Why Joe's London Flat in "You" Looks So Lived-In, According to the Show’s Production Designer
Joe Goldberg’s musings in You continually offer insight into the fictional serial stalker’s actions. In the fourth season of the show—which was broken into two parts that are both now available to stream on Netflix—the character, played by Penn Badgley, is adamant about enjoying his “European holiday.” While this implies he’s only in London for a temporary vacation, the lived-in look of his flat paired with his new identity as Jonathan Moore suggests a permanent relocation is underway.
Why? Turns out it's not his apartment at all: “I pitched it quite early on that he was possibly taking over (the residence of) a Classics professor at the university, Darcy College,” the show’s production designer Kevin Phipps tells House Beautiful. “Basically it's an Airbnb in a way—you are living in somebody else's world.”
Joe's Flat
While Joe would probably have traveled light with a couple of treasured items for his trip, Phipps felt he should live in an enjoyable space with character and a slight backstory to it rather than a bland apartment. “I love this place—charm, built-in bookcases, a fireplace in every corner,” Joe thinks in the first episode. “All due respect, Williamsburg could never.”
The home is packed with details, some of which aren't even visible on-screen. “We did do a little bookbinding station where he would've carried on his deep passion of restoring books,” Phipps says of a nook off the dining room that’s outfitted with traditional bookbinding clamps, leather working tools, knives, and brushes.
There’s also a vinyl collection and a few Easter eggs hidden in the book titles as intellectual jokes requested by the show’s writers, which Phipps says he thinks likely “go over the head of 99 percent of the viewing audience.”
The mix of midcentury furniture and older objects, like “pictures on the wall of the Grand Tour where, historically, people would go around Europe and visit all the archeological and architectural sites and buy prints,” aims to make the home look like it was passed down through generations.
The Mews Setting
The flat itself is portrayed as a building on Kynance Mews in London’s South Kensington. The actual cobblestone street was created on a backlot at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden. Placing Joe in a mews house stemmed from the need for a rear window between his flat and Kate and Malcom’s apartment. “We wanted to create a view that was quite controlled between the two dwellings—you couldn't see half a dozen houses,” says Phipps, who did a ton of pictorial research on London architecture to find the right match.
A mews is a row of stables and coach houses with living quarters above them. They were built behind large London houses of the 17th and 18th centuries as a place for those owners to house their servants and horses. Today, they've been converted into houses. “We put Malcolm and Kate in the sort of grander building on the other side of the mews,” Phipps says. “Nowadays, (a mews house is) a very sort of trendy place to live, very sought after. Probably, the mews house would cost more than an apartment on the other side of the divide, so to speak.”
Kate and Malcom's Apartment
For Kate and Malcom’s apartment, the design leaned into the idea that the couple hired a decorator. “They'd paid for a backstory rather than (developing it) themselves,” Phipps says. “It wasn't something that had organically grown. And particularly, with Kate being in the art world, the artworks were quite heavily curated and chosen to reflect that part of her personality.”
Sundry House
Along with those apartments, Sundry House remains a fundamental set throughout the season. Inspired by modern-day member clubs like Soho House, the location acts as a multifunctional space for parties, business meetings, an art exhibition, and a wedding. Both the interiors and exterior were built at the studio. Phipps developed two versions of the club. The initial design took a more serious perspective, which felt too much like a hotel foyer to the show’s producers. To make it more fun, Phipps and his team brought in playful, animal-inspired art—a moose statue, a beaded zebra head from South Africa, and large gold beetles on the walls. Patterned fabrics, bold colors, and layers of gold solidify the eclectic look.
Sundry House’s wedding transformation included “about 50 lava lamps all bubbling away,” Phipps says. That drastic makeover also employed tons of iridescent mirrors, faux floral arrangements, decorative desserts, hanging records and umbrellas, and even a British flag-inspired moose statue.
Lady Phoebe's Country House
Of course, another standout set of the season is Lady Phoebe's country house. Since filming took place at the historic Knebworth House, there were restraints and measures taken to preserve the state of the home. Some moments required the production team to strip out the real furniture in the building and bring their own in. But if you plan to visit and take a tour, you might be shocked. “The two bedrooms, Kate and Joe's bedrooms, are not actually connected to each other,” Phipps reveals of the rooms, which are actually on opposite sides of the building and were made to look like they connected through the magic of editing. “In reality, the connecting doors bleed into a bathroom for both rooms.”
With intricate sets, idyllic filming locations, and an unexpected plot twist, You's fourth season certainly packed a punch. If a fifth season follows, it'll be hard to top!
You love set design. So do we. Let’s obsess over it together.
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