Penn Badgley responded to people lusting after Joe Goldberg in Netflix's 'You'

10 January 2019, 12:27

By Nicky Idika

The Joe thirst is real and Penn Badgley does NOT endorse.

Netflix's You is an edge of your seat thriller that explores the corrupted infatuation of its lead character, Joe. Penn Badgley stars as Joe, a bookstore manager who falls for Guinevere Beck, a beautiful aspiring writer.

This isn't your typical "boy meets girl" love story though. Joe is actually quite... bad. Despite his manipulative and homicidal tendencies, people seem to have the hots for Penn Badgley's character. Predictably, the actor does not co-sign the love for Joe AT ALL.

Penn responded to the Joe thirst with some pretty hilarious quips on Twitter.

Penn even agreed with one fan who noted that the "amount of people romanticising" his character was scary. While Joe is handsome and charming in the series, he's also... a killer, so there's that.

The character of Joe actually puts viewers in an interesting position. Much of the story in You is told from Joe's perspective, so it can be quite uncomfortable to realise you've formed an attachment to such a despicable (albeit fictional) person.

Last month we interviewed Penn about his You character and asked him whether he thought Joe could ever be redeemed.

"There's no redemption for someone who is behaving that way. I think the only redemption is in death," he told PopBuzz.

"Again, Joe is not a real person. And I, as an actor portraying him—and as a person who really struggled along the way to understand whether or not it was even responsible to be doing this, and portraying him in the way that I did—to me, I'm not interested in Joe's redemption. I'm interested in our redemption. I'm interested in us examining it in a responsible way. So I think I just want to see him change. And I want to see him progress. But it doesn't mean for the better."

Penn Badgley has spoken, folks. Stop! Thirsting! After! A! Killer!