Comments by You actor Penn Badgley are the latest in a conservative move away from celebrating eroticism on-screen
Twitter may be slowly decaying, but it still finds a way to generate a minor *** panic. The latest micro-iteration blazing through one corner of the pop culture sphere: Penn Badgley, best known for playing Dan Humphrey on Gossip Girl and as the star of Netflix’s You, said that he no longer wished to act in *** scenes, citing fidelity to his wife. According to his podcast, Badgley asked You showrunner Sera Gamble for a reduction in intimate scenes in the show’s fourth season, which premiered last week; his character, the disarmingly bookish serial killer/love addict Joe Goldberg, still has *** in the new season but less so than in prior ones, and fully clothed.
Specific contractual clauses regarding intimacy on camera are not new – Julia Roberts is one of many actors who’ve said they’ll never do on-screen ******, for example. And Badgley is certainly entitled to his own boundaries. (A new Variety story connects his reluctance to film intimate scenes to his feelings of discomfort as a child actor.) But a segment of the Twittersphere’s extension of his personal logic into an argument against *** on-screen in general, and the conflation the professional performance of intimacy with individual fidelity, feels disturbingly puritanical. Some have expressed distaste at any on-screen ******, or asserted that most *** scenes are gratuitous, unnecessary and rife with issues of consent.
Be First to Comment