Keep your eyes peeled. Netflix’s psychological thriller “You”—about serial killer Joe Goldberg and his “complicated” love life—is returning for its final season. The series will meet its inevitable end when the 10-episode installment of Season 5 premieres on April 24, 2025.
For those interested in learning how to get cast on a show like “You,” we’ve got you covered. Here, we share audition tips from casting directors and cast members—including stars Penn Badgley and Victoria Pedretti—plus the latest updates about open Netflix auditions and casting calls ahead of Season 5.
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Based on Caroline Kepnes’ series of novels, “You” Season 1 follows the exploits of New York City bookstore manager Joe Goldberg (Badgley), a man with a penchant for murder. His obsession with customer Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) quickly turns sinister as he uses social media and other technology to stalk her and monitor her every move. Season 1 concludes with Joe killing Guinevere and framing her therapist, Dr. Nicky (John Stamos).
On Season 2, loosely based on Kepnes’ sequel, “Hidden Bodies,” Joe moves to Los Angeles to make a fresh start, changing his name to Will Bettelheim. While he strives to have a normal relationship with aspiring chef Love Quinn (Pedretti), it doesn’t take long before his old habits reemerge. However, Love is not who Joe thinks she is—in the season finale, it’s revealed that she is just as obsessive and murderous as he is. In fact, he has been her prey all along.
By Season 3, Love and Quinn have had a child and moved to the suburbs. But Joe’s killer instincts kick in once again, and he turns his attention to Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle). When Love learns of Joe’s new obsession, she plots his murder, but—always one step ahead—Joe kills Love instead, faking the perfect murder-suicide and escaping his life under the presumption that he’s dead.
In Season 4, Joe follows Marienne to Europe. There, he settles in London, where he poses as an English professor named Jonathan Moore. As he falls in with an elite circle of wealthy socialites, the group begins to die, murdered one by one by someone who’s determined to blackmail and frame Joe for the deaths. In an effort to hide his true identity, Joe works to catch the killer but ultimately falls for a woman named Kate (Charlotte Ritchie) in the process, changing the entire trajectory of his life.
Season 5 will see Joe and Kate move to NYC—his old stomping grounds—as he tries to lead a life on the right side of the law. As husband and wife, Joe and Kate become affluent members of society thanks to her position as CEO of the Lockwood Corporation. However, despite his Prince Charming façade, Joe’s past and present will collide, compromising his future with the woman who inspired his desire to change, as someone new will make him question his lifestyle once again.
According to Netflix, these stars will close out the series on Season 5:
- Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg
- Charlotte Ritchie as Kate Lockwood
- Madeline Brewer as Bronte
- Griffin Matthews as Teddy Lockwood
- Anna Camp as Raegan and Maddie Lockwood
- Natasha Behnam as Dominique
- b as Phoenix
- Pete Ploszek as Harrison
- Tom Francis as Clayton
- Nava Mau as Detective Marquez
For the majority of the series, David Rapaport and Lyndsey Baldasare of the L.A.-based Rapaport/Baldasare Casting have led the casting charge. The pair also assembled talent for “Legends of Tomorrow,” “Supergirl,” “Riverdale,” and “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.” CDs Beth Bowling and Kim Miscia of Bowling/Miscia Casting (“Blue Bloods,” “Mr. Robot,” “Gotham”) were also involved in casting Season 1. Rapaport remains the primary CD for “You” at this time.
As Rapaport told us, actors don’t always realize that CDs are actually their biggest cheerleaders. “We’re really rooting for the actor to do well. I’ve said this before: Selfishly, I want you to do well because it makes me look good. I really want actors to come in and feel comfortable and do their best,” he said. “It’s a weird process, auditioning. You have to come in and be completely open and vulnerable in front of people you don’t know in a room you’ve never been in before. I think some actors assume we want to embarrass them or make them feel less than, when it’s the exact opposite. I want them to feel as safe as possible; I want them to do well; I want them to see it as an opportunity to perform, to act, hopefully to get some direction, workshop it if we can. I think it can be a really fun learning experience in the office. Ultimately, we want you to succeed.”
Showrunner Sera Gamble (“The Magicians”) told TV Insider that the casting process for Season 1 “was extensive. We were adamant that Joe is neither Mr. Robot nor Dexter. He’s an amateur. He’s a smart guy; he’s well-read and not that different from you and me.”
The role, of course, went to former “Gossip Girl” star Badgley. “As a casting director, I always keep an eye out for people that have sort of been in the family, so to speak,” Rapaport, who also cast “Gossip Girl,” explained. “I love to use a lot of the same actors or see the same actors over and over again and give them a lot of opportunities. And so with [‘You’], we read a lot of men for that role that we had seen before or cast before. And so it’s just a matter of timing and kind of finding that perfect fit.”
Having cast a number of successful pilots that went on to become multi-season hits, Rapaport also gave us some insight into how the casting process works when you’re starting from scratch. “Once we start casting a role, we’ll have a session in my office and I’ll send a link of that session to the producers who weren’t there, the director, and writers. Everyone weighs in and we narrow it down to final choices, which we then send to the executive producers,” Rapaport shared. “Then we narrow that choice down to one, which we then send to studio for approval and then to the network for approval and then we go back and negotiate a deal and hire them.”
