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Penn Badgley infamously swore off sex scenes before the production of “You” Season 4, revealing on a viral episode of his “Podcrushed” podcast in Feb. 2013 that he told showrunner Sera Gamble he was no longer interested
in filming intimate scenes on camera. The actor then told Variety later that same month that “it’s important to me in my real life to not have” sex scenes, clarifying: “My fidelity in my relationship. It’s important to me.”
Cut to more than three years later and Badgley’s wife, Domino Kirke-Badgley, is speaking out after spending all this time being accused online of blocking her husband from doing sex scenes. When Badgley cited his marriage as a reason he did not want to act in sex scenes anymore, social media was quick to come for Kirke-Badgley, even though Penn had cited her as the reason he even accepted the lusty lead role in “You” in the first place.
“A few years ago, the internet decided I’d asked my husband to stop doing sex scenes. The truth is, my husband decided to do this for mental health reasons,” Kirke-Badgley wrote on Instagram. “After working in the industry since he was just 12 years old, believe me, it was time. In the entertainment world, they call actors ‘puppets’ behind their backs, and it’s even more disturbing when they start out as child actors… after years of trying, Penn decided to take a stand and let the world see him. And guess what, he hasn’t lost fans and he’s still getting hired!”
“The characters that my husband has played over the years, people have come to expect that he will continue to play that guy,” she added in the video post. “I was super happy for him and very proud of him because I understood how major it was, and yeah … it’s just relational hygiene.”
Badgley has been married since 2017 to Kirke-Badgley, who “encouraged” him to play Joe on “You” even though the part required him to film various sex scenes.
“There’s almost nothing I could say with more consecration. That aspect of Hollywood has always been very disturbing to me — and that aspect of the job, that mercurial boundary — has always been something that I actually don’t want to play with at all,” Badgely told Variety in 2023. “I told [Sara Gamble before Season 4] kind of my desire, and she immediately was accepting and responsive. I’m always very practical. I said I know it can’t be none, because there’s something coded into the DNA of the show, and I signed the contract, and so it is what it is but as little as possible would be my preference.”
There were fewer sex scenes in “You” Season 4, and all of them were performed fully clothed as a result of Badgley speaking up. The actor’s initial comments earned a polarizing response online, with his detractors criticizing him for equating sex scenes with real sex. Many of Badgley’s critics pointed out that intimacy coordinators are now a staple in Hollywood so that sex scenes remain safe during filming. He later told GQ magazine that his comments got “blown out of proportion.”
“What I was speaking about wasn’t actually the final product,” Badgley said. “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.”
Badgley said he was “nervous to even have that conversation” with “You” showrunner Sera Gamble, adding, “It was not easy. It was easy because of Sera’s response, and I felt relieved. But technically speaking, if I thought I’d had the ability to set that boundary earlier, I would have. We shall see if setting that boundary, of course, has any ramifications. Just simply, it does limit the number of projects you can be a part of.”
Next up for Badgley is the romantic comedy “You Deserve Each Other,” co-starring Meghann Fahy.
