Gwenhwyfar Frazier
Netflix’s official TikTok has recently shared two delightfully creepy clips—and they’re not for feature films. They might easily be called “horror comedy,” though.
Both clips star Penn Badgley “dueting” with fans of his Netflix show You, the third season of which just dropped in October. Badgley uses the duet to fulfill TikTokers’ requests that he narrate their videos—in character as the homicidal, misogynistic stalker Joe Goldberg.
Both videos show fans engaging in mundane activities; one is rinsing a vintage sweater out in a sink, while the other is perusing the manga section of a bookstore. Badgley, who appears to be improvising his monologues, narrates each video as though Joe is stalking each TikToker. He pulls familiar phrases from the actual show, including the signature line Joe utters each time he chooses a new victim: “Hello, you.”
In the second video, which has been viewed almost 11 million times, Badgley-as-Joe comments from afar (but, you know, not that far) on TikToker Kasey’s manga selections. Notice how Badgley’s smooth baritone voice in the video’s introduction turns creaky and creepy and just a little froggy as he slips into the character of Joe. The video has two million likes, and counting.
Badgley has been very vocal in the past about not wanting fans of the show to romanticize his character (who is a violent, abusive, misogynistic serial killer). Season One of the dark thriller deliberately made the point that society trains both men and women to think of controlling, obsessive behavior as a symptom of love, though it’s actually a symptom of dominance and abuse.
Right before Joe kills her at the end of Season One, Beck ruminates on the fact that she grew up receiving the message that a man who really loves her will make her his entire world, and cling to her obsessively—like the Beast, from Beauty and the Beast, he’ll want to lock her into a castle with him. However, the man who’s done that to her now is about to end her life.
Perhaps in an effort to seem like he disapproves of Joe’s stalking, Badgley slips a bit of comic relief into his ad-libbed monologue in the TikTok video, highlighting the inappropriateness.
“You search volume by volume—carefully. You’re particular,” he says of Kasey, then adding, “I can see that, ’cause I’m, like, three feet away from you!”
After that brief aside, he returns to Full Joe, asking, “What fantasy are you envisioning in your head right now? What manga is drawing your perfect life? I have to know.”
You was just renewed for a fourth season, and fans are thoroughly enjoying the TikTok antics as they begin the long and arduous wait for the new season’s release, which will hopefully occur next year.