he believed was his "one true love." We find him at the start of season 4 in Europe, where he landed after following Marienne across the pond. Joe seems to be living a simple life as Professor Jonathan Moore in London, but little does he know how drastic things can change when you become friends with the wrong set of people.
The season takes on the format of a whodunit, which Badgley tells EW is "a stretch in a good way."
Netflix Penn Badgley
Badgley says he's "curious as to how people will feel" after seeing the first half of season 4 (the second half will drop on Netflix on March 9). "I think we do pull it off," he says, adding of the first five episodes, "It's going away to come home. I think when the show comes home to what the show does best, it's really rewarding. The first five probably test [the audience] a bit."
Still, a new storytelling format comes with a new set of challenges. Badgley explained that his biggest challenge this season was simply "staying the course. All these things can change around me, but Joe is still Joe. It's not like I have to do anything different. I'm always responding spontaneously. I'm not saying that I'm comfortably on autopilot, but it really was like 'stay the course and let everything go crazy around me.'"
The former Gossip Girl star enjoyed this season's stunt work — specifically his scene opposite Roald (Ben Wiggins) in episode 5 where he gets chased through the woods before getting confronted by Rhys (Ed Speleers) a.k.a. the Eat the Rich Killer. "I really love the physical stuff with Joe... [It] feels like almost an action movie level of stuff every season. There's usually just two very different arcs where I'm doing a lot of physical stuff. It's fun."
Badgley reveals that scene almost didn't make the final version.
"We did not have a lot of time. In fact, they nearly pulled the plug when we were filming that stuff with Roald and Joe. I mean, there's some times where you're shooting and you're just on borrowed time and there's a need to come in and stop it. This happens on every set, especially on shows that are trying to do a lot like ours, and that was one of those days. There are sequences in [You] where we are biting off a lot in our schedule, in our budget, and we really took it to the edge. There were some major sequences where we were like 'Alright. We gotta move on.' And we were like 'Ugh. The shots we had planned! The this. The that.' But I guess the people watching couldn't tell the difference," explains Badgley. "[That scene] was unfinished, but then we actually had to go back, like weeks later, and shoot different parts of it."
After getting stalked himself this season, will Joe finally learn from his mistakes? "No," Badgley says — though he does offer up that he hopes audiences are left asking "Is Joe a hero now?" after season 4's first half.
You season 4, part 1 is streaming now on Netflix. Part 2 drops on March 9.
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