Joe Goldberg might be a bit slut—or player, if you will—but just because it's true doesn't mean actor Penn Badgley has to like it! In 2023, Penn went public with his request to do fewer sex scenes in You season 4, sparking discussions about the nature of acting, nudity on set, and intimacy coordinators. Now, in anticipation of You's fifth and final season, Penn is opening up about why he's “just not interested” in sex scenes anymore.
In 2023, back when he was promoting season 4 of the show, Penn explained that he had requested to do as few sex scenes as possible. Part of his reasoning, he said on his Podcrushed podcast at the time, was because he didn't want to “put myself back on a career path where I'm just always the romantic lead.” He also cited the importance of “fidelity” to his wife, Domino Kirke.
That said, he knew at the time that he couldn't do zero love scenes on the show, which is an exploration of romantic tropes and how romance can disguise toxic behavior, but they found a compromise. In the end, there were only a handful of sex scenes in You season 4, and though it's unclear whether or not this trend will continue in season 5, Penn's views on sex scenes have not changed. In a new interview with The Guardian, the actor said that he's no longer interested in Hollywood sex scenes.
“Sexual violence has been rampant for a long time, there's inequality between the sexes, there's a lot of reasons we should be concerned with sexuality and want to explore it far more meaningfully than we have, but a sex scene is not doing that,” he said. “Usually it's there to titillate, and to say: ‘Ah, the thing you've been waiting to see, it's finally happening.’”
Penn added that sex on screen was also a far cry from sex IRL, noting, “It's just not the way sex happens, the falling against the wall and grasping at each other's clothes, all this stuff. There's no time for condoms, there's no time for conversation. There's no time for awkwardness, for real connection. It's a narrow and simplistic way that we have done it so far, and I'm just not interested in that.” Fair enough!
