Penn Badgley: Here’s Looking at ‘You’

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Lemonada Media

Society & Culture, Film Interviews, Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Television, perhaps more than movies, has a way of etching its stars in stone. And few actors seem to be able to break the mold more than once. Which is what makes Penn Badgley’s career—first on Gossip Girl then You—special.

We sit this week around the fifth and final season of You (7:00) to unpack its shocking series finale [spoiler] (9:13) and the political climate in which the show is coming to a close (12:10). Then, Penn opens up about the solitude of his west coast upbringing (19:50), his years as a child actor (23:19), and his beloved portrayal of Dan Humphrey on Gossip Girl (33:12).

On the back-half, Badgley’s transformative trip to South America in 2012 (39:46), his spiritual journey into the Bahá'í Faith (42:38), and how these experiences led him to his wife, Domino (44:30). To close, he describes the intense physical experience of filming the You finale [spoiler] (51:36), what the ‘fantasy of Joe Goldberg’ reveals about masculinity today (55:55), and a fitting Dave Eggers passage from the prologue of The Executioner’s Song (1:03:22).

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This episode was recorded at Spotify Studios.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Lemonada
0:02.0	Lemonada
0:04.0	This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam for Go, so welcome to the show.
0:40.7	Today, actor Penn Badgley.
0:48.4	Television, perhaps even more so than movies, I think has a way of etching its stars into stone.
1:01.9	I'm thinking about Alan Alda and Mash, George Went in Cheers, Kelsey Grammer and Frazier, actors who, if they were to walk down the street right now, would be called not by their name, but their characters.
1:13.3	Hawkeye, Norm, Frazier, something about the medium and its delivery system beamed into our living rooms year after year, season after season, practically preserves the performer in formaldehyde, which is what makes Badgley's career kind of remarkable.
1:18.6	He became known to most back in 2007 for his portrayal of Dan Humphrey on Gossip Girl,
1:25.4	playing this writerly Brooklyn teenager who was always looking from the
1:30.1	outside in while he was attending his posh Upper East Side High School. The show carried on for six
1:36.5	seasons over five years, catapulting Badgley along with the rest of the cast into the spotlight.
1:43.3	What people seemed to think of Dan
1:45.1	seemed to be what people thought of me, Badgley said recently. The actor and character
1:51.2	inextricably linked. And so as Gossip Girl ended, he pivoted. He toured with the band,
1:58.0	he created with friends, took bit parts and independent movies, and most importantly, he let some time pass.
2:05.4	Then, finally, came you, which stars Badgley as Joe Goldberg, a charming, obsessive stalker who goes to extreme measures.
2:16.2	And even extreme feels like I'm understanding it,
2:19.1	to insert himself into the lives of women he's transfixed by.
2:24.0	The show, which originally aired on Lifetime
2:26.4	before breaking out and becoming a hit on Netflix,
2:30.1	is a popular entry into the attractive but horrible serial killer subgenre.
2:35.8	It's also now coming to a close.
	...

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