Hey, you. The fifth and final season of the Netflix hit show You is out, so we spoke to Penn Badgley (Joe), Charlotte Ritchie (Kate), Madeline Brewer (Brontë), Anna Camp (Reagan/Maddie), and Griffin Matthews (Teddy) about the very wild ride the finale took us on. 
Taylor Miller / BuzzFeed
Here’s what we learned (massive spoilers ahead, obviously):
1. Frankie DeMaio, the child actor who plays Henry, was given a different version of the script, which had no swear words and reduced violence. He won’t be watching the show. 
Netflix Griffin, who is also a father, said he hung out a lot with Frankie’s parents on set. “We tried to build a relationship with him and to feel safe, because the show is very dark. Honestly, I think he’s really smart, so he did a really good job of knowing this is action and this is real life.”
2. Penn is not the kind of actor who spends all day in character as Joe — he’ll usually just take a second before a scene starts to get worked up into the red-faced, vein-popping state. 
Netflix “At this point, I don’t have to put a lot into it in terms of preparation. When you’ve been doing any role this long, it does become pretty much like second nature. It’s going from zero to 100 constantly, all day, often. Some of the things I do just to stay ready are about halfway through the season, I often start eating quite light and usually go somewhat vegetarian, because I’m having to run all day. I just crank my nervous system before we go,” Penn explained.
3. Before shooting, the cast met up for a picnic in Williamsburg (apart from Penn, who had a scheduling issue). Nobody came over to say that they recognized them. 
Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images “Griffin brought the most beautiful charcuterie,” Charlotte said, with the man himself noting his “dad energy.” Other more social activities included the cast watching the eclipse on the rooftop of their studio in Queens.
4. Meanwhile, on one shoot inside a building in the West Village, the street outside was suddenly full of You fans. It’s not super clear how they found out about the filming inside. 
Taylor Miller / BuzzFeed Griffin recalled, “Penn and I were walking from the trailers to set, and a police officer stopped him and said, ‘Dude, my wife loves you from You and Gossip Girl, can we get a picture?'”
5. Playing Maddie impacted Anna’s self-esteem to the point where one day she became paranoid that Charlotte was mad at her. 
Clifton Prescod/Netflix Anna said of switching between the two, “When I came in and I was Reagan, balls to the wall, hair tied back, all in black, she was confident, she knew what she was doing — I felt great. I felt really good on set. When I would have to switch, Maddie has very low self-esteem, and she just doesn’t feel at all confident. I had a moment with Charlotte where I was like, ‘Did I do something wrong?’ And she was like, ‘Anna, I think that’s just you feeling like the person.'”
6. Anna helped cast her double, Sarah Helbringer, who would act alongside Anna as one of the twins in shots where her face wasn’t visible. 
Netflix “She was phenomenal and learned every line perfectly. She got my tonality and inflection. We had a dinner party scene, and she would be watching where I pick up the wine glass, so that way, when they turned around and were shooting over her onto me as the other character, the coverage would match. So she was very, very, very attuned to everything I was doing, and became a really great friend of mine. My performance is half of hers,” Anna explained.
7. And Griffin requested that his on-screen husband be Black, as he’s always had white actors play his television spouses. 
Netflix He explained, “My personal life is interracial. But I thought it’s interesting: Teddy grew up there in Harlem, that is what his life was. He got thrown into this situation. The way you cast, even with race, tells people a different story about what he’s had to live through, and how much they don’t know.”
8. Charlotte initially “judged” Kate for being so cold, and noted that she used “Joe as a physical manifestation of her own redemption.” 
Clifton Prescod/Netflix “I really enjoyed opening up Kate,” she said. “Joe’s like a mirror for her, so she can stay good. And she thinks, if he stays good, then she can stay good — but in terms of resources, she’s so very much in charge.”
9. The script would be changed based on Griffin and Charlotte’s input in order to make their characters sound more authentic from Harlem and England, respectively. 
Clifton Prescod/Netflix Griffin and Charlotte had many conversations about the role of race and class in their characters, with the former noting, “People of color wear two faces. We know how to do that, so he could not be the same person outside of the company as he was inside the company.”
10. And Charlotte has looked up fan theories about the show’s ending on Reddit, spotting a few that were right on the money. 
Clifton Prescod/Netflix She’s been most pleased by the community’s investment in the show’s side characters, explaining, “There’s such depth to some of the analysis. It’s pretty impressive and nice to know that those details don’t go unnoticed.”
