Penn Badgley thinks back on “Breaking Bad” part he nearly got: “The one that got away”
“That was the best television script I’d read at that point,” the ‘You’ star said.
Penn Badgley is being candid about the part that slipped through his fingers.
The You actor was asked what role his fans would be surprised he auditioned for but didn’t get in a recent interview with Buzzfeed.
Breaking Bad was one that Badgley said he came close to winning. We conducted a test between Aaron Paul and myself. Paul ultimately won the part of Jesse Pinkman in the popular series, which ran from 2008 to 2013 for five seasons.
He continued by praising the program, which over the course of its run garnered more than 100 awards.
“Actually, that was the best television script I’d read at that point,” the Gossip Girl alum added. “That was the one that got away.”
In the original series, Paul costarred with Bryan Cranston’s Walter White as an aspiring crystal myth businessman named Jesse. He returned in the Netflix epilogue film El Camino. He was nominated for three more Emmy Awards, won three of them, and was also nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance.
As Dan Humphrey in The CW’s Gossip Girl, a role he played for five years from 2007 to 2012, Badgley had already started.
He currently plays Joe Goldberg, a stalker and serial killer who has fooled himself into believing that he is pursuing his victims with the best of intentions, in Netflix’s You.
“I think that part of what the show is doing is showing that he’s never really looking at himself,” Badgley previously told The Hollywood Reporter about his character, who, in season four, goes by professor Jonathan Moore. “No matter what happens, actually, he seems to be incapable [of change]. It is hard for anybody. And then once you’ve done some really terrible things, it’s even harder.”
You season four, Part 1, is streaming on Netflix now, and Part 2 returns on March 9.