35 Things You Didn't Know About You

Though You eventually ended up on Netflix via Lifetime, it was originally optioned by Showtime. Way back in 2015, Deadline announced the news, but Showtime ended up passing on the series. Nevertheless, it feels as though You has found its rightful home on Netflix.

You may have found its audience through Netflix, but when it first aired on Lifetime, it failed to set viewing figures alight. Per Deadline, Lifetime had initially renewed You for a second season before the first even aired, but when it didn't generate the expected audience, the channel pulled the plug. Luckily, Netflix was already on board for international distribution and stepped in with a second season renewal.

It's hard to imagine anyone else playing bookstore manager-turned-serial killer Joe Goldberg, but Gossip Girl's Penn Badgley was unsure about taking the role at first. As he told i News, "I was on the fence, thinking, you know, 'I wish you guys well, I hope you find someone. But I'm not sure I wanna do this.' For six months out of the year, for potentially six years. That's the way television is. It's a very different life from movies."

It's undeniable that most of the women in You meet unfortunate ends. Actress Elizabeth Lail, who plays Beck, told Radio Times of her character's awful fate, "The unfortunate thing is, the woman doesn't win in the end. And I'm so sick and tired of that."

Penn Badgley has made it clear that he doesn't like the character he plays. He explained to Digital Spy, "There's a lot I don't enjoy about him." He continued, "To be honest, I don't enjoy nearly everything about him."

But as an actor, Badgley finds a challenge in playing Joe: "It ends up being a deep, deep psychological exploration for me. And it seems to bear fruit. There's a lot about him that I struggle with and yet I'm always trying to humanize him as much as possible."

Caroline Kepnes, the creator of Joe Goldberg, told i News, "There's a level of denial, you don't really know what you're writing." She continued, "I remember when I wrote You and someone first referred to Joe as a serial killer I argued, 'He's not a serial killer, he meets these terrible people and has these awful thoughts, but he's very sensitive.'"

At some point, though, Kepnes faced the facts. "It's very strange to realize you have written a serial killer. When people talk about how awful he is, I feel more protective of him. It also makes me want to torture him a bit more," she said.

Having been dropped by Lifetime on account of not securing enough viewers, You proved it could be a major hit. Per Variety, You was only "quietly drawing in an average of 612,000 viewers per episode last fall on basic cable." But when it moved to Netflix, Variety exclusively "learned that 43 million households completed all of Season 1 of You on Netflix." Read: a huge hit for the streaming service.

In an interview with Refinery29, author Caroline Kepnes said of Peach Salinger, "I wanted her to have a name that would be kind of annoying. I also thought peaches were perfect because they're ripe and delicious, and then they're spoiled, poison, they attract flies, they can make you sick."

And as for that Salinger connection: "I thought of her as a third cousin, maybe a fourth cousin. To me, she has all the wealth and security, but she would be a different person if it had been a maternal relation and it wasn't a name."

There's a reason that Peach Salinger is so stylish. The actress that plays her, Shay Mitchell, told Glamour, "I learnt that I much prefer wearing heels over tennis shoes from being on Pretty Little Liars where my hair, make-up, and wardrobe was pretty minimal. I actually loved dressing up like Peach, wearing heels and clothes. I bought so many of my own bags to New York and worked with the costume designer on producing this look. A lot of the clothes are mine, too."

If you wondered whether the bookstore Joe works in, Mooney's, really existed, then you're in luck. Brick Underground reported that Mooney's is actually a store called Logos in Manhattan: "Not only was the façade of his Yorkville store filmed, the front interior was also featured. And while the shop actually does have a basement where 'all sorts of things are stored,' it's safe to say there is no cage for human captives in it."

Just as Joe moved from New York to Los Angeles for Season 2, apparently, the serial killer could end up somewhere new in future seasons. "The third book, which remains as yet untitled, sees Joe move again, this time to a small island where he can start afresh," i News reported.

Discussing the third book, which she's currently writing, Caroline Kepnes told i News, "It's got a very low murder rate. He moves there for love reasons, for the greater good. But then he discovers there are no murders because they're all too co-dependent. It was an exciting challenge to figure out how to kill people in a place where there's so much intimacy in the community."

Ambyr Childers, who plays Candace on the show, revealed that she wasn't surprised by the brutal events in Season 2. As she told CNet, "This is not a show about unicorns and rainbows. This is a show about a man killing and murdering and torturing people."

Playing a prolific serial killer takes its toll on a person. And having inhabited a soul as dark as Joe Goldberg, Penn Badgley is adamant that fans shouldn't be idolizing him. When fans began tweeting at Badgley in lust, he was quick to shut down their inappropriate crushes.

One fan wrote, "Kidnap me pls," to which Badgley replied, "No thx." When another suggested that the killer was cute, the actor replied, "A: He is a murderer." So stop crushing on Joe, okay?

The reason fans feel compelled to binge You is partly because the book has the very same quality. Co-creator Sera Gamble told Awards Daily, "Greg Berlanti sent me the book originally. He told me for him the experience of reading the book was like binging an addictive TV show. He said, 'Call me back if you feel the same.' I thought his assessment of it was totally right."

Fans of the series will be well aware that Candace surprises Joe in his bookstore at the end of Season 1, but that's not the case in Caroline Kepnes's novel. Instead, Joe meets a new woman, named Amy Adam, after he kills Beck, via Entertainment Weekly. Viewers will catch that nod to the book's original ending, as we now know that Candace calls herself Amy Adam in Season 2 of the show.

It's hard to imagine You Season 2 without Ellie, Delilah's feisty younger sister who consistently challenges Joe. In fact, the serial killer sees something of himself in Ellie and feels an urge to protect her from sexual predators like the comedian Henderson. But she's simply a creation for the TV show, and readers of Hidden Bodies will be surprised to find she's missing in action.