[bright music]

Hello, I’m Penn Badgley. Welcome to the set of You.

Let’s take a tour.

[bright music]

[graphics buzzing]

[graphics buzzing]

[graphics buzzing]

Welcome to Mooney’s Bookstore.

And here we have, oh my goodness,

we’ve discovered our first Easter egg.

This is Madeline Brewer.

Hello.

She plays a character whose name I guess we can reveal.

It’s Bronte.

What’s your name?

It’s, uh, Bronte.

No, it’s not.

I know.

Um, anyway-

This cash register, this season, doesn’t work.

The first season, it did and I had to learn how to use it.

This is a really lovely message.

Hate has no business here, however, Joe Goldberg does.

So I don’t know, take that for what you want.

This was recreated from the first season.

This is not a real bookstore.

This is not even a real ladder.

I don’t think it could scarcely support my weight

but I will try it.

Ooh.

It’s so canned. That was just foolish of you.

[laughs] Yeah.

So you’ll notice here that we have subjects, titles here.

However, each and every single book is real.

So every book in the shelf,

every book in the environment is a real book.

Most of them purchased from used book wholesalers.

And we actually even sorted some of them into categories

so that the right books were in the right section.

[Penn] You searched the books fiction F through K.

Where we had specific books that were gonna be featured,

it was required actually that we create our own book jackets

and our own graphics and our own titles and our own authors.

It feels very real upon first entrance.

And then you realize after a bit

that it is covered in fake dust,

which is worse than real dust.

And everything feels kind of flimsy.

So there’s something about being here

that at once is very real and very fake just a little bit.

I disagree because I watched the first season of the show

and was obsessed with Mooney’s

’cause it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.

To walk in for the first time with like fog in the air,

going through the lights, it’s like gorgeous.

Something can be gorgeous and flimsy I think.

It’s like, you know, that ladder.

Right.

It’s like me. I’m gorgeous and flimsy.

Exactly.

Season five would be also in New York as season one was.

So it was important to really familiarize myself,

assemble the information, the drawings,

which were brilliant.

If I were a patron, I think I’d want to hang out there.

It seems like the kind of place that

you could lose maybe a whole afternoon if you had it.

That to me is a measure of success.

This is where Joe and Beck would’ve met

right here for the first time.

This is the part of the bookstore.

And so I was just getting to know Joe Goldberg

right about here.

In fact, this is that turn where he’s like [gasps].

And you murmur your first word to me.

Hello. Do you work here?

Guilty.

Another aspect of the bookstore set,

which is probably most exciting,

is the fact that we have an LED screen,

which represents York Avenue.

That is seen when you look out the front windows

and the LED screen has imagery on it that has been shot

that looks exactly like our location.

We’re in our bookstore. We look east.

We see that cars go by. It’s fully animated.

It’s like you are on York Avenue. It’s very effective.

[sighs] Well, Maddy, it’s been nice knowing you,

but we’re gonna go somewhere no one else wants to go.

Okay, have fun. Thanks.

Bye.

That’s what you’re all been waiting for.

And here’s a little secret. This is not where we’re going.

This is in a different building from the cage.

This is meant to be the top of the stairs.

This would be where Paco would’ve seen Beck

and then turned away from her.

Paco! [screaming]

No, he was mostly an angel, but he did let her die.

This is where I get to do my theater stairs.

[footsteps tapping]

[graphics buzzing] [pensive music]

[graphics buzzing]

[pensive music]

[footsteps tapping]

So if you can’t already tell,

usually I’d flip this light on for dramatic effect.

But it’s already on.

Here we are in la cage.

This is the cage. This has been reconstructed every season.

But this is where it all happens.

It doesn’t have a handle on this side, obviously,

because no one’s supposed to get out.

Don’t leave!

I’m not. We’re gonna get through this.

From the season one design,

everything was completely replicated.

The cage itself, we built from

the exact same drawings that they built season one.

I promised you the truth and I’m gonna give you that.

This is actually a really cool little detail.

This does not open-

[contraption clattering]

Unless this is closed.

I thought that was a really nice touch.

That way, people can’t get out obviously.

[contraption clattering]

Doesn’t work that way. It’s only one way.

Probably done some of my best and worst work in here

I’d say.

There’s nothing like a cage scene as ready as I am

to take off the Joe boots and untuck his shirt

and high-waisted pants.

I’ll never get to do this stuff again.

It’s a really particular kind of thing and it’s very intense

and I’ve been really fortunate to have it.

This thing is always really well made.

The joke is that Joe builds this on his own every season.

