Penn Badgley takes it off in ‘The Stepfather’
In a thriller, it’s usual to see scantily clad females take up much of the screen time. The new movie “The Stepfather,” in theaters now, holds true to this generalization — star Amber Heard is constantly in a bikini. But don’t fret, ladies — there’s also something in it for you.
“If I had known how much I would have had my shirt off in this movie, I would have been at the gym for months,” laughs Penn Badgley, who stars in “The Stepfather” as Michael Harding, a teenager who uncovers the fact that his mother’s new, seemingly perfect fiance is actually a serial killer. And who, yes, is in most of the movie with his shirt off.
“It certainly didn’t register with me when I was reading the script, [or with] the director. When we were filming the last scene, he was talking to me while I was in a towel and he just looked me up and down and was like, ‘I had no idea how f—ing naked you would be in this movie.’”
Badgley on trying the film lead thing
“It was something that I had never done before — “it” being a couple things: a lead in a film, and a film, period,” Badgley says. “I thought of this as an exercise in making it real. I didn’t think [about doing] anything like ‘probing my worth’ as an actor. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about making [the character] real.”