Domino Kirke-Badgley Sets Record Straight on Husband's Sex Scene Ban

Domino Kirke-Badgley has broken her silence after more than three years of online accusations that she forced her husband, Penn Badgley, to stop filming sex scenes. She did not ask him to stop. He chose to himself.

"A few years ago, the internet decided I'd asked my husband to stop doing sex scenes. The truth is, my husband decided to do this for mental health reasons," Kirke-Badgley wrote on Instagram. "After working in the industry since he was just 12 years old, believe me, it was time. In the entertainment world, they call actors 'puppets' behind their backs, and it's even more disturbing when they start out as child actors… after years of trying, Penn decided to take a stand and let the world see him. And guess what, he hasn't lost fans and he's still getting hired!"

The actor, who began his career as a child, first announced his decision before production on "You" Season 4. On a viral February episode of his "Podcrushed" podcast, he revealed he had told showrunner Sera Gamble he no longer wanted to film intimate scenes. He repeated the position to Variety that same month.

"It's important to me in my real life to not have" sex scenes, Badgley told Variety. "My fidelity in my relationship. It's important to me."

That reference to his marriage made Kirke-Badgley a target on social media — even though Badgley had credited her as the reason he accepted the lead role of Joe Goldberg in "You" in the first place. The couple married in 2017, and she had encouraged him to take the part despite its intimate content.

In her video post, Kirke-Badgley addressed the expectations attached to her husband's screen persona. "The characters that my husband has played over the years, people have come to expect that he will continue to play that guy," she said. "I was super happy for him and very proud of him because I understood how major it was, and yeah … it's just relational hygiene."

Badgley elaborated on his reasoning in a 2023 interview with Variety. "There's almost nothing I could say with more consecration. That aspect of Hollywood has always been very disturbing to me — and that aspect of the job, that mercurial boundary — has always been something that I actually don't want to play with at all," he said. "I told [Sara Gamble before Season 4] kind of my desire, and she immediately was accepting and responsive. I'm always very practical. I said I know it can't be none, because there's something coded into the DNA of the show, and I signed the contract, and so it is what it is but as little as possible would be my preference."

The result was visible on screen. Season 4 of "You" contained fewer sex scenes, and every one of them was performed fully clothed.

The initial comments drew a polarized response. Detractors criticized Badgley for equating sex scenes with real sex, and many noted that intimacy coordinators — now a Hollywood staple — exist to keep such scenes safe during filming. Badgley later told GQ his remarks had gotten "blown out of proportion."

"What I was speaking about wasn't actually the final product," he told the magazine. "It was sort of like the culture inherent to the production of all movies, but particularly those scenes. It's like, look, we know that Hollywood has had a history of flagrant exploitation and abuse."

He admitted he was "nervous to even have that conversation" with Gamble. "It was not easy. It was easy because of Sera's response, and I felt relieved. But technically speaking, if I thought I'd had the ability to set that boundary earlier, I would have. We shall see if setting that boundary, of course, has any ramifications. Just simply, it does limit the number of projects you can be a part of."

Badgley's next project tests that calculation. He stars in the romantic comedy "You Deserve Each Other," co-starring Meghann Fahy — a genre that will show whether an actor can build a career on boundaries he once feared would cost him work.