This one was supposed to be built by Mr. Mooney,

but every other one was built by Joe.

He’s wiry, but very strong.

This table is meant to look like I do a lot of work here.

You gotta be precise and use exactly the force needed.

[hammer banging]

Secret, I never do any work here.

Joe is always supposed to be binding books, right?

He’s never binding books. He doesn’t even sleep.

If you track Joe’s waking life

and then killing life schedule, this man does not sleep.

He rarely eats.

I gotta be honest, are interesting, strange tools.

Look at this thing. This must be an old press.

You know, like literally just like a binding mechanism.

These arches, I think they’re gorgeous.

Oh, and this is an area

that we’ve never [laughs] utilized really at all.

But it gives the whole place, you know, dimension.

This I have bound one book here. Exactly one book here.

And I think exactly one book on that table

that I said I never used. So I’ve used it once, I lied.

See this dust?

You see how like just there’s

a thick coat of dust on everything.

I believe it’s chocolate powder, but I wouldn’t eat it.

We’re getting a set to look this aged

requires many passes.

So we told our painters, our scenic artists,

it needs to look like this and we gave them the reference

and they made a pass.

Then the producers come down for a walkthrough

because that’s what happens every so often.

And they ask the question,

So you’re gonna age the basement, right?

As though it’s never been aged.

It’s like, Yeah, of course we’re on it, right?

So we redouble our efforts

and we had painters in here for a week.

Every corner has dust or grime in it

where the walls meet the floor,

look like they’ve never been mopped.

But that doesn’t happen in one pass.

You have to stick with it.

You can’t actually make a set out of masonry

because it weighs a tremendous amount.

And we try to make things as light as possible.

Concrete block is a thin layer of plaster with scored lines.

The brick is a material where they mold recycled paper.

Our carpenters, and our art people, our set people,

they put a lot of work into this.

They do it so quickly. It’s ridiculous.

It’s a gift to us as actors

because you know that what you’re in feels real.

It looks real. You feel very supported.

We border on the sort of absurdist

and comedy and melodramatic.

What were you trying to do to me?

I was just making it cozy. Look.

And that’s the whole point of the tone and the horror of it.

But these sets are to me, what helped make the difference.

A little bit of a interesting note.

This is where we shot Gossip Girl.

This is the same stage where the Waldorf suites

or whatever where they live, it was in this stage,

the stage with the bookstore was where

the Humphrey Loft was.

So this place is extremely familiar to me.

I was just standing outside looking at the trees

and I thought, I’ve been looking at these trees

for nearly 20 years now.

And I thought to myself, Have they grown?

Do trees in the city over the course of 20 years,

do they grow?

They must, so that’s just a little window into my brain.

Beck, in the end, the cage was a good thing for me.

I’m hoping it’ll be the same for you.

Look, look, hence, typewriter, paper, no distractions.

It’s the low tech writer’s retreat you always wanted.

[funky music] [graphics buzzing]

[graphics buzzing]

[funky music]

This is my front door.

You can’t tell. Doesn’t look a front door.

No. Well, I don’t know what kind of places you’re living in.

But this is an elevator shaft. Not in real life.

It would be a working elevator for a billionaire apartment.

It’s massive. I mean, it’s meant to be two floors.

If you notice there’s stairs that lead to nowhere.

All the light you see here is not daylight. Like all that.

You know, that’s supposed to look like sunlight.

Right? That’s not what that is.

Joe’s studio and Joe and Kate’s apartment,

those were being built from scratch.

And so we had to sort of decide as a group

what the language of that apartment was going to be.

One of the specific references was from the Dakota.

That’s the direction that we went.

So this is the Lockwood-Goldberg living room.

Non-working fireplace that when we needed to work,

there’s a whole gas apparatus.

That’s my real life human boy who plays my child.

His character name is Henry.

Henry, I’m sorry that she said that to you.

Is it true, what Gretchen said?

Here’s the conversation you’ve been dreading for years.

Come on over here.

There’s a nice photoshopped image of Charlotte

who plays Kate with her longtime family friend in the show.

That’s not real. They’ve never been together on a horse.

And it has this terrace that looks out onto the city,

which we can never shoot in, by the way.

‘Cause as gorgeous as it looks from far away,

the closer you get, you start to see.

you start to see this ain’t real. This is not real at all.

It’s not called the Lockwood-Goldberg.

That was a total ad lib. It’s Lockwood.

It’s Charlotte’s character.

Charlotte Ritchie plays Kate Lockwood,

who is the heiress to a billionaire magnate.

My family are wealthier than any of them.

You don’t go by Lockwood? Yes.

