It’s not me, it’s ‘You’: Penn Badgley and Victoria Pedretti shed light on their character’s season 3 motivations

Penn Badgley returns as Joe Goldberg, an unassuming serial killer, stalker, and book enthusiast turned suburban dad, in season three of Netflix’s You.

Badgley tells ABC Audio that although he appears to have met his match in his partner Love Quinn, there’s no certainty that he’ll ever change his killer ways.

“I don’t know that he can be reformed,” Badgley says. “I don’t know what that really would look like for him. I don’t know if he came to terms with who he really is and what he’s done.”

Badgley says Joe’s inability to hold himself accountable is because “he’s a fugue state,” a person who temporarily loses their sense of personal identity and impulsively wanders off.

“Fugues are interesting. Fugues are actually very powerful,” he explains. “Maybe within their own kind of thing they go somewhere, but they always return. They always return to the beginning. And that’s really what Joe is.”

Similar to Badgley who offers some much needed insight into Joe’s troubled mind, Victoria Pedretti, who plays Love Quinn, shares her personal take on Love’s erratic behavior.

“Her behavior is obviously a lot of extremes, but I think we find her relatable because she is programed… through the media, and schools… that teach us our roles as women,” she says, before noting that Love’s season three motivations come from “familial trauma,” “being deeply neglected” and a lack “of self-worth.”

Still, Pedretti believes that as problematic as Joe and Love may be, they both are “worthy” of “empathy and sympathy.”

“I think it’s valuable to try to understand people, at least a little bit,” she shares.

Season three of You is now available to stream on Netflix.