Netflix’s “You,” now streaming its 10-episode fifth and final season, wraps up the story of serial killer Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley). And this season, there’s a former Pittsburgher along for the ride. It’s not the first time.
Actress Victoria Pedretti, a 2017 graduate of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama, played Joe’s romantic interest, Love Quinn, early in the show’s run. Joe killed Love at the end of season three.
For this final season, McCandless native Griffin Matthews (“Genius: MLK/X,” “The Flight Attendant”) joins the cast as Teddy Lockwood, half-brother of Joe’s current wife, Kate Lockwood (Charlotte Ritchie).
Another blink-and-you’ll miss it Pittsburgh tie: Near the end of episode seven and early in episode eight, a character visits HM Prison Blackheath in London, but the two-second exterior establishing shot is stock footage of the former SCI Pittsburgh prison.
Now living in New York again where “You” began, Kate takes over as CEO of her father’s company, Lockwood Corp., much to the chagrin of Kate’s hard-charging sister Raegan (Anna Camp). Raegan’s twin, Maddie (also Camp), works at the company in PR but mostly she’s a socialite, divorcee and widow after her last husband “paid $3 million to travel outside Earth’s orbit and tragically continues to do so,” Joe explains in voiceover narration that describes a private space excursion disaster.
Joe returns to the scene of his first crimes, reopening the bookstore seen in season one and hiring a young redhead, Bronte (Madeline Brewer, “The Handmaid’s Tale”), who seems poised to become Joe’s latest lover.
“You” remains a satisfying mix of soapy antihero drama, hilarious voiceover narration and ridiculous plot twists manipulated by unreliable narrator Joe. And you know the show didn’t introduce twins without a plan to do something bonkers with them. Camp excels as both Raegan and Maddie, modulating her performance to play each of the distinct characters.
“She was phenomenal,” Matthews said in a phone interview last week from Madrid, Spain, where he relocated from California last year with his husband and two children. “She had to do take after take as one character … then Anna had to run, change her costume, change her hair, and come back and switch and do the other (twin’s) lines. She had to learn two characters every day and she never faltered.”
Matthews said acting in “You” is the first time he’s joined a show he was already a fan of.
“Because I knew the tone of the show, I felt like I could come in on day one and make strong (acting) choices,” said Matthews, a 2003 graduate of CMU’s School of Drama. “You always want to make strong choices, but for this one I felt like I knew the world.”
Matthews said like some of his past roles, this is another one where he’s cast as the disruptor.
“As I’ve gotten older in the business, I really feel clear when I get jobs, it’s usually to come in and shake things up,” he said. “That’s exactly what Teddy does and who he is. I’m always happy to step into that role. The idea of disrupting is to shed light on another version of humanity, so I try to disrupt with humor that’s also rooted in reality — or at least another version of reality.”
Matthews said he used Harlem-raised rapper A$AP Rocky as inspiration for Teddy.
“(A$AP Rocky) is the face of Gucci and I want Teddy to feel like Harlem on the top, Gucci on the bottom,” Matthews said. “This guy is not coming from the same life or the same money. The siblings are far wealthier than he is. I wanted him to feel like an outsider who was finding his way in.”
Of course, the survival rate for any “You” character, other than Joe, tends to be low.
“I told the producers, ‘Please don’t kill the Black guy first. Kill me third or fourth, just not first.’ They laughed,” Matthews said.
Matthews hasn’t been back to Pittsburgh since before the pandemic, but he hopes to get back to visit his parents during a break in his schedule later this year.
Just before filming the final season of “You,” Matthews shot a role in “This is Spinal Tap II,” due in theaters Sept. 12, where he plays a clerk at an inn where the band stays.
“It was the scariest job I’ve ever done because there is no rehearsal, no script,” said Matthews, who arrived on set familiar with Christopher Guest’s improvised movies (“Best in Show,” “A Mighty Wind”) but intimidated by having to improvise through scenes that could stretch to 20 minutes. “You don’t know where you’re going so it was terrifying and so liberating. As actors we can become very robotic, very good at the technical part: I say my line, I pick up the cup on this line, go here on this line. This felt like complete improv, and you just have to stay alive through the scene. I’m excited to see it. I don’t know what I did. I blacked out when it was over.”
Local on ‘Drag Race All Stars’
Pittsburgher Nicholas Fry, who competed on the most recent season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” as Lydia B. Kollins (making it halfway through the season before being eliminated), will be among the 18 queens competing on “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars,” which debuts with two episodes at 12 a.m. May 9 on Paramount+.
Ordered/canceled
Tom Ellis (“Lucifer”) will star in CBS’s CIA-set “FBI” spinoff, which received a straight-to-series order for the 2025-26 TV season.
CBS canceled comedy “Poppa’s House” and reality competition “The Summit” after a single season each.
Netflix canceled “Heartstopper” after three seasons but will wrap the story with a film in lieu of a fourth season.
Channel surfing
Infamous for the accidental shooting death of its cinematographer, Alec Baldwin-starring western “Rust,” which is also about an accidental shooting death, hits theaters and video on demand (via Apple, Amazon, Fandango at Home) on May 2. … Longtime “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens resigned Tuesday from CBS News, citing an inability to “make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience” as CBS owner Paramount Global is in settlement talks with President Donald Trump over a lawsuit, ridiculed as frivolous by First Amendment attorneys, involving the editing of an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of last year’s election. The settlement talks come as Paramount seeks to gain government approval to be acquired by Skydance Media. … WQED-TV will rebroadcast its 2004 documentary “From Pittsburgh to the Vatican” at 8 p.m. April 24 and 4 p.m. April 25.
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