Murder, Death and “You”

Hi AC Tribe,

With the recent news break of You getting approved for a third season, I thought I would use this week’s blog post to talk a little bit about my experience on the show playing Candace. Fair warning, if you haven’t seen Seasons 1 & 2 there are some spoilers in this post!

When I landed this role, everything happened really quickly. I had about a week to read the first book by the great author, Caroline Kepnes, and get an idea of the tone of the show and my character’s role in the story before I got to New York. What fascinated me the most about Candace is that she's the only one in the show that really comes after Joe. She's the vigilante. She’s the only one who is calling everything like it is and is the only one who's transparent about her drive and motivation—to give Joe what's coming to him. I am a lot like that in real life—straight to the point, no bullshit. I think that is one of the things that attracted me the most to this character.

At some point in the first half of the season, Candace is nowhere to be seen or heard but when she comes back into the fray, it's as "Amy Adam" and she's seducing Love's twin brother, Forty. At that moment, I was like, "Oh, Candace is not playing around and she's going to do whatever she can to infiltrate Joe's inner circle." She's smart and she's determined. Creator Sera Gamble did a very good job creating this character and allowing her to be this very determined, smart, clever woman.

I also loved how strong Candace is. I think we're in a time in Hollywood where this character represents so many different avenues of where women are. I know some of it in the show is to the extreme, but she's not a killer. She just wants to take care of the other women that could possibly get swept into Joe's trap because she knows how dangerous he is. Joe tried to bury her alive, then she took off to Italy, and she made a very bold decision to come back and confront Joe.

I think knowing the decision that Joe made to kill Beck at the end of Season 1, Candace knew that there was a possibility of her own death, but she still went after him. She was like, "Fuck it. Why not go after the guy who put me in the ground?" I mean, I think if I was in that same situation, oh god, I don't know what I would do. Would I come after him? Yeah. Probably.

When I first read about Candace’s gruesome end at the hands of Love, I thought to myself, “what a great twist!” Although I was sad that this was the end for Candace, this is not a show about unicorns and butterflies, this is a show about murder and death. Just the fact that she could actually put Joe back into the cage was epic, and then she goes to console Love and Love kills her. Love plays such a beautiful, innocent, vulnerable person and then you see this dark side to her, it raises the questions, “What would you do for love? How far would you go?” I think it's a beautiful ending for my character because her goal was to allow Love to know the truth about Joe. It's not that Candace didn't accomplish what she wanted or what she set out to do, she very much did and now whatever that relationship with Joe and Love turns into, she said everything she wanted to say. She left it all out on the table.

Another thing I loved about working on You is that I was able to bring the jewelry brand into the show. You’ll notice that Candace is wearing our ACJ StarDance Hoop Earrings in one scene. You all know how much my brand means to me and it was so cool of the show to allow me to wear my jewelry so that I could bring both of my passions together as one through this experience.

Getting to work with the amazing actors on this show like Penn Badgley, Victoria Pedretti and James Scully to bring the creators’ vision to life was an incredible experience that I will forever be grateful for. I hope you are all as excited as I am to see where Season 3 goes!

Love,

Ambyr