Although “You” has come to an end, plenty of opportunities await as you put your newfound knowledge to the test. Our dedicated directory pages can help you find calls for both thriller and Netflix productions, and our guide on how to audition for Netflix will help you prepare for what goes on in the room.
Here are some audition tips from the series’ cast members and CDs:
Be yourself in the room. “I’m looking for actors to offer up their unique selves,” Rapaport told Mashable. “I want actors to come in and share their unique perspective on material and their unique personalities.” He noted that he “can see right through someone when they are putting up a facade. Those fake performances are boring and inauthentic. Think about your favorite artists and musicians. They don’t hold back. They let you inside. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to walk into any casting room, to share yourself and be vulnerable. I get it. But those that are willing and able to share are the ones who excite me most.”
Berlanti echoed this advice in conversation with us: “[Actors] shouldn’t try to be something they think the director or showrunner wants them to be. The thing that’s unique about them is them.”
The CDs are looking for new faces. For most of his projects, Rapaport casts a lot of younger actors. “What I like most about that is the opportunity to discover new talent,” he told Casting Frontier. “There are times when the roles feel similar in type, but no actors are the same, and I take joy in really digging deep in my quest to find new breakout talent. I think the shows are varied enough that I’m never bored creatively. The characters and actors required for a show like ‘The Flash’ can be so extremely different than those I cast on ‘You,’ for instance…. That contrast keeps me interested.”
Even a no can be an opportunity. Pedretti wasted no time after graduating from college; she moved straight to NYC and jumped headfirst into auditions. “I was getting close already, pretty early on, to roles that I ultimately didn’t get. But I was like, ‘Damn, this is feeling good. Something’s working. People are responding,’ ’’ Pedretti told Collider. “Then, I’m like, ‘OK, let’s just keep it going.’ ” One of those early unsuccessful auditions was for Season 1 of “You.” “It was the first callback I ever had for a show,” she told W. Her hustle ultimately paid off with roles in “The Haunting of Hill House,” “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” and “The Haunting of Bly Manor”—and, of course, Season 2 of “You.”
Don’t let the audition process limit you. Remember that auditions aren't the sole measure of your ability as an actor. “I hate auditioning,” Badgley told us. “It is a really hard process that I don’t think has as much to do with acting as it has to do with the audition…. The advice I would give to any young actor, and I would include myself in this, is: Don’t let the conventions and the desires of the industry and the people you are auditioning for become the thing you’re most concerned with. Don’t let the limitations of the industry become limitations for your expression as an artist and as an actor.”
Find the darkness in yourself. On a show like “You,” there’s no telling which characters will end up being murderous, manipulative, or just plain creepy. It’s not easy to play the villain—just ask Badgley. “I didn’t want to do it—it was too much,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “I was conflicted with the nature of the role. If this is a love story, what is it saying? It’s not an average show; it’s a social experiment. And then what was key in me wanting to jump onboard were my conversations with Greg Berlanti and Sera Gamble, the creators, and understanding Joe’s humanity. I knew that I would be conflicted about the role from day one till the last day; and that is why they thought I would be good for it, is that I’m not psyched to play somebody of this nature.”
When it comes to unlocking your inner baddie, acting coach Michelle Danner suggests doing a deep dive into your character’s psyche. “Is your character a sociopath, a psychopath, a person who snapped and became psychotic, or just someone who is plain evil?” she posited. “To know exactly how they would be diagnosed will help you to understand their pathology. Literally do the medical research on the person. People can have flaws they’ve acquired or the defects can be ingrained in their nature. Know the case study that applies to them and how they are wired.”
Enjoy what’s within your control. After a slew of less-than-rave reviews over a prior role, James Scully, who played Forty Quinn, found himself desperate for work. So when “You” came along, Scully learned, in retrospect, that giving others’ opinions too much power robs you of your own. “It’s easy as an actor to get distracted by all the things you can’t control: the budget, the editing, the writing, public opinion; if you focus on it, the list becomes endless,” he wrote for Backstage. “But if you wait for other people to tell you what success is, you might miss all of the power you DO have. You can make up your OWN mind about your work, you can actively surround yourself with people who support you and love you and are honest with you, you can RELISH the free time between acting jobs as an opportunity to learn and change and grow as a person, and you can take a job just because it makes you happy and not because it fits well into someone else’s vision of success.
“In a career in entertainment, crushing lows and ecstatic highs are GUARANTEED but those are not (and should not be) your life. Your life is the in-between bits, and what you do with them will determine the quality of the art you make,” Scully continued. “Go on adventures, live a life that makes you happy outside of work, LOVE yourself. You are not your job, you are not your paycheck, you are not a list of credits. So, as important as they might seem, let yourself forget about those things for a while. Be gentle with yourself, and most importantly: Have fun.”
