- Victoria Pedretti said she didn't realize how "crazy" her "You" character Love was while filming.
- Pedretti said on the "Podcrushed" podcast that she left her "judgments" behind on set.
"You" star Victoria Pedretti said she didn't realize how "crazy" her character Love was until watching season three of the hit Netflix show.
In the third season, Joe (Penn Badgley) meets his match with his new wife Love (Pedretti), who is even more willing to kill people than he is. In fact, in the first episode, Love murders their neighbor Natalie after Joe starts to have an affair with her.
During Pedretti's appearance on Badgley's podcast "Podcrushed," the costars discussed the different ways they approach playing their morally complex characters.
Badgley said: "Hats off to you as an artist. I think, when you're on set and when you're playing her, you identify with her so much, and again, I think that's beautiful. I think the way I view Joe in some ways limits the way I'm able to portray him, whereas you really embrace her."
In the past, Badgley has said he has had a hard time playing Joe because he is "really repulsed" by the character.
Pedretti replied that she embraced Love to the point where she didn't fathom how "crazy" her character was until she watched the first episode of the third season, in which Love murders Natalie.
"I was like: 'This is crazy, She's so fucking crazy,'" the actor recalled.
Pedretti went on to explain that the reason she didn't notice Love's extreme personality before was that she wanted to focus on portraying her character accurately.
"Because at that point, I have a distance from it, and now I'm watching it and I'm like, 'No, I was really in it,'" the "Haunting of Bly Manor" star said. "I was really like, these are the circumstances, this is her justification and that's it. I need to say these lines, they need to be felt completely. There's no room to be judgmental or analytical of it. That's not my place."
Pedretti added: "I mean, now I have my judgments. I would say she's crazy. She's a serial killer, but I also know exactly how she got to be how she is."
Pedretti said that she thinks Love turned out the way she did because she sees herself as a victim.
"She doesn't see a space for her to go above her circumstances," the actor said. "She's always looking for justifications to explain what she's doing, and what she did instead of doing the hard, disciplined, rigorous work of trying to better herself for herself, for her child, for her life, she's just like: 'I'm a product of my circumstance,' as opposed to being like: 'Maybe I should try meditating.'"
"You" season four, part one, premieres Thursday on Netflix.