The Real Reason You's Penn Badgley Doesn't Want to Do Sex Scenes Anymore

Penn Badgley, who plays Joe Goldberg on You, has shared why he asked the creator of the Netflix series to stop filming sex scenes

By Corinne Heller Feb 15, 2023 8:29 PMTags
Watch: Lukas Gage LOVES Working With Penn Badgley (& Why That Scares Him)

Hey you, Joe Goldberg is keeping his killer moves out of the bedroom.

Days after Penn Badgley revealed that he asked to do stop filming sex scenes in the latest season of his show You, he explained his reasoning.

"If you have a partner," Badgley stated on Sirius XM's Andy Cohen Live Feb. 14," and you wanna be with your partner and you have to do this with another person, frankly, for me, it's just not my desire."

On Feb. 9, the actor stated on his Podcrushed podcast that ahead of the current season four, he asked the Netflix series' showrunner, Sera Gamble, "Can I just do no more intimacy scenes?"

Badgley, who is married to singer Domino Kirke, further noted that "fidelity in every relationship, especially in a marriage, is important to me." 

Prior to the most recent season of You, Badgley's character was often involved in intimate scenes, including with season one Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) and season two and three's Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti).

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In an interview with Variety, also posted Feb. 14, Badgley said that "it's important to me in my real life to not have" sex scenes.

Sylvain Gaboury/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

"My fidelity in my relationship. It's important to me," he continued. "And actually, it was one of the reasons that I initially wanted to turn the role down. I didn't tell anybody that. But that is why."

However, the Gossip Girl alum—who shares son James, 2, with Kirke and is stepdad to Cassius Riley, 13, her son from a previous relationship—acknowledged that intimate scenes are often required for actors. "I'm always very practical," he explained. "I said I know it can't be none, because there's something coded into the DNA of the show, and I signed the contract, and so it is what it is but as little as possible would be my preference."

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