Penn Badgley shares his request to limit intimate scenes on ‘You’ did not affect the show’s plot

Penn Badgley thinks his comments to limit sex scenes in his Netflix show, You, were blown out of proportion.

Speaking with GQ, the former Gossip Girl star said he was taken aback by the reaction to comments he made on his Podcrushed podcast last month.

In the podcast, he revealed that he asked showrunner Sera Gamble if it would be possible for his character to “do no more intimacy scenes.”

“What I was speaking about wasn’t actually the final product,” Badgley clarified in the interview published on Tuesday, March 14th, 2023. “It was sort of like the culture inherent to the production of all movies, but particularly those scenes. It’s like, look, we know that Hollywood has had a history of flagrant exploitation and abuse.”

He added that he had been “nervous” at first to bring up the topic in the first place. “I was nervous to even have that conversation. It was not easy. It was easy because of Sera’s response, and I felt relieved,” he said. “But technically speaking, if I thought I’d had the ability to set that boundary earlier, I would have.”

Badgley noted that his request did not “change the trajectory of [You’s fourth season] at all,” as his character Joe “was naturally ready to not be in that position anymore.”

In the interview, the actor admitted that “setting” a “boundary” could potentially have “ramifications” for any future project he takes on.

“Just simply, it does limit the number of projects you can be a part of,” he said.