Here Are The Real-Life Partners Of Netflix's You Cast

After the rollercoaster of the last four seasons, it's official: Season 5 of Netflix's hit show "You" has been confirmed. Come 2024, we'll get to find out what fate awaits Professor Jonathan Moore — or Will Bettelheim — or Joe Goldberg, as this will be the final season of the show. Throughout the sensational series, which is originally based on Caroline Kepnes' book by the same name, we've watched Penn Badgley portray the obsessive, murderous Joe Goldberg (the guy with more red flags than we can count). Over binge-watching sessions, several of his love interests, confidants, and roadblocks have come and gone, introducing us to new (and familiar) faces.

The large cast has had fans digging into the juicy behind-the-scenes details of "You," trying to find out everything there is to know about Badgley's off-screen love interest, who Love Quinn's (Victoria Pedretti) co-worker/boyfriend is, and how one cast member broke things off with her real-life stalker ex. So we've done some digging to bring you the real-life partners of Netflix's "You" cast, and have regrettably had to leave out some of the show's incredible cast members who are currently single Pringles (shout out to Jenna Ortega).

Penn Badgley, the driving force behind "You," is not in fact a scary stalker boyfriend. He had a couple of high-profile relationships back in the day, dating Blake Lively from 2007 until 2010 and Zoë Kravitz between 2011 and 2013. In 2014, a couple of years after Badgley's breakout show "Gossip Girl" ended, Badgley began dating Domino Kirke, a singer and doula.

The couple met at a meatball shop, of all places, and bonded over their shared passion for music and belief in Baháʼí faith. They held two wedding ceremonies in 2017, as Kirke told HeyMama in a now-deleted article: "My first wedding was more of a civil ceremony with about 40 people that were able to join us in a pinch. The second one was more planned. 200 people came from all over the world. It just felt necessary to have both" (via People). Badgley and Kirke welcomed their first child together, and Kirke's second, James, in 2020.

Obviously, "You" features a lot of scenes revolving around sex — after all, Joe Goldberg is always looking for "the one." But in 2023, Badgley addressed his dissatisfaction with filming intimate scenes, telling Variety, "My fidelity in my relationship. It's important to me. And actually, it was one of the reasons that I initially wanted to turn the role down." Luckily, Kirke encouraged Badgley to take the role to begin with, but this is the main reason the heat was slightly turned down in Season 4.

Elizabeth Lail plays Guinevere Beck, the struggling writer who surrounds herself with shallow friends and becomes Joe Goldberg's newest subject of fixation in Season 1. But outside of the show, her love life has found a much happier conclusion in pediatric dentist Nieku Manshadi.

As she gushed to Brides in 2021, "We met the good old-fashioned way — at a mutual friend's party in Williamsburg!" Lail went on to detail that in August 2020, mid-pandemic, the couple went away for a "much-needed long weekend" in Montauk, New York. "We were at our own little bonfire during sunset on the beach making s'mores when Nieku proposed with my grandmother's wedding ring," she said. In April 2021, Lail and Manshadi had an intimate wedding ceremony of just 22 guests due to the COVID-19 restrictions, and couldn't have looked happier.

In speaking with Decider about her time on "You," Lail said that, even though he plays a not-so-good guy, Penn Badgley put her at ease. "You tend to have to chemistry read before you even have the job. So I read with Penn and I remember leaving and I thought, 'Oh, thank God.' Because there was something there. There was some kind of easy, something you can't put your finger on ... Penn turned out to be the most incredible partner because he is such an incredible human being and we were doing uncomfortable things and I felt very safe with him."

We loved Shay Mitchell as Emily Fields in her breakout role on "Pretty Little Liars," but when she landed the part of Peach Salinger in Season 1 of "You," she really put her acting chops to work. As Guinevere Beck's privileged, manipulative, and frankly unhinged best friend, Joe Goldberg nearly met his match — but luckily, Mitchell has a much healthier outlook on love than her on-screen character. She has been with her boyfriend, television host, brand consultant, and producer Matte Babel since 2017, but they've known each other for much longer.

The couple has two children together, daughters Atlas Noa and Rome. While Babel and the actor seem to be the perfect pair, Mitchell shared that marriage isn't on her mind for the time being. In 2021, she told E! News, "There's no pressure here. I love it. I love the fact that we come home and every day I'm like, 'I choose you and you choose me.' It keeps us on our toes. I'm like, 'Hey, I can walk out. I don't need to go through a lawyer, I can just walk out.' And same with him. It keeps it sexy."

