Last Updated:September 27, 2025, 12:48 IST
Penn Badgley shared some behind-the-scenes details about filming a sex scene in You season 3.
Penn Badgley’s starring series ‘You’ ended earlier this year. (Photo Source: Instagram)
Penn Badgley is giving fans a behind-the-scenes look at one of the most awkward moments while filming his hit Netflix series You. In a new excerpt from his upcoming essay collection, Crushmore: Essays on Love, Loss, and Coming-of-Age, co-written with his Podcrushed co-hosts Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari, the actor recalls shooting a tricky sex scene from season 3, which he described as a “fantasy sequence.”
In the excerpt, published by Vulture, Penn Badgley discussed the scene where his character, the psychotic killer Joe Goldberg, was having an intimate moment with his wife, Love, played by Victoria Pedretti. Joe was “meant to be humpin’ on his wife, with whom he has become not only bored but also contemptuous.” However, he imagines he is with another woman, Marienne, played by Tati Gabrielle, the librarian he was flirting with. Penn explained that the camera setup made the scene even more complicated.
Penn Badgley Reveals He Had To Film The Scene All Alone
“What this means for me, practically speaking, is that the director wants a close-up of my face as my character Joe is deep in dissociative reverie mid-coitus,” he wrote. The actor mentioned that the camera, which was a “very large apparatus” weighing roughly 700 pounds or 317 kilograms, could not include Victoria in the frame, and that’s why he had to simulate the act alone. He had to “effectively humpin’ on the air, on a fake bed in a fake room, surrounded by a film crew.” He further shared, “Oh, and I’ll be in the same nude thong I’ve been wearing all morning as we complete the scene, of course.”
Filming the scene, as the actor revealed, not just required him to be “humping the air with the camera in my face,” but also he needed to look straight into the barrel of the lens, which Penn said he never “reflexively” does. “You never let a mean girl know you’re looking. Looking in the camera ruins a take. Looking in the camera is crossing a great metaphysical threshold because you’ve acknowledged the audience,” he added.
Penn Badgley Recalls How The Crew Began Laughing When They Filmed The Scene
The 38-year-old actor further shared that he and the entire crew started laughing as soon as they began shooting the scene. “I realise as I try to look into the lens that, for a moment, I can’t. I simply cannot. It’s too bald, too bold, too bawdy, and I feel naked because I am almost naked. I really can’t take this seriously. I start to giggle, and then I laugh, quaking on all fours. Every part of me that can jiggle is now jiggling,” he recalled. The laughter did not stop with him. The show’s camera operator and the sound guy holding a boom mic also started giggling along with him. He said, “We all laugh, and it’s a relaxing, unifying moment. But we must be quiet, and eventually we do. I finally look into the lens.”
Finally, Penn got into his character. “I’m not home, but I can imagine that I am. There is no one in front of me, but I can imagine someone is. A moment ago, there was only resistance in my body to do what was needed, but upon the utterance of one word — ‘action’ — I am supremely present in the face of sheer absurdity. I look in the camera and I hump my ass off,” he concluded.
Penn Badgley has since requested not to film intimate scenes for Joe in season 4. In an episode of Podcrushed, he shared that he told the makers he did not want to film such scenes.
Chirag Sehgal works as a Senior Sub-Editor in the Entertainment team at News18.com. With an experience of five years in the media industry, he largely focuses on Indian television coverage. Apart from bringing …Read More
Chirag Sehgal works as a Senior Sub-Editor in the Entertainment team at News18.com. With an experience of five years in the media industry, he largely focuses on Indian television coverage. Apart from bringing … Read More
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September 27, 2025, 12:48 IST
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