Who decided it was okay to turn serial killers into objects of desire? According to Penn Badgley, who plays a sexy serial killer on Netflix’s You, part of the blame falls on the shoulders of Netflix itself.
While acknowledging that Joe Goldberg, the fictional murderer he plays on You, is written to be attractive to audiences, Badgley doesn’t mince words regarding how the streamer has romanticised real-life killers like Jeffrey Dahmer. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Badgley said that anyone who finds themselves drawn to serial killer characters should first look inward for why that might be. But, he added, that doesn’t excuse how these characters are portrayed to audiences.
“To be fair, with our show, you’re meant to fall in love with [Joe]. That’s on us,” Badgley said. “Ted Bundy? That’s on you. Jeffrey Dahmer? That is on—Netflix. That is squarely on the shoulders of Netflix.” He added, “I don’t have answers at this point—I do, but they’re long. Yeah, it’s weird, man.”
Ryan Murphy’s Dahmer series on Netflix generated a huge amount of backlash when it first premiered for how it was perceived as romanticising the killer. Some people tweeted that they found themselves attracted to Dahmer, as played by Evan Peters, while others on Twitter explicitly called out those who were tempted to turn the killer into some kind of sex symbol. Before the Dahmer series, Penn Badgley himself became one of the first public figures to critique the impulse to lust after TV murderers.
In 2019, Badgley went viral for responding to thirst tweets about his You character, Joe. “A: He is a murderer,” he quote-tweeted one. When a commenter asked what they’re supposed to do if he’s just hot, he responded, “Then we got nothing left. ‘Thanks 2019 but we’ll take the check plz’ – Humanity.”
This story was originally published by GLAMOUR (US).