Dr. Nicky, Guinevere Beck's weed-smoking, boundary-crossing therapist in Season 1 of "You," is played by the legendary John Stamos. In an interview with Newsweek, he spoke about the way he approached playing the character, saying, "I went over the script quite a bit with my therapist, and then I read the book and found a lot more little nuggets in there. I think the pot-smoking thing wasn't even in the script. It eluded that he's a pot smoker, but I said, 'Why don't I just do it?'"

And like most of the Netflix show's cast members, Stamos is in a more successful relationship than his on-screen character, having been married to Caitlin McHugh of "The Vampire Diaries" fame since 2018.

The "Full House" alum met McHugh on the set of "Law & Order: SVU" in 2011, but it wasn't until October 2017, after a year of dating, that the couple became engaged, and just four months later, exchanged their vows. "We're a perfect balance," Stamos said in an interview with People. "I'm like, hyper and tense and she's like, 'It's cool man. Everything's fine.'" The happy couple welcomed their adorable baby boy, Billy, to the world in 2018, and have built themselves a beautiful family of three.

In Season 2 of "You," we were introduced to the ambitious but deeply troubled (that might be putting it lightly) baker, Love Quinn, played by the incredibly talented Victoria Pedretti. She became a series regular for Seasons 2 and 3 following her breakout role in Netflix's "The Haunting of Hill House," as she became the next victim of Joe Goldberg's — excuse us — Will Bettelheim's obsession. Later, in Season 3, Love has a forbidden love affair with Theo Engler, her younger neighbor, played by Dylan Arnold. Their chemistry was something you just can't fake. (And, spoiler, they didn't.)

In November 2021, after photos of Pedretti and Engler running errands together surfaced, a source for Entertainment Tonight revealed, "Victoria Pedretti and her 'You' co-star, Dylan Arnold, are dating and have been for about a few months." So obviously, fans were stoked.

In October 2021, Pedretti spoke with Elle about her character's relationship with Theo, saying, "She does get a glimpse of how maybe she ought to be treated, where somebody is really concerned about her well-being in a way that her parents don't really show a regard for, and her husband doesn't show much regard for, her brother didn't show much regard for." When asked about their character's age differences, Pedretti remarked, "The age difference? He's definitely not a child. ... I mean, Dylan is actually a year older than me, so that's Hollywood for you."

When Season 2 of "You" rolled around, we were introduced to a mostly new cast, including a horde of new friends Will Bettelheim had to try and win over. Among these friends was Gabe Miranda, played by Charlie Barnett of "Russian Doll." Although he only appeared in a handful of episodes, his character played an important role in Sunrise and Lucy's wedding as the officiant.

In real life, Barnett will soon be hearing wedding bells again, as he is engaged to set designer Drew Bender. It is believed that they have been dating since 2018. Barnett also posted photos of the set designer on his Instagram.

Barnett divulged his and Bender's wedding plans to Page Six in April 2022. "Wyoming is a difficult place to find things. That's where I've been a bridezilla," he said about their wedding planning. Barnett also added that it will be very "bohemian," and that instead of having cake, their guests will be eating pie. "It's a higher altitude, so it's hard to bake cakes up there." Given Bender's career, this is sure to be a stunning wedding.

In Season 2 of "You," James Scully played Love Quinn's impulsive, attention-seeking twin brother, Forty. Some fans loved him, some hated him, but one thing remains true; Scully did an incredible job playing him. Now a couple of years after his time on "You" ended, Scully has continued to act in films like "Fire Island" and "Something's More Than One Thing." Something about Scully's work though is that he has a tendency to crush on those co-workers.

In 2022, Scully revealed to Page Six that he had a crush on Penn Badgley when they were filming "You." He said, "I spent many days with him for six months, and every time I walked into the hair and makeup trailer and saw him, I would just sigh wistfully to myself."

Now Scully is dating Julio Torres, a writer known for his work on "Saturday Night Live," "Los Espookys," and an upcoming project for HBO. When asked by Leo Edit who his idol in the industry is, Scully responded, "My boyfriend, Julio. There is a person who has made a career for himself in the entertainment industry pretty much entirely on his own terms. ... Any time I feel myself getting sucked into the vortex of vanity and narcissism and classism that this industry can be, I try to imagine what Julio would do, and I suddenly recognize that so little of that stuff matters."

Remember Forty and Love Quinn's heavy-drinking, overbearing socialite mother Dottie? She was severe, but the actor who portrayed her, Saffron Burrows, is anything but. She became a model at the age of 15 in the late '80s and was acting by the early '90s, so needless to say, Burrows has seen an incredible evolution within the industry during the span of her career, including the LGBTQ+ movement.

