15 Intriguing Facts About ‘You’

Season 5 of Netflix’s psychological thrillerYou began filming earlier this year—and has been confirmed to be the series’ last. To prepare for the final season, here are 15 intriguing facts about the show that even obsessive You fans might not know. Spoilers ahead!

You was originally developed for Showtime.

All the way back in 2015, it was announced that Greg Berlanti (The Flash) and Sera Gamble (Supernatural) planned to bring Caroline Kepnes’s You: A Novel to the small screen. They first pitched it to Showtime, which ultimately passed on it. Lifetime picked it up and premiered the pilot in September 2018, then renewed the series early for a second season. The network reversed course, though, and canceled the show after its first season pulled in low ratings. Netflix—which had been streaming the first season of the show internationally—stepped in, and the rest is history. “Lifetime were fantastic partners for Season 1 and we’re really grateful that they made the show with us,” Gamble told Vulture in late 2018. “I understand Season 2 didn’t work for their business model. We had been talking about the show with Netflix the whole time. ... This just feels like a really great story to tell with the Netflix model. It was always built to be extremely binge-able.”

Penn Badgley wanted Joe to be as creepy as possible.

Before You, Penn Badgley was best known for playing Dan Humphrey in the series Gossip Girl—and in his view, the two characters were quite different. The actor has been vocal about the disturbing (yet not surprising) amount of people thirsting over his You character, killer Joe Goldberg. “I personally feel it is a bit of a social experiment. It’s a litmus test to see the mental gymnastics that we’re still willing to perform on a cultural level, to love an evil white man,” he said before the show debuted in 2018. And according to a 2018 article in The Daily Beast, Badgley wanted to make the character unappealing. “In the pilot episode,” he said, “the director was trying to get me to be at some points less disgusting. ... I was always kind of on the sidelines like, we don’t need to defend Joe. We don’t need to defend Joe.”

You’s creative team featured a number of women, and Badgley called the show “a learning experience.” “[B]y and large, all of the people responsible for this thing are women,” the actor said. “And most of our directors were female, most of the writers were female, most of the cast was female. There were just a couple of men involved. ... I would just listen to why it is that the women involved were interested in this thing, and how it is that they saw it.”

Some of Peach Salinger’s wardrobe came from actress Shay Mitchell’s own closet. 

Though she wasn’t exactly everyone’s favorite, Peach Salinger—best friend of Joe’s Season 1 fixation, Guinevere Beck (played by Elizabeth Lail)—was an entertaining character with a killer wardrobe. Actress Shay Mitchell told Glamour UK that her personal style is more like Peach fashion-wise rather than the more relaxed attire of her character Emily Fields on Pretty Little Liars. Mitchell incorporated some of her own clothes and accessories into Peach’s wardrobe, so it makes sense that she appears to share the same chic taste as her fictional character. “I bought so many of my own bags to New York and worked with the costume designer on producing this look,” she said. “A lot of the clothes are mine, too.”

Mooney’s is a real bookstore in New York.

The first season of You was filmed on location in the Big Apple. One of the show’s most recognizable settings is Mooney’s Bookstore, where Joe works (and holds people captive)—and though it doesn’t go by that name, the store itself is a real place that fans can check out. Logos Bookstore is located in Manhattan’s Yorkville neighborhood. But don’t worry, there’s not really a basement with a big glass cage. Logos also turned up in Melissa McCarthy’s film Can You Ever Forgive Me. 

Before she was Love Quinn, Victoria Pedretti auditioned to play Guinevere Beck.

In Season 2, Joe leaves New York and moves to Los Angeles. There, he meets another character fans of the book series will recognize: Love Quinn, played by actress Victoria Pedretti. She originally auditioned for Guinevere Beck and got a call back from the producer—her first ever. “I didn’t get the job, but I’m glad I didn’t,” she told Elle, “because it meant that I was able to do The Haunting of Hill House, and it meant that I was able to come back to play Love” in You’s second season.

The book version of Love Quinn wasn’t a killer.

Producers made some changes when adapting the second book in the You series, Hidden Bodies, for TV. In the book, Love and Joe’s meet-cute goes down differently, but she does ultimately accept Joe for the stalker/murderer that he is. However, she’s not a fellow killer like she is in the Netflix show. In the series, Love has murdered an au pair and poisoned her first husband by the time she meets Joe. After their relationship gets serious, she adds two women to her body count—and as we saw in Season 3, she definitely didn’t stop there. 

Candace Stone’s alias “Amy Adams” is an actual character in Hidden Bodies.

