27 "You" Behind-The-Scenes Facts About Season 3 That Make This Show Even More Wild And Amazing
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There are MASSIVE spoilers ahead for You Season 3. So if you haven't finished the season, just bookmark this for later.
1.First, Dylan Arnold actually auditioned for Joe in season 1 and then Forty in season 2 before landing the role of Theo in season 3.
"My relationship with the show goes way back," Dylan explained. "I actually went to college with Elizabeth Lail, who played Guinevere Beck in the first season. So I’d seen the first few episodes, but it wasn’t until I got the audition for the third season that I went back and was like okay, let me watch the second season and get the tone of the show."
2.Tati Gabrielle originally turned down working on You simply because her agent couldn't reveal to her what the project was, and she wanted to take a bit of a break.
"In September or October of last year I was in Spain shooting another project," Tati explained. "I had fully intended, once I finished that project, to take a month off. But my agent said, 'They want you for this Greg Berlanti project.' I asked, 'What is it?' They couldn’t tell me so I said no."
3.Then, Tati's agent came back to her with the role and this time was able to reveal that they wanted her to do a chemistry read with Penn Badgley, so she knew right away it had to be for You Season 3.
Tati continued, saying, "Two weeks later, my agents came back again and said, 'They still really want you. All they want you to do is do a chemistry read with Penn Badgley.' And then I knew what it was. I said yes because I was a super big fan of the show."
4.One of the first things Shalita Grant and Travis Van Winkle, who play Sherry and Cary, learned about their characters was that they were going to be "the first caged couple" on the show.
Sherry explained how when they first met with Sera Gamble they were told, "We were going to be making history within the series as the first caged couple."
5.The You creators told Victoria Pedretti at her original audition that Love's story would only last two seasons, so it didn't come as a surprise when Love died in the Season 3 finale.
Showrunner Sera Gamble said, "We had a conversation with Victoria about it at her audition, that we had this idea for a two-season story with them. Things can always change, of course, and they do. We talked about everything."
6.While it wasn't always certain Love would die after her two-season run on the show, Victoria always had a feeling that it would have to end that way.
"I knew I wasn’t going to be on the show past two seasons, so I assumed that she would die," Victoria said. The writers did toy with other ways to say farewell to Love, but this obviously made the most sense.
7.The cast was given two scripts at a time while filming Season 3, so they all were surprised when they learned various surprises throughout the season.
Shalita Grant said, "I wish we got all the scripts at once so I’d have known. We block shot two episodes at a time because of the pandemic, so we got two scripts always."
8.However, at the beginning of each season, Penn Badgley asks the creators who dies in the final episode of the season, and he did the same thing for Season 3.
"There's always one person who dies at the end who is, like, key," Penn said. Meanwhile Tati Gabrielle didn't ask showrunner Sera Gamble because she wanted to be surprised.
9.Since You Season 3 filmed on the Warner Bros. Studios lot in California, Love's bakery A Fresh Tart was also used for Luke's Diner in Gilmore Girls.
The Warner Bros. backlot was also where Shameless, Friends, Pretty Little Liars, The Big Bang Theory, and many more shows were filmed. You can actually take the Warner Bros. Studios tour too.
10.The two most surprising plot twists for Tati Gabrielle were Love's death and when Love hits Theo and he falls down the stairs.
"I was very mind blown by that," Tati explained while talking about Love's death in the Season 3 finale. She also said, "[When she hurt] Theo. When I got to that, I was like, No! Not the kid. He's so innocent."
11.The decision to shockingly kill Natalie in the first episode of Season 3 was because the writers wanted to do the opposite of what fans would expect. Everyone thought Natalie would be Joe's obsession for a whole season, so they decided to kill her early.
Showrunner Sera Gamble explained, "With a show like this, where Season 1 was such a particular fun, twisty ride coming off of Caroline [Kepnes’] book, we really had to prove to you at the beginning of Season 2 that we would still be able to surprise you. We did a lot of stuff in Season 2 to try to do that. The conversation at the beginning of Season 3 was ‘What do you think would happen if you were a viewer?’ And it’s that Michaela would be in the whole season, so we were like, 'She's got to go in Episode 1.'"
12.Due to the fact that You Season 3 was filmed during the coronavirus pandemic, there were a lot of scenes that were cut or reworked so they wouldn't feature a ton of actors on set together.
"There were significant rewrites throughout the whole season to try and negotiate around these scenes that would require a lot of people," Penn Badgley said.
13.Penn Badgley and Victoria Pedretti said it felt very weird to be so close to each other while filming Joe and Love's sex scenes after spending the pandemic distancing from other people.
Victoria explained, "It's weird. We have a rapport. We played a couple before, but it didn't just immediately come back after being in a global pandemic."
14.Like in previous seasons, Penn Badgley records most of Joe's voiceovers before they've filmed the scenes, and he thinks of the voiceovers as separate from his performance.
Penn said, "I record the voiceover most of the time before we've shot it. I don't think about it when I'm shooting it how I did it then. Very rarely. They're two separate things and then they just lay on top of each other and work and just going to keep going."
15.Victoria Pedretti filmed Love's final moments a few days before wrapping the series, so for a while afterward she just played a dead body.