In an interview with The Guardian in 2014, she discussed working in Hollywood as a bisexual woman. "There's no coming out to do because I've always just followed my heart and I was lucky enough to have parents who didn't impose any bigotry on me. So to come out would actually be an untruth because the men I've loved were very vivid, real, loving relationships," she said. "So I'm with this woman now who's extraordinary and that's what we're doing."

The woman she referred to was Alison Balian, a writer and producer for "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," whom Burrows married in 2011 (right after the Marriage Equality Act was passed). The couple share two children, a daughter born in 2017 and a son born in 2010.

When Candace Stone, Joe Goldberg's ex-girlfriend, made a surprise appearance at the end of Season 1, fans were left with an intense cliffhanger that only Season 2 could fill. As we got to know the character, played by Ambyr Childers, we learned that she was a victim of Penn Badgley's villain protagonist as well. But the tragic truth is that Childers and her character Candace had something in common, in that her real love life turned into a nightmare as well.

Childers and producer Randall Emmett tied the knot in 2009, and a year later had their first child, London. In 2013, along came their second daughter, Rylee, but things were far from settled in their family unit. Emmett reportedly filed for legal separation in 2015, and then Childers filed for divorce in 2017.

Two years after her divorce, in a 2019 interview with Stylecaster, Childers admitted to relating to her "You" character, saying, "I love the strength that Candace has. I'm meeting Candace at a time in my life where I'm like, 'Okay. I like that. This is what I need.'" Later, Childers filed a restraining order, citing that Emmett had been emotionally and verbally abusive, going as far as to place a tracking device in her car when they were married, all of which Emmett denies. The order was granted in December 2022 (per The Los Angeles Times). They still share custody of their two daughters.

Lukas Gage is on the up and up, having landed roles in hit shows like "Euphoria," "The White Lotus," and of course, playing Adam in Season 4 of Netflix's "You." As Joe Goldberg tried out his newest pseudonym across the pond and a new cast of characters was introduced, viewers got to know which troublesome bunch we'd be dealing with this season. Gage's character was fitting, playing the avaricious Adam, an American who was manipulative in love.

But thankfully, Gage seems much more down-to-earth in reality. And, lucky for him, he's snagged himself a beloved icon to take to red-carpet events — celebrity hairstylist, Chris Appleton. You know, the icon responsible for creating Kim Kardashian's signature wet hair look. During an interview with The New York Times in March 2023, Gage was asked about Appleton's Instagram post that featured Gage, and whether this was a relationship announcement. He replied, "If they want to think that, they can."

Shortly after Gage declined to define his relationship, Appleton appeared on "The Drew Barrymore Show" and gushed about finding love. "Love is a really special thing, and I think meeting someone that you really connect with is really, really special," he said (via YouTube). He showed a photo of the couple, with Appleton saying, "That's Lucas. That's in Mexico. Looking like a hottie." The couple married in April 2023.

When Malcolm is first introduced in Season 4, it was hard not to cringe or want to simply mute the television. And Stephen Hagan did a brilliant job of portraying the jerk who you loved to hate — although he wasn't around for long. Malcolm treated his girlfriend Kate terribly, although you may have had to listen carefully because the charming accent could fool you.

Thankfully, Hagan seems to be the sheer opposite of his on-screen character. He's been married to his wife Wendy Wason, a comedian and actor, since 2012, and the pair lives in London with their three children.

Being cast in a hit Netflix show must have been a massive achievement for Hagan, but unfortunately for his wife and mother, some scenes were a little too difficult to stomach. In speaking with the Belfast Telegraph about Wason's reaction to the show, he said, "She has to say she likes it, but she did really like it — although she found it quite upsetting to see me kissing someone. My mum was upset at me being ripped to shreds but wasn't bothered about the intimacy, whereas Wendy didn't mind me being ripped to bits but found the kissing tough." But since this wasn't Hagan's first role, and the happy couple has been together for over a decade now, it's hopefully an issue they will work out.

Maybe you knew him from "Eragon," or from "Downton Abbey," but one thing's for sure — "You" fans will remember Ed Speleers for years as Rhys Montrose, Season 4's author looking to run for London mayor. In an interview with People, he spoke about his role on the show, saying, "I had a long chat with the showrunner Sera Gamble before deciding on the part completely. But it is funny, these days you don't get as much information for roles as you used to." So perhaps he didn't know about the midseason twist at the time.

Outside of his professional life, Speleers is fairly private but has made several public appearances with his wife Asia Macey, who is a costume designer. She's worked on films and television shows like "Into the Woods," "Skins," and interestingly enough, "Downton Abbey," around the time that Speleers had a part in the historical British drama.

It's been reported that Speleers and Macey have been married since 2014 and, according to his Instagram, they share two children. But the rest is up to speculation, as the couple has yet to comment publicly on one another.