Penn Badgley Criticizes Netflix For Glamorizing Serial Killers – Looper

In anticipation of “You” Season 4 Part 2, which premieres March 9, 2023, Entertainment Tonight recently asked Badgley for his thoughts on people who develop hopeless, all-consuming crushes on serial killers. As per usual, the actor didn’t shy away from taking some of the blame for that.

“Now to be fair … With our show, you’re meant to fall in love with him,” he said. “That’s on us.” In fact, Badgley had already expounded on some of those mechanisms in his 2020 InStyle interview. “There are times where Joe is so impossibly sympathetic and even honest and brave,” he said at the time. “Sometimes he’s the exact perfect balance between chivalrous and allowing his partner to be autonomous and empowered.”

But the actor also didn’t mince words with Entertainment Tonight when it came to discussing the viewing public’s crushes on other real-life serial killers whose stories were dramatized on Netflix. “Ted Bundy? That’s on you,” he said to fans, before adding, “Jeffrey Dahmer? That is on Netflix. That is squarely on the shoulder of Netflix.” Badgley was, of course, referring to the movie “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” and the series “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” the former of which starred Zac Efron as Bundy and the latter of which starred Evan Peters as Dahmer. Both premiered on Netflix, and both — like “You” — arguably glamorized their serial killer protagonists. But neither series featured a star willing to tell his fans not to love him, and for that reason, those other fans may be lost forever.