Penn Badgley stopped doing sex scenes for his mental health, clarifies his wife

Penn Badgley's wife Domino Kirke-Badgley has denied asking him to stop doing sex scenes, saying the You actor made the decision himself for his mental health.

Penn Badgley's decision to scale back intimate scenes in his acting projects has followed him for years, and apparently, so has a rumour about who made that decision.

The You actor revealed in 2023 that he had asked the show's creator Sera Gamble if he could stop doing intimate scenes. At the time, some fans blamed his wife, Domino Kirke-Badgley, for the decision. Three years later, Kirke-Badgley says she is still receiving messages about it.

And she has had enough! In a video posted to Instagram, Kirke-Badgley directly addressed the speculation and made it clear that her husband made the decision himself.

She clarified, "A few years ago, the internet decided I'd asked my husband to stop doing sex scenes. The truth is, my husband decided to do this for his own mental-health reasons."

She then addressed those who continue to contact her about the issue. "I want to say to those of you who still DM me about my husband deciding to do this for himself and his mental health, like get over it."

The comments came as Kirke-Badgley reflected on a decision that became a talking point around Badgley's role as Joe Goldberg in You.

Why did Penn Badgley stop doing sex scenes?

Badgley first spoke publicly about his decision on his Podcrushed podcast in February 2023, ahead of the fourth season of You. The actor explained that he had asked Gamble whether he could do "no more intimacy scenes", saying he had been thinking about the direction he wanted his career to take.

"This is actually a decision I made before I took the show. I don't think I have ever mentioned it publicly. One of the main things was, do I want to put myself back on a career path where I'm always playing the romantic lead?"

Badgley also referred to his marriage to Kirke-Badgley while explaining his thinking at the time. "Fidelity in every relationship, especially in a marriage, is important to me. It's got to the point where I don't want to do that. So I said to Sera, 'My desire would be zero, to go from 100 to zero.'"

Those comments quickly became a subject of discussion among You viewers, particularly because Joe Goldberg's character had been heavily associated with sex and intimate relationships throughout the series. But Badgley later clarified that the situation had been somewhat overstated.

Badgley said his comments were 'blown out of proportion'

Speaking to GQ shortly after the original discussion, Badgley said the response to his comments had gone further than he intended. He also explained that his concerns were connected to the broader culture around filming intimate scenes and Hollywood's history of exploitation and abuse.

"It was sort of like the culture inherent to the production of all movies, but particularly those scenes. It's like, look, we know that Hollywood has had a history of flagrant exploitation and abuse."

The actor's request was reportedly accommodated during the production of You Season 4, with the show's creative team working around his preference. The boundary did not mean intimate scenes disappeared entirely from his work. By the final season of You, released in 2025, Badgley did participate in some intimate material, with the actor explaining that certain scenes were important to the story.

Domino Kirke says the decision was about more than marriage

In her latest comments, Kirke-Badgley pushed back against the idea that she had somehow instructed her husband to stop doing sex scenes. She said the decision was important because of the kinds of roles Badgley has played throughout his career.

"The characters that my husband has played over the years, people have come to expect that he will continue to play that guy. He didn't want to do any of that, which was really major in his industry because that's the thing they like you to do the most," she said.

Kirke-Badgley said she was proud of him for setting the boundary and described the decision as a form of "relational hygiene". She also connected it to his long career in the entertainment industry. Badgley began acting as a child and was 12 when he started working professionally.

She shared, "After working in the industry since he was just 12 years old, believe me, it was time. In the entertainment world, they call actors 'puppets' behind their backs, and it's even more disturbing when they start as child actors. So finally, after years of trying, Penn decided to take a stand and let the world see him. And guess what, he hasn't lost fans and he's still getting hired!"

What appears to frustrate Kirke-Badgley most is that the decision continues to be attributed to her despite Badgley having publicly explained that it was his own choice.

The couple married in 2017, and Badgley's comments about fidelity in marriage became part of the public discussion around his decision. But his subsequent explanation also placed the issue within a much broader conversation about actors' boundaries, intimacy on screen and the working culture surrounding such scenes.