Penn Badgley shares why 'You' season 4 has fewer intimacy scenes
Part one of the fourth and final season of "You" dropped this week, and Penn Badgley is sharing why the new season is lacking intimacy scenes.
In an interview with Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari for the "Podcrushed" podcast, Badgley said he asked for fewer of them.
"I asked Sera Gamble, the creator of the show, 'Can I just do no more intimacy scenes?' This is actually a decision I made before I took on the show," he said. "And she didn't even bat an eye, she was very glad that I was that honest."
"She appreciated my directness and she appreciated that I was also being reasonable and practical," Badgley added. "And they came back with a phenomenal reduction."
The actor, who previously starred in "Gossip Girl" and "Easy A," said that before he took on his role as Joe Goldberg in "You," he questioned whether he wanted to play a character who had a lot of intimacy scenes.
"Think about every male lead you've loved," he said. "Are they kissing someone, are they doing a lot more than that? And you know, it's really not my desire to. I said to Sera, like, my desire would be zero."
Badgley added that his marriage to Domino Kirke also matters to him, and he got to a point in his career where he didn't want to do those scenes.
"But I signed the contract, I signed up for this show," he said. "I know when I did -- 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 [the creators of the show]."
"You" follows Badgley's character, Joe Goldberg, an obsessive murderer who goes to extreme, often violent measures to insert himself into the lives of the women he is transfixed by.
Earlier this week, Badgley told "GMA" that fans will be most surprised by the genre shift in the final season of the show.
"It goes from being a thriller, romance, something in that vein, and now the first part -- it's being released in two parts -- the first part is a whodunit. It's a murder mystery," Badgley said.
