Penn Badgley has admitted he “struggles” with his character in Netflix’s You.
The 33-year-old plays Joe Goldberg, the murderous bookseller that is the main focus of the thriller.
Season two is based on Caroline Kepnes’ book Hidden Bodies (you can read an extract from that here) and sees Joe head to Los Angeles in an effort to forget what happened in New York.
But his determination to change – particularly after he meets Love Quinn – is threatened when secrets from his past start to resurface.
And while fans have been hooked on You ever since the series debuted on Netflix last St. Stephen’s Day, Badgley has some pretty strong feelings about his character.
“There’s a lot I don’t enjoy about him,” he told DigitalSpy, discussing playing Joe. “To be honest, I don’t enjoy nearly everything about him.
“However, it ends up being a deep, deep psychological exploration for me. And it seems to bear fruit. There’s a lot about him that I struggle with and yet I’m always trying to humanise him as much as possible.”
The actor previously told how “unhinged” his character would be when You returns on December 26.
The bookseller-turned-murderer was left shaken following the return of his ex-girlfriend Candace – who, lets be real, we all thought was dead…and clearly Joe did, too – at the end of season one.
Which means that Joe has a different kind of dilemma on his hands.
“In the first episode, he’s struggling to conceive of the fact that she’s alive,” he told Entertainment Weekly.
“He’s unhinged because of how much he doesn’t understand about what he’s done and who she is.”
