Penn Badgley says playing Joe in You season 3 was "difficult" now he’s a dad

12 October 2021, 17:41

Watch the first trailer for You season 3

By Sam Prance

It turns out that Joe Goldberg's fatherly instincts are the opposite of Penn Badgley's.

Penn Badgley has revealed that playing the role of Joe Goldberg in You is a lot harder now that he's become a father himself.

After almost two years of waiting, You season 3 is finally here. The show returns this week (Oct 15) and it looks set to add to the drama, death and destruction Joe created in the You's first two seasons. In the wake of learning that Love is pregnant, Joe decides to try to make it work with her. The couple move to the suburbs in a bid to escape their murderous past.

However, fatherhood doesn't turn Joe into a new man and Penn Badgley has said that he now finds it difficult to play him.

Penn Badgley says playing Joe in You season 3 was "difficult" now he’s a dad. Picture: Anthony Behar/Sipa USA, Netflix

Penn became a father in August 2020 after his wife, singer Domino Kirke, gave birth to their first child together. Speaking to Access Hollywood about being a dad and how that's changed his acting experience in You, Penn said: "The funny thing is I was curious what my new fatherhood, how that would influence my experience with Joe and acting with him."

He added: "Sometimes it was almost not helpful because I was having such a light and joyful experience... still am, and Joe is so petrified. He's so scared, and of course I can identify with the fear but he's just so morbid in his obsessive, sort of like self-preservation, primal instinct that sometimes I almost found it harder as a result, you know what I mean?"

He ended by saying: "It really depended on the scene."

Penn Badgley reacts to fans wanting to date Joe from You

In contrast Victoria Pedretti, who plays Love, said in the same interview that not being a mother helped because she could just "come at it as a character" and it wasn't so "confusing".