The Visible Man

Penn Badgley is famous for his roles as a gossip and a stalker—and he’s a little disturbed by what fans see in him.

- Jackson McHenry

Penn Badgley spends a lot of time thinking about a just end for the serial killer he plays on TV, if justice were ever to exist in the universe of You. His character is Joe Goldberg, a bookish, seemingly nice guy who has a habit of stalking and killing the women he loves and anyone who gets in his way. So far, Joe has eluded any attempts to thwart his bloodshed, slipping from a literary New York in the first season to a health-food-and-crystals Los Angeles in the second. When You returns for its third season this October, Joe is a golly-gee young father living in a fictional Bay Area suburb populated by tech billionaires, anti-vaxxers, and mommy bloggers. His new wife, Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti), is just as willing to kill for love as Joe is, but his violent tendencies remain unsated. “When we watch a character like Joe, do we want him to pay?” Badgley muses. “Do we want retribution? Do we want vengeance?”