Penn Badgley is ready to say goodbye to ‘You’ character, Joe Goldberg
After playing Joe Goldberg on “You” for the past 10 years, Penn Badgley reflects on the show’s impact.
Penn Badgley is letting “Gossip Girl” and “You” fans on a little behind-the-scenes secret.
The actor, while giving a tour of the “You” set to Architectural Digest, revealed the Netflix show used the exact same stages as CW’s 2007-2012 hit show “Gossip Girl.”
Badgley dropped the fun fact while showing viewers around the spooky basement beneath Mooney’s Bookstore, where his character, serial murderer Joe Goldberg, holds his victims’ hostage. The cage, made of galvanized steel and plexiglass, is 13 feet long, 8 feet wide and 9 feet high, as per Netflix, with each season featuring a new cage as Joe traveled the world.
“A little bit of an interesting note. This is where we shot Gossip Girl,” Badgley, 38, says in the April 28 video.
“This is the same stage where the Waldorf suites or whatever, where they live – it was in this stage,” Badgley said in the video, referring to the plush Manhattan penthouse where Leighton Meester’s character Blair Waldorf lived in the show.
Badgley further revealed that Mooney’s Bookstore, where his Joe worked or used to work, was his “Gossip Girl” character Dan Humprey’s Brooklyn loft, where he lived with his dad Rufus (Matthew Settle) and sister Jenny (Taylor Momsen).
“The stage with the bookstore was where the Humphrey loft was,” he said, adding “so this place is extremely familiar to me.”
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“I was just standing outside looking at the trees and I thought, ‘I’ve been looking at these trees for nearly 20 years now,’” Badgley continued. “And I thought to myself, ‘Have they grown? Do trees in the city, over the course of 20 years, do they grow?’ They must.”
“So that’s just a little window into my brain,” he added with a smile.
“Gossip Girl,” based on Cecily von Ziegesar’s book of the same name, was a satirical drama about wealthy prep school teenagers on New York’s Upper East Side tormented by texts from a mysterious “Gossip Girl” who knows all their dirty secrets. Besides Badgley, the show also featured Blake Lively, Meester, Ed Westwick, Chace Crawford, and Michelle Trachtenberg among others.
‘You’ final season
The fifth and final season of “You,” meanwhile, dropped on Netflix on April 24, marking the end of Joe’s journey after eight long years. The final season, in its first four days on Netflix, amassed 10.1 million views and claimed the top spot on the English TV list, according to Netflix. The release also brought back Season 1 of the series to Netflix’s Top 10 for the first time since February 2023.
Despite the show’s skyrocketing popularity, Badgley in an exclusive interview with USA TODAY’s Anika Reed said he’s glad “we’re putting him (Joe) to bed.”
“I’m glad we’re putting him to bed,” the actor said. “I’ve been with (Joe) my entire 30s, actually, I was 30 years old when I signed on to do this. I’m going to be 39 later this year.”
“He’s been like my little convict brother, who I’ve had to counsel through our 30s together,” Badgley added. “And in that way, he’s kind of taught me to be a better man. He’s failing miserably, but I’ve had to reflect on all the things I share with him, even if they’re not that escalated or that magnified.”
Saman Shafiq is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected] and follow her on X and Instagram @saman_shafiq7.
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