Based on Caroline Kepnes' best-selling novel of the same name, YOU is a 21st century love story that asks, 'What would you do for love?' When a brilliant bookstore manager crosses paths with an aspiring writer, his answer becomes clear: anything. Using the internet and social media as his tools to gather the most intimate of details and get close to her, a charming and awkward crush quickly becomes obsession as he quietly and strategically removes every obstacle - and person - in his way.
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Penn Badgley has openly connected Joe Goldberg to his old Gossip Girl character Dan Humphrey, calling Joe a warped version of what Dan might have become. He's pointed out that Dan always saw himself as an outsider looking in on privilege, when in reality he was already firmly on the inside the whole time.
Netflix actually crunched the numbers on this one. Across just the first two seasons, the word 'you' is spoken 3,857 times, largely thanks to Joe's endless second-person inner monologues aimed at whoever he's currently fixated on. Season one alone accounts for 241 uses in the opening run of episodes.
For the season one scene where Beck falls onto the subway tracks and Joe jumps down after her, Elizabeth Lail and Penn Badgley had to complete an eight-hour MTA safety course beforehand. They came away with real transit cards certifying them to legally be down on the tracks, essentially the same training given to trainee train conductors.
Before Lifetime picked it up, You was actually developed with Showtime in mind. Showrunner Sera Gamble has said the earliest draft just didn't line up with Showtime's vision for the show, and that Lifetime ended up being a better creative fit despite it not being the obvious home for a story this dark.
The final season deliberately loops back to New York, with key scenes shot around Central Park, Tavern on the Green and the Bleecker Street subway station, the same borough where Joe's very first obsession began. Production even filmed a sequence at the old Joliet Prison in Illinois, using the crumbling building as a stand-in for Joe finally facing his past.
