YOU: Cast and Creators Talk Season 1 and Shipping Toxic Relationships [Exclusive Interview]

If you were a Gossip Girl fan back in the day, you’re probably excited to tune in to see Penn Badgley make his long-awaited TV return in Lifetime’s new drama, YOU. 

But you’re likely to be more than a little disturbed by the differences — and some of the unnerving similarities — between Gossip Girl‘s Dan Humphrey and YOU‘s Joe Goldberg.

The new series follows Joe (Badgley), a brilliant bookstore manager who becomes obsessed with a customer named Beck (Elizabeth Lail) and uses her extensive social media presence to insinuate himself into her life and present himself as her perfect man. YOU is based on the novel of the same name by Caroline Kepnes and was executive produced by Sera Gamble and Greg Berlanti.

While attending ATX Television Festival back in June, we had the chance to sit down with Badgley, Lail, Kepnes, and Gamble to discuss this “21st century love story.”

“It’s about the toxic power of love between this one man and this one woman […] The idea that love can save these people and finding out if it can,” the author said when asked to tell us about the core theme of her story. Kepnes described the book as “virtual reality [where] you’re putting yourself in the position of this guy.”

As for Joe, who does some deeply questionable things in the pilot alone, the cast and creators were hesitant to classify him as a straight-up villain.

“He’s deeply sensitive and deeply flawed, but it’s that sensitivity that, I think, makes him unique, where there’s no blood lust,” Kepnes said. “He thinks a lot, and he’s very empathetic toward other people in his own mind, but what that results in is … well, fill in the blank!”

Gamble, who is also the co-creator and showrunner of the Syfy hit The Magicians, fell in love with Kepnes’ novel.

“I just got so addicted to the book as I was reading it. I really feel like reading this book is sort of the equivalent of binging a season of TV all in one day,” Gamble said. “It had that, ‘You can’t put me down, and you’re just going to read me faster and faster and faster’ kind of feeling. I immediately felt it would make really compelling television.”

Lail, who explained that she’d been wanting to work with Berlanti for a long time, said that she knew immediately this was something special from the moment she auditioned.

“It’s a feeling. You can feel when something is inside of you and really fits with your artistic spirit and what you need to work on, not only in yourself, but in your work, in your craft as an actor,” Lail said. “I got all of that from this. I left that audition, and I was like, ‘Oh, I can do better.” It’s like, ‘There’s more to be had here.'”

Badgley, meanwhile, initially struggled to see what Gamble and Berlanti saw in the book, calling the act of embodying Joe “really disturbing.” He recalled that the conversations he ended up having with them to discuss the project really compelled him.

Once it clicked for him, Badgley was able to find a way to portray the character that made sense to him — the good and the bad in Joe existing simultaneously.

“I try not to see [Joe] as a duality. That’s the thing: just seeing him as a whole. He’s a sphere. You can only see so much of his sphere at any given point,” he said. “You can only see one side, ultimately, one hemisphere, you know? You got to turn it around to see the dark side of the moon, so to speak.”

“That is what I think, as an actor and as a human, really made it compelling, and that’s why I ultimately decided to [sign on to the project]. It was an incredibly enriching experience, because of trying to make [Joe] a whole human without this sort of old-fashioned idea where a villain is a case of this duality,” he continued.

“We’re all so much more complicated than that. The opportunity that I had to explore Joe made me understand maybe a little bit about … Could I say human nature? Maybe I came to understand what it is that interests me about modern popular culture, and how it indoctrinates us all with so many ideas about what human nature actually is, what it is to be in love, what it is to be in a relationship.”

YOU is extremely timely, with a major portion of the plot being influenced by today’s very social media driven society.

For Kepnes, this was an essential part of the story she wanted to tell in her novel.

“I have so much compassion for all us dealing with these [social media] tools that are relatively new, and figuring out our limits, both searching for people and then the mixed-up idea of wanting attention but [at the same time] wanting boundaries. I think it’s a thing that’s 24 hours a day. I grew up not having any of that, and there was so much escapism, and if something was going on at school, I’d be able to get home and it didn’t exist,” Kepnes said.

“I can’t imagine being a child and coming home and having all of that follow me home,” she continued. “I wanted to write about someone who’s very sensitive, but dealing with all of this in, to me, a unique way on a personal level, as far as not participating in it. Then, of course, Joe is using it [to stalk Beck], instead of participating.”

