Penn Badgley and “You” showrunner Sera Gamble spoke publicly together for the first time about their conversation on intimacy scenes on the Stitcher Studios podcast, “Podcrushed”.
Joined by his fellow hosts Sophie Ansari and Nava Kavelin, Badgley discussed previously asking Gamble to “do no more intimacy scenes” in season 4 of the hit show because “fidelity in every relationship, including my marriage, is important to me.”
Gamble said during the latest episode of the podcast: “It was not a very difficult conversation for me, honestly. Like first of all, nobody was saying ‘I refuse to do something.’
“We were both just saying like, my job in that conversation was just to like pinpoint exactly what you were asking for and what was making you uncomfortable. And, there’s a big difference, for example, between saying, ‘I have a problem with the content of the show you’re writing’ and ‘I’m having this issue around my own performance, what my job is demanding that I do specifically with my body.’
“And I just don’t think that’s a very complicated conversation for us to have because I’m not, we’re not in the business of saying, strip down and touch someone if you know that’s not what you wanna do.”
Badgley responded, “Yeah, that actually brings up how it’s also not common. It’s like, one thing I’ve said too is like when people bring up, ‘well, what about murder?’ It’s like, guys, I’m not murdering anybody.
“At the end of the day, there’s something that you can’t simulate, which is physical touch. It just comes down to that. It’s like, not everybody has to do this in their job. I caught up on the negative feedback way after the fact, and then I was like, ‘oh, okay.’ But people love to state so clearly as though they’ve experienced this, like, why don’t you just do your job?”
Gamble continued: “Well, everybody’s, you know, we’re not all the same. There’s stuff I won’t write, so I don’t take those jobs. For example, if you were like, how about a little right wing propaganda? We’ll pay you really, really well, right? I don’t know. I have lines.
“But, it doesn’t matter what the actor next to you is comfortable with, they may feel a completely different way about kissing. They may think it’s not the same, which is fine because that’s their, you know. But, the two people in that conversation are me and you. We’re making the show together. We were many years into it at this point. And it’s just like, let me understand. My job is just let me understand the parameters and then come back with a plan.”
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‘You’ Star Penn Badgley On ‘Disturbing Aspect Of Hollywood’, Chooses Fidelity Over Intimate Scenes
After his comments hit headlines earlier this year, Badgley insisted in an interview with British GQ that they’d been “blown out of proportion.”
The “Gossip Girl” star shared, “What I was speaking about wasn’t actually the final product.
“It was sort of like the culture inherent to the production of all movies, but particularly those scenes. It’s like, look, we know that Hollywood has had a history of flagrant exploitation and abuse.”