Victoria recounted her final days on set, saying, "The weird thing was that days after that, I was just a body. I was being moved around as a body. And so when [I] wrapped the show, I'd been dead for a couple of days, so it was kind of anticlimactic."
16.In fact, the very last moment Victoria filmed was a quick insert of Love simply placing the poison in a cabinet.
17.Victoria Pedretti said it was a "challenge" filming Love's death scene just because she didn't know anything about aconite and paralytics, so figuring out "how to act it out" was hard.
"It felt very unique and strange," Victoria began. "I didn't really understand how to act it out. I don't know anything about aconite and paralytics so there was a bit of a learning curve, but I was very excited to rise to the challenge."
18.Also, Penn Badgley said it was hard filming the moments when Joe was paralyzed on the floor because there was only so much acting he could do while lying still.
Penn hilariously explained, "The director would come up to me and she'd be like, 'I know this is a lot to ask. Can you just give a little more?' I'd sort of shrug my shoulders and be like, 'I mean, I'll try. I'll try to overcome the paralytic that's supposed to have taken me to the point that all of this is happening.' It was really strange. But I think it all plays."
19.Taylor Swift's "Exile" being used in the Season 3 finale proved to be the "perfect sad song" for Joe and Love, and the inspiration behind using it came from showrunner Sera Gamble listening to Folklore throughout the pandemic.
Sera said she felt like "Exile" encapsulated everything perfectly, so she asked You music supervisor Season Kent if they could try to get the song for the moment. "I'm sure Taylor Swift has no idea who I am," Sera began. "But in my small way, through the TV shows that I've been making for the last few years, I've been a little bit in conversation with her storytelling by bringing it into our storytelling, which is a beautiful thing that I get to do as part of my job."
20.While filming inside Joe and Love's infamous glass box, the crew would take down one wall in order to get the inside shots, but it's still a very claustrophobic space.
"When we would shoot, they would take one wall down," Shalita Grant began. "You’d think that’s making it bigger, but no, now it’s you, the other actor, three crew members, and a big camera."
21.In fact, Shalita Grant and Travis Van Winkle filmed all of Sherry and Cary's glass box scenes in "sequential order," which made it feel like they were performing a play.
"The cage stuff was so dope," Travis said. "We got to shoot that in sequential order, so we got to do, like, a mini play. When we were in that confined space, it's not an easy place to be. It was fun. I felt like we really got to live that."
22.Tati Gabrielle worked a lot with the writers to make sure Marienne's experience as a Black woman was coming across as authentically as possible. In fact, a few lines were changed per Tati's request.
In "Missing White Woman Syndrome," Tati said how Marienne's line originally read, "The rest of them have to fend for themselves," and she talked with the writers and had the line changed to "the rest of us..." Tati explained why the change was important, saying, "I requested to change it to 'us' because I was still in that conversation — I'm a Black woman as well... It was a small change but something I felt was very important and pertinent to keep solidarity within the community."
23.While a lot of characters die in You Season 3, at one point the writers were worried that Joe wasn't being "violent enough" based on what we'd seen him do in the previous two seasons.
Sera Gamble explained that the "body count seems high" for Season 3 because there are two people that are now killing. In fact, Sera said that it's not until we get to the middle of the season that "there's a body that we can fully attribute to [Joe]."
24.Travis Van Winkle said one of his "funnest moments on set" was filming the scene in Episode 8 where Cary stands in front of the mirror and tries to get Joe to join in on the fun.
"Self-love is a very important thing in life, and I don’t want to knock that down," Travis said. "There’s a moment where Cary wants Joe to love himself as much as Cary loves himself. It’s a teaching moment, and it was one of my funnest moments on set.”
25.If you look closely, you'll notice that Marienne wears a locket throughout You Season 3. Tati Gabrielle actually requested that a photo of Marienne's daughter Juliette be placed inside.
Tati explained why the locket was important to her creating Marienne, saying, "You'll see Marienne at several different points, specifically heightened points where she's anxious about her child or anxious about another child or being challenged or questioned on her motherhood, she'll fiddle with her necklace as an anxious tick."
26.When coming up with how Sherry would cover up her missing ear in the flash-forward, Shalita Grant immediately suggested bangs.
"We were having these conversations about how Sherry would cover up the fact that she only has one ear," Shalita explained. "I immediately thought, it’s bangs. It’s bay-yangs. Like, trauma bangs. In the hair-and-makeup trailer everyone was like, 'Yes! That’s exactly what it is.'"
27.And finally, Penn Badgley said that his conversations with showrunner Sera Gamble about Season 4 are the "most exciting so far," and he thinks next season will be "quite different."
"I think for the next season, my conversations with Sera are really, I think, the most exciting so far," Penn explained. "I think we're really going to get into [Joe's relationship with himself]. And the next season could be quite different. It really could be quite different."
More on You Season 3
15 Burning Questions I Need Answered After Finishing "You" Season 3Kayla Harrington · Oct. 25, 2021
11 Super-Smart Details In "You" That You Probably Missed That Foreshadow The Dramatic EndingNatasha Jokic · Oct. 20, 2021
Victoria Pedretti Said It Felt "Strange" To Film "You" Season 3 Sex Scenes With Penn BadgleyKelly Martinez · Oct. 27, 2021
Here's What The Cast Of "You" Looked Like In Their First Big Acting Roles Vs. NowMichele Bird · Oct. 27, 2021