The pilot is an interesting (and unexpected) mix of dark creepiness and genuine humor. The cast and creators teased that the show kicks into an even higher gear after the premiere, on all levels.

“It gets even funnier,” Badgley said. “Both funnier and creepier,” Lail added.

“I think [the humor] is necessary,” Kepnes said. “You need that or then it just becomes a slasher film.”

“We wanted this to be the story of a relationship that you were interested in seeing more of, and also just a deep dive into the lives of these two characters. It’s not all darkness. There’s just a dark aspect to it. I’m very interested in shows that are a combination of different tones that somehow work together in harmony, but you wouldn’t think that they go together,” Gamble said.

“I feel like this show, at its best, is both a romance and a thriller in the same scene,” she continued. “Sometimes both a romance and a horror movie in the same scene at the same time. I really like that — what it does to your brain when you’re watching something and processing it on two levels like that.”

Everyone agreed that the way the story was crafted, you’re left with the uncomfortable sensation of hoping this admittedly screwed-up relationship will somehow succeed — in spite of Joe’s disturbing behavior.

“In reading it, it brought a lot of uncomfortable stuff up for me, because I found myself frequently rooting for this relationship, even though I knew that Joe was doing increasingly bad things and that I shouldn’t root for the relationship,” Gamble said.

“I was actually shocked by how frequently I was hoping that on the next page, he would just put down the bad stuff that he was doing, so that the relationship would have a chance to thrive,” she continued. “That’s when I realized that I really have a lot to say about what romantic comedies and the great romantic movies that I loved as a child, and what they’ve kind of done to my brain and my heart, and how it’s a little bit fucked up.”

The couple’s portrayers agreed that there were plenty of genuine moments between Joe and Beck in spite of Joe’s duplicity, which will certainly lead to viewers watching the show and wholeheartedly shipping their characters.

“They are really romantic together, and there are some really beautiful moments. I speak from Beck’s point of view, and there are some really beautiful moments between the two of them. There’s some real honesty that happens, for Beck at least,” Lail said. “She grows within this relationship 100%. If I were watching the show, I would love that. I, too, would be rooting for them, despite my better judgment, because there’s a real connection.”

“We often found that shooting it, depending on the scene, it might not be disturbing or dark or troubling at all. It’s just a scene between two people in a relationship discovering something special between them, and learning, growing. That is something that has happened for them,” Badgley said.

“But you can learn and grow and, ultimately, still fail to learn the right lesson from it. I don’t think Joe is not learning and growing but … Well, you can train a plant in many directions, but it still depends on who the gardener is. I think Joe is tending to his own self in a manner that he can’t tell how misguided it all is,” he continued.

This unexpected affection and sympathy for Joe isn’t new — Kepnes mentioned that readers over the years have told her constantly that they love Joe.

While Joe is obviously the show’s main POV character and provides the voiceover — a la a much sicker version of Gossip Girl — there’s a lot about Beck that will also be explored as the series continues.

“Beck is very malleable. She is not necessarily happy, but in a way, trained, as many females are, to adapt [her personality] to her circumstance, whether that be with her best friend who is very wealthy, or a guy who she feels like she needs to be a particular kind of sexy for, or with her professor, where she needs to be intelligent and hard-working. With Joe, it’s clever and witty,” Lail said.

“She is all of those things, but she does have a habit of compartmentalizing, and I think she discovers that throughout [the series],” she continued. “You definitely get her growth, and she’s growing as a young woman. She’s slowly but surely finding her voice, literally, as both a person and as a writer.”

The group also revealed that a future episode will take place from Beck’s point of view, illuminating her personality, which Gamble calls equally as “complicated” as Joe’s.

All in all, the YOU team is excited for viewers to experience the first season in its entirety.

“There’s something about this [show] that I think once you’ve reached the end of the first season … I find it hard to talk about it without including the context of the whole series, because to me, it’s such a holistic experience,” Badgley said.

“It’s not just a thriller,” he continued. “It’s not just a show about a guy stalking a girl. It goes to a lot of places, and it has its purpose, and it’s driving towards an end. I’m really excited to talk about this.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKSYTlSaGik

YOU will premiere September 9th at 10/9c on Lifetime.

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