Caroline Kepnes shares how she created Joe Goldberg for Netflix’s You

Caroline Kepnes tells Stellar how she channeled a series of personal setbacks into creating the You book series – now a hit Netflix adaptation – and its charming yet evil antihero Joe Goldberg.

Caroline, let’s clear something up. You and I are actually close friends of two decades – former co-workers, in fact, at a magazine in New York City. What do you recall of that?

I started at the beginning of 2001. I was supposed to go dance on an MTV show on New Year’s Eve, and my parents were like, “Caroline, you can’t go dance on MTV when you start a new job next week.”

‘You’ author Caroline Kepnes. (Picture: Supplied)

A couple of years later, you moved to LA and worked for a gossip columnist at the height of the Britney/Paris/Lindsay era. What was that like?

It was very stressful. I’m glad that era is being revisited; I’d be sent to parties with questions that would never be asked now. But you’re on a mission: you’re expected to ask a stranger about their sex life at a party.

Then you run home and write it up – because this was before social media – and be at work the next morning, a total wreck. I got sent to Vegas to follow Britney Spears and I couldn’t go through with it. I played blackjack instead.

What kept you going?

Nerve. Vodka. And the desire to try to get better at something.

Penn Badgley with co-star Victoria Pedretti in ‘You’ (Picture: Supplied)

You then wrote for TV, on fairly squeaky-clean shows like 7th Heaven and The Secret Life Of The American Teenager. How on earth did you pivot from that to Joe Goldberg?

There’s a line in the first chapter of You, where Joe says, “You’re so clean, you’re dirty.” I agree with that – I like worlds that are scrubbed so clean and made with such purpose. I loved the language on 7th Heaven, where every sentence is a run-on sentence.

I bring that into my writing. But it’s also the specificity of a world where you walk into a room and you hear it and you know it, because they’re kind of speaking like aliens.

So what was Joe borne of?

He was someone I created to fill a void. I had vocal-cord damage and had to live in silence. My identity got stolen through my student-loan debt. My mother had to have surgery. And my father was battling and ultimately died of cancer. So Joe became my voice. I was like, “Oh, this is entertaining! This is making me feel better.” It was healing.

He sounds like the product of a lot of grief and anger.

That’s correct. And my books touch on a lot of things in my own life – references and song lyrics – that I use to get through tough times. Pitch Perfect was all over the first book because I’d been so out of it during my dad’s fight with cancer that watching it made me feel alive. I wanted to give that back by making it one of my characters’ favourite movies.

Penn Badgley and Elizabeth Lail star in the Netflix series 'You'. (Picture: Supplied)

Then the TV adaptation came along. It wasn’t a hit at first, but once it went to Netflix, millions of people worldwide were suddenly aware of your work.

That was wild. When you write a book – especially a first book – you have these imaginary friends. They were my little toys. And suddenly the world is playing with them. I’m still not adjusted to it. I’m used to my own crazy world where I speak my own crazy language. It’s such a strange thing to see so many people suddenly speaking it, too.

Your third You book is about to hit shelves, and the show is currently filming the third season. How much are you thinking about the show as you write?

They’re two different mediums. Joe in the books is for sure a bit grimmer; he’s going to treat a child differently. I just have to focus on the world in my books; they’re two different psychologies playing out.

Nicholas Fonseca with Badgley and Kepnes at the You premiere in New York in 2018. (Picture: Supplied)

But you got some input on the initial casting, didn’t you?

Yes. I remember seeing Penn early on. You can tell by the way someone holds a book if they’re not necessarily holding books that often. Penn really felt like a reader – he’s got all the good that is in Joe, and he’s really good at pretending he has the bad.

One funny thing about casting, though... I’d really fall for somebody’s talent and then I’d get so upset if I realised they were going to have to “die” at some point because of a plot I had already written.

Your new book is dedicated to your mother. Why?

She’s my number-one reader. She doesn’t get mad when I send her 10 emails in a row with drafts asking her to read each one. I always had serious plans as a girl – to be a dancer or a writer or a model – and she supported all of them.

Caroline Kepnes features in this Sunday’s Stellar.

You came to Australia a few years ago for the Brisbane Writers Festival.

I loved it so much. But I’m just not used to the way you live with nature... I remember being in a lobby in Brisbane and this giant bird walks in and no-one screams. And I’m thinking, “What the f*ck?!” I also need to come back and see the koala I scared. I had jokingly said I wanted to hold a koala, because I’m an American arsehole like that, and my publicist was determined to make it happen.

So she takes me out to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and for a minute it’s OK – I’m holding her like a baby, but she turns her head and latches on and I’m feeling like the poor thing has chlamydia and all kinds of problems, and it just terrified me. And I feel bad about this. So I want to go back. I won’t hold her this time. I’ll just say sorry.

You Love Me (Simon & Schuster, $32.99) is out on Wednesday.