When I was designing it, I was trying to figure out

how much of this apartment is Kate’s apartment

and how much of this apartment is Joe’s apartment?

It’s mostly Kate. Her resources went into this.

But there had to be a place where you saw Joe’s character

and Joe was into books, and so we found places.

Joe’s world is on the bottom

’cause that’s where all the book cases are.

And Kate’s world is on top

because that’s where all the art is.

Ooh, what kind of kitchen is this? Hello, New York City.

We’ll just, we’ll find another way.

Your sister- Stop it!

That is not who we are.

Not who we are? You want us to kill everyone

who becomes suspicious of us for the rest of our lives?

That oven, the stove.

This thing is ridiculously beautiful. Yeah, just so nice.

Look at that. We’ve never used any of that.

I didn’t even know that was in there.

Really, really, really well made cutting boards.

Look at that, these rounded edges. The appliances are real.

These fruits are very fake. That might be real salt.

Real nice salt, black truffle salt. That’s real.

[Penn speaks in foreign language]

It’s expired. I feel like Joe would cook a steak well.

Is that on the nose? I feel like he’d cook meat well.

He is a working class guy.

He would’ve had to cook for himself

and I feel like he’d probably be pretty good

with a few key things.

He probably makes a good chicken.

You know, once you nail a chicken and you have that,

it’s an infinite resource.

You can cook chicken anywhere.

Well, having exited the kitchen on the first floor

in the hallway, we’re going to magically enter

the second floor into Henry’s bedroom through his closet.

It’s a little bit like Narnia, but different.

[bright music] [graphics buzzing]

[graphics buzzing]

[bright music]

So now we’re in Henry’s bedroom,

which is meant to be right up there.

Reminder, there is no second floor.

I really like this.

Welcome Henry. [purring]

Henry’s, I suppose, grown up a little bit like his father,

hopefully only just a little bit.

He might have violence in his blood.

[Joe grunting]

Whether that’s a real thing or not,

holding back the truth isn’t the way to protect him.

He likes to read. He’s six years old.

So he’s reading all about, you know, giraffes.

For Henry, One of the things we did in his room,

the upper floors of the Dakota

all have these giant angled ceilings,

which correspond to angled roofs,

which to me is a very playful kind of idea.

Here we have a fake child’s drawing.

This one looks like it might be real.

No? Probably not.

But they look pretty convincing, don’t they?

And we also have some actual art

that is done by theoretically, Henry,

but I think it’s actually the art director’s son

who happens to be the same age as Henry.

[footsteps tapping]

This looks to be, is it a real fire alarm, smoke detector?

Well, there’s a canister there.

I don’t know what that’s for. I don’t know why that’s there.

Maybe an end of season gag. Maybe it involves fire.

Maybe that’s a spoiler. I don’t know.

[chill music] [graphics buzzing]

[graphics buzzing]

[chill music]

So this is Joe and Kate’s bedroom,

where admittedly very little of the magic happens.

It is an absurdly huge New York City bedroom

and very well appointed.

It’s very light. It’s very not Joe I think in a way.

In fact for me as Joe, I just

don’t really feel like this is home at all.

These are meant to be closets. There is nothing in them.

But that is what they’re meant to be, a his and hers closet.

Ooh, you know what, a little detail I’ve never noticed.

Look at those.

Those corner moldings up there. It’s very nice.

It’s very extraordinary, frankly, to have

an apartment of that scale in New York.

And I think that is probably its most awesome feature

because it is so much grander than anything

that you would normally see.

Very fortunate in my life to have actually

walked through the Dakota.

And the walls are actually taller than what we built.

That’s all the studio could fit.

But the scale of it from a design standpoint,

one of the most interesting features of it,

because of the sort of subconscious statement it makes

about status and about wealth and about privilege.

So what’s next for the power couple?

We are largely focused on changing the world.

[Joe] So many ways.

[bright music]

Now you’re in the real world,

which is like the bowels of the fake world.

Or maybe it’s the other way around?

Is the fake world the bowels of the real world?

We’ll never know.

This is the outside of the cage set, right?

That’s the first floor of the Lockwood suite.

This is like the reality of what we do.

Or a television show or a movie is made by hundreds,

if not sometimes, depending on the scale, thousands.

Men and women put this thing up.

And it was built like very quickly.

So I just think seeing this as a testament to

the scope of the craft, you know,

how many people are involved,

how many people make it their life’s work.

That’s why people get into this business

just to tell some stories and this is how you do it.

I’ve gotta go shoot something else now,

but we’ll see you later.

Toodles.

[bright music]