‘You’ Shows Viewers How a Fragile Ego Can Lead to Madness
Preview
If Caroline Kepnes’s 2014 page-turner You, about obsession and online stalking, scared readers into changing their passwords, this unsettling adaptation will likely spark a social-media shutdown.
Gossip Girl’s Penn Badgley stars as Joe Goldberg, a New York City bookstore manager who’s instantly smitten with a customer named Beck (Elizabeth Lail). At first, “he does what you or I might do,” says executive producer Sera Gamble (The Magicians). “He Googles her, looks into her social media, walks by her yoga studio. Then cut to: He’s sneaking into her apartment.”
Joe crosses every line imaginable to control Beck and isolate her from her best friend, Peach (Pretty Little Liars’ Shay Mitchell), providing a chilling look at how toxic masculinity and a fragile ego can lead to madness.
“There’s truth to those stories you hear,” Gamble notes of the timely theme. “Men are afraid they’ll get laughed at, while women are afraid they’ll be murdered.”
You, Series Premiere, Sunday, September 9, 10/9c, Lifetime
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