Ed Speleers Talks About Joining The Serial Killer Drama

It’s rather fitting that this article should come out on Valentine’s Day. Joe Goldberg is such a romantic. It’s all about love for this demented serial killer who consistently finds himself in the middle of one bloody mess after another in the hit Netflix drama You.

British actor Ed Speleers has joined the cast for the show’s fourth season as Rhys Montrose, a man whose true motives are multi-layered and hard to pinpoint. “I knew this would be juicy,” he said in a recent interview. “I’ve played some fairly contentious individuals, but this felt like something that was going into a new world, and with the cult following, I had to do it.”

Speleers is having a great 2023, with a few hits premiering in February and March, but he says starring opposite Penn Badgley is a career highlight. The series is inspired by the novels by Caroline Kepnes, and show creators Sera Gamble and Greg Berlanti have kept it fresh with different settings and a new cast of crazy characters each season. The latest season does not disappoint!

The ten-episode season is broken into two parts: Part One premiered on February 9 with the first five episodes, and Part Two will stream on March 9. Part One debuted on the English TV List in the No. 1 spot with just over 92 million hours viewed, making it the most-viewed title this week. In addition, You landed in the Top 10 in 90 countries. Fans also revisited Season One with 19.24 million hours viewed and Season Three with 11.44 million hours viewed.

Speleers is also starring in the highly-anticipated new season of the Paramount+ hit Star Trek: Picard, and TV lovers will recognize him for portraying villain Stephen Bonnet in the Starz! series Outlander as well as his role as Footman Jimmy on two seasons of Downton Abbey (SAG award-winner, Best Ensemble).

Throughout our conversation, Speleers expresses gratitude for the opportunity to get into the role of Rhys, a writer and aspiring politician. “He is unlike any character I’ve played before,” he added.

He was filming Star Trek: Picard when his UK agent sent him some scenes for You. “Obviously, I knew about the show. It would’ve been impossible not to have heard about it,” said Speleers. At the time, however, he was so busy filming that he admits he hadn’t watched the show. He immediately binge-watched the first three seasons.

He laughed as he recalled that initial conversation with his agent. “She said I had to audition, and I had to do this show. She’s obsessed with it and joked that if I didn’t do it, she wouldn’t drop me but warned we would have a big problem!”

He sent in a few taped auditions, followed by a Zoom. Because he didn’t have complete scripts, he had to work with a handful of select scenes that he described as “well thought out and full of depth.”

When asked why he thinks audiences are so drawn to shows about serial killers and why we root for them, Speleers said it’s likely because we see their humanity. “We see their flaws, and we can understand them. I don’t think we can escape the fact that a huge part of the population has this morbid fascination and curiosity with the darker side of human nature, and we want to understand what drives that darkness. We see it play out in true crime all the time. One of the draws in particular with our show is that we empathize with Joe. The show’s lighter element allows the audience to feel safe enjoying it. We are allowed to escape into it, and we’re allowed to say, ‘This is wrong,’ but it’s not real. These characters are flawed but so fleshed out that you can feel for them.”

In the new season, Joe, known to his new circle of friends as Professor Jonathan Moore, is embroiled in chaos when he moves across the pond, hoping to begin anew. After his previous suburban life went up in flames, he fled to Europe, settling in London to escape his messy past, adopt a new identity, and pursue true love. And this is where he meets Rhys, a man who changes his life in many ways.

Poor Joe, wherever he goes, trouble and murder follow, but this season he makes it very clear that he doesn’t want to do this anymore. Perhaps his reluctance to kill makes him an antagonist worth rooting for. He wants to change his terrible ways. Don’t we all?

Joe quickly realizes he may not be the only killer in town. Now, his future depends on identifying and stopping whoever is targeting his new friend group of uber-wealthy socialites.

Rhys has motives of his own, and though viewers will not learn exactly what those are at first, his interactions with Joe play out in some of the season’s best scenes. Is he a friend or foe?

In true You fashion, there are plot twists aplenty, especially in the second half when the complexity of the relationship between Joe and Rhys is finally revealed.