11. Penn was 30 when he took the role of Joe — and now he’s about to turn 40. The cultural shifts in how we talk about gender-based violence have impacted how he talks about the character in the press. 
Courtesy of Netflix While recent news hasn’t affected how he approaches playing Joe, Penn said of playing him post-#MeToo, “It’s been influencing ever more the way I think about just the implications of playing a character like this, becoming a more infamous protagonist, or just a famous protagonist. I’m just always encouraged more and more to try and invest everybody’s experience of the show with as much meaning as possible by the way we speak about it in places like this. So yes, I think about it more. But ultimately, it’s not changed the way I’m approaching a role.”
12. To film her scenes, Tati Gabrielle had to fly back and forth between New York and Winnipeg as she was also working on The Last of Us. 
Netflix Madeline said that working with Tati on that emotional scene in Mooney’s was one of her “favorite scenes,” especially as she was a “huge fan of the show” going into it. “Episode 9 is so magnificent in its representation of gaslighting and manipulation, and then the ways in which we can overcome it through friendship and community,” Madeline explained, likening Marienne to a “ghost” who is able to see into Brontë’s future.
13. For the sequence when Mooney’s burns down, Charlotte wasn’t actually near any real fire. 
Netflix She explained, “Luckily, my participation in the fire was mainly bright, flashing red and weirdly green, and a haze machine. I had recently had quite a bad stomach bug, so I was already half not there.”
14. The final episode took 16 days to film, with both intimacy and stunt coordinators joining the “heavily choreographed” sequence. 
Netflix Madeline said of filming the mixture of sex and violence, “I think we both advocate for ourselves well, as well as know how to respect each other and respect ourselves and so it was great.”
15. The finale was also mostly shot in sequence, with stunt doubles taking on the most dangerous tasks. 
Netflix Madeline explained, “We did as much as we safely could. We shot a lot of it in sequence, because there was a lot of blood and scrapes, and then we had to be soaking wet. I think that was important for building up to this final moment.”
16. Penn thinks the show purposefully “withheld the audience” from seeing Joe “explicitly as a sexual predator” until the final episode. 
Netflix Penn said, “Finally, in Episode 10, you see it. I think the question the viewers are asking themselves is, ‘Oh, did I need to see that after all this time in order to really believe he is who he is? Why was it so important for me to finally see him viscerally, tangibly, doing the thing that I always know that he’s done in order for me to accept he’s crossed the line?'”
17. Despite the heaviness of the topic, Madeline and Penn agreed that they found moments of levity and “laughed a lot” throughout those final scenes, which wound up being more graphic without the lighting effects. As such, Penn found it especially difficult to act as if he was punching Madeline’s face. 
Netflix “All the terrible things he’s done, we’ve withheld the audience from seeing, and therefore I’ve been withheld from having to viscerally enact a punch to [Madeline’s] face,” Penn said. “It’s incredible that it’s taken this long to see him do this, because again, guys, first season, masturbates on the street in front of her window, strangles her at the end.”
18. There’s one line that Madeline thinks sums up the show: 
Netflix “I think we all ultimately want to believe that, like, good partners, good men, good people can exist,” Madeline said. “It’s so succinct, it so perfectly encapsulates why we keep forgiving this man, as an audience, as the women.”
19. Penn thinks the last lines of the show have a double meaning depending on whether or not you take them literally. 
Netflix “If Joe is real, then he’s just skirting blame, as he always is, even if he’s on to something. But let’s remember Joe isn’t real, so all it could be is us. Any show is about something that’s socially relevant. Otherwise, it wouldn’t resonate. This show is about misconceptions of love and what roles masculinity plays in that, or femininity, or anything in between,” Penn said.
20. And that Joe couldn’t have ended the show in the box, as he tends to wind up there every season. 
Taylor Miller / BuzzFeed Penn said on the ending, “I think most people a few years ago would have said, ‘Oh, it’s going to be in the box.’ Some woman, some badass, will take him down and put him in the box. Well, actually, that happens every season. And then he gets out. That isn’t where he does his worst work. He does his worst work in the bedroom, and that’s where he gets caught. He gets caught with his pants down in the bedroom, and he’s deconstructed as a romantic icon, very explicitly and specifically. He’s not a serial killer. Yes, he does that serially, but that’s not what this show is about. It’s not about serial killers, and it’s never been a clinical portrait of them.”
Thanks for talking to us! You Season 5 is now available on Netflix.
