Actor Penn Badgley suffers for his popular character in the series You (stalker and murderer Joe Goldberg), facing the premiere of its fourth season, this Thursday 9 February on Netflix. In an exclusive interview with clarion, the 36-year-old actor teases: “If I were Joe, I’d be like ‘Why can’t I relax?’ Your big new challenge is going to be seeing yourself and being able to say to yourself, ‘That You it’s you'”.

Penn Badgley genuinely smiles at the Zoom screen in front. He has a dark beard and slightly overgrown wavy hair, just like Joe Goldberg in season four of You: addiction, dark and global fury. Badgley is from Baltimore, USA. But this haunting and bloodthirsty protagonist he’s been playing since 2018 will flee to London after the corpses he left behind. And you will discover new ones.

The first five episodes of this fourth season will be released this Thursday 9 and the remaining five on March 9. The news is that Joe Goldberg will not be the first guilty of the London crimes. Another killer (or assassin) is killing some frivolous young millionaires. Without predicting it, the criminal star of You will have become an amateur detective looking for someone to leave him secret messages in London.

Who will beat who? In order to leave his traumas behind (and the corpses of the third season), Joe now calls himself Jonathan Moore and works as a professor of literature at Oxford. Thus, Joe-Jonathan will meet a select group of rich men and women who will not have time to harass and kill. Another (or another) is doing it for him. Will they discover the true identity of Joe Goldberg?

“Try to be a good man”

-Penn, do you think this season is the best of all?

-Mmmm, I think it has the potential to be. I haven’t watched all four seasons back to back to tell. I think this fourth season is going to be the best yet. But I’m really curious to see what the public thinks about it.

-What do you love and hate about the way Joe behaves in London?

– Joe is always himself. All the while he tries not to be and not to hurt anyone. To get out of any of those possible situations. What I appreciate about Joe Goldberg is that he tries, now, to be a good man. But I hate him too, because he is unreliable and violent.

-Joe is a better detective than a murderer?

-He’s a good detective. He is intelligent and thinks quickly. But he is not a very good nor a very efficient assassin. For example, he is clumsy at hiding evidence. So Joe is probably a better detective than a killer. He’s not good at both at the same time.

Fascinated by a killer?

With the sure success of the fourth season of YouThanks to the morbidity of seeing one stalker pitted against another, questions about how problematic it is to be fascinated by Joe Goldberg will return.

It is not Cold: he is a bloodthirsty being. But you will not have time to regret it. You will have to solve the mystery of the killer on the loose in London, like in a classic Agatha Christie detective story. The famous “whodunit” (who did it): find out who kills the others in a closed group.

Unlike Joe Goldberg, actor Penn Badgley takes it easy. listen to the questions clarion and resumes the analysis of the fourth season of You.

“I always get a verbal introduction to the script before I read it,” Badgley reveals. I think they took the storyline to the only place it could go to make the show evolve. Joe may not evolve, but the show is moving forward.”

-What is your favorite scene from the fourth season?

I think my favorite scenes are the ones I shared with actor Ed Speleers who plays writer Rhys Montrose and Charlotte Ritchie who plays Kate. I have to do different things with them playing Joe than he ever did himself.

Penn Badgley named the two most original characters, aside from him, that were added to this season. You seems to have found a new narrative efficacy in this English detective story in the style of Agatha Christie. The suspicions and anxiety that viewers will experience will be the guarantee of the serial marathon.

Rhys Montrose (Ed Speelers) is a best-selling writer whose memoirs lifted him out of poverty. He will be an inspiration to Joe Goldberg. He will be very happy whenever they talk about literature, morality, London society and these strange rich young men that he observes and observes fascinated. What makes Rhys Montrose so interesting?

The other addition, Kate, is played by Charlotte Ritchie (an English comedienne, famous for the series Ghosts). She will play Joe Goldberg’s romantic interest: gallery owner and art curator, short dark hair and a passive-aggressive attitude. Will Kate be the real shadow killer?

Every scene between Penn Badgley and Charlotte Christie is an acting delight. The sexual tension between her characters supports the renewed seductive power of You on a par with the police “yellow”. And the other friends of the millionaire circle in danger are almost archetypes of idiocy: a fake influencer, a fake artist, an insecure fetishist, the enigmatic oriental. They will all be suspects.

In counterbalance, another new character will also shine, Nadia (played by Amy-Leigh Hickman). She is one of Joe’s literature students, and who advises him on police codes similar to those of Agatha Christie. Or is it really Nadia who wants to see everyone dead? What is the motive for London’s crimes?

It will take Joe Goldberg some time to focus the investigation, since he continues to cry – and in the throes of trauma – from the terrible events he himself caused in season 3 (Spoiler alert!). After killing his crazed wife Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti), he faked his own death and fled to Europe, obsessed with African-American librarian Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle).

Joe has traveled to Paris to stalk her, but it’s best not to anticipate what will happen to Marienne.

Since he was being followed from the United States, he decided to hide his identity and go by the name Jonathan Moore. Give yourself a new chance. “I don’t want to kill again. I want to redeem myself,” reiterates his off-screen voice: that low and constant whisper in the ears of the spectators. To kill or not to kill yet? this will be the dilemma that Joe Goldberg will have to face.

-Penn, were you a mystery reader?

-No, they never interested me much. I’m not the kind of guy for crime thrillers. But unlike Joe, I don’t think there is a lesser form of literature. I like mystery, yes, but I prefer less obscure mysteries.