Another change from book to screen eliminated a character entirely. At the end of the first book, Joe meets a woman named Amy Adams in the bookstore, falls in love with her, and follows her to Los Angeles. Amy doesn’t exist in the series, but the writers found a creative way to work her into the second season: Joe’s ex-girlfriend, Candace Stone (Ambyr Childers)—whom he killed in the first book but who made an appearance in the finale of You’s first season—uses the name Amy Adams as an alias when she tracks Joe down in LA.

Badgley’s stand-in had a role in Season 2.

Have you ever wondered how they film You to go along with Joe’s narration? To know how to act out what Joe is thinking, someone else has to read the lines on set, a job that falls to Danny Watters, Badgley’s stand-in (the person present in the actor’s place during rehearsals so that blocking and lighting can be determined before shooting begins). In Season 2, Watters got to play a separate character of his own: He’s simply credited as “Groom” in the eighth episode, “Fear and Loathing in Beverly Hills.”

Young Joe is the brother of the actor who played young Jeffrey Dahmer.

Season 3 of You explores Joe’s traumatic childhood. In flashbacks, Jack Fisher plays a young Joe during his time at an orphanage. And Jack isn’t the only Fisher to appear in a Netflix project about a serial killer: Jack’s brother Nick landed the role of young Jeffrey Dahmer in Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.

Dylan Arnold tried out for two other roles before being cast on You.

It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Penn Badgley as Joe, but of course many tried out for the part—including Dylan Arnold, who also auditioned to play Love’s brother, Forty, in Season 2. (That role eventually went to James Scully.) The third time proved to be the charm when Arnold was cast as Theodore “Theo” Engler, son of Joe and Love’s neighbor Matthew, in You Season 3. 

Arnold also has another connection to the series: “I actually went to college with Elizabeth Lail, who played Guinevere Beck in the first season,” he told Teen Vogue.

Arnold played a teenager—but he’s older than Pedretti.

In Season 3, Love and Joe move to the California suburbs for a fresh start. While Joe obsesses over their neighbor Natalie, Love gets to know Natalie’s college-aged stepson Theo. Despite his believable performance as a teenager, Arnold was in his twenties at the time: The actor was born February 11, 1994, making him one year older than Pedretti, who was born March 23, 1995. “[T]hose moments where she’s referring to me as a teenager were always really funny because I’m older than she is,” the actor told Teen Vogue. “But yeah, we had a lot of fun with those scenes, but it’s also very heartbreaking. We figured out a way to make it fun and charming.”

Tati Gabrielle filmed her first sex scene on You.

Tati Gabrielle has been acting since 2014, starring in shows like Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and The 100. In 2021, she joined the cast of You for the third season as Marienne Bellamy, local Madre Linda librarian, and Joe’s eventual love interest. Gabrielle hadn’t filmed a sex scene before this role and was naturally nervous about. But with Badgley’s support, as well as a professional intimacy coordinator, the actress felt more comfortable with the scene. She told Page Six, “It became more of a dance, like a choreographed dance than it was, like, having to feel that nervousness and be awkward or weird.”

Badgley wants Cardi B to make a cameo on You.

In a 2021 interview, he cited rapper Cardi B as someone he admires when it comes to authentic fan interaction via social media. She responded on Twitter and the two made each other their profile pics. Her hit song “I Like It” appeared in the first episode of Season 4 as Joe begrudgingly dismembers a corpse. Badgely told Rolling Stone, “Would I want her to be in You? Yeah, if it worked. I wanted her to be in Season 4. But it has to work. You know? How could she be anybody but Cardi B?”

Badgley directed a Season 4 episode.

The actor made his directorial debut with the season’s penultimate episode—and what an episode it was. Joe starts spiraling and finds himself in another dream sequence being confronted by his victims. Beck appeared to Joe in Season 2 while he was trying to resist Love. This time around he’s first taunted by London socialite Gemma before he runs into Beck again and she really lets him have it. The trippy sequence closes out with Joe’s dearly departed wife, Love.  

In a featurette, Badgley pointed out the shots he was most proud of, which included a transition from Beck swallowing a key to Joe in the latest place to hold his glass prison. His second favorite was a shot involving some CGI. 

Joe will return to New York in Season 5.

At the end of Season 4, Joe and new love interest Kate (Charlotte Ritchie) have moved from London and to live in New York, where Joe has bought an old bookstore. Filming for Season 5 began in the city in March 2024, and while many details are under wraps, there are some things we do know: Madeline Brewer will play a character named Bronte; Pitch Perfect’s Anna Camp will play twins; and Gamble has left to work on other projects (Michael Foley and Justin W. Lo replaced her as showrunner). Badgley has teased what we can expect. “I know what Greg pitched me a few years back as what he thought was the right way to end,” he told British GQ. “[I]t’s going to be, I think, a grand finale.”

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