You star Tilly Keeper talks toxic relationships and seducing Penn Badgley

London’s calling in the latest season of Netflix’s controversial, supremely addictive, hit series You. 

Based on Caroline Kepnes’ series of novels, You‘s fourth outing will continue to follow protagonist, murderer-stalker Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) as he attempts to outrun his past, and violent impulses. He settles into London life as a professor of literature, trying to keep a low profile but finds himself caught up in an intriguing ‘whodunnit’, amongst a new social circle of socialites, full of privileged, rich and depraved characters.

One member of this new circle is rich, beautiful party girl Lady Phoebe, played by London-born actress and EastEnders alumni Tilly Keeper. There’s so much more to Phoebe than the “rich bitch” and “party girl” stereotypes, and we see her bright, comic light darken as the fourth season of You unravels. 

Lady Phoebe encounters mental health issues and an abusive relationship, soon becoming a character we can truly root for – particularly as she’s not a serial killer (a rarity on You), just a woman fighting her own heartbreaking battles.

GLAMOUR caught up with Tilly  as part one of season four launches (the second instalment is coming to Netflix on March 9th) to get the lowdown on sex scenes, toxic love and internalised misogyny on the show.

Tell us about Lady Phoebe, what’s the most important thing we need to know about her?

On first look, Phoebe comes across as vapid, a bit of an airhead, materialistic, superficial… and she can be all those things. But the real core of this character is goodness, light and naivety. She  has a lot of love to give – and she doesn’t have a lot of love in her life, and I think that makes her quite a lonely individual. But it doesn’t necessarily make her a jaded person. And I think that’s really nice – she’s very optimistic, despite the tone of the whole show.

She starts off as comic relief within the darker wider storylines, but she goes through her own trauma. What was that like to play, going from the light to the dark? Did you enjoy the range?

I think it rounds out the character a lot. It was a great challenge as well, to play that steadily and plant the seeds so that it makes sense.

The main note [from showrunner Sera Gamble] was that by the second half of the season we want to see the heart behind closed doors, when all the noise shuts off. Hopefully by that point, you’ve got to know Phoebe and you care about her when she is in danger. 

We see her try to seduce Joe at one point – what was that like to film?

Filming that scene with Penn, he’s such a sweetheart and he’s so gracious and incredibly respectful and I was a bit more like, ‘oh, have a laugh with it, whatever!’.