YOU's Penn Badgley and Sera Gamble Share the True Story Behind the 'Iconic' Peaches and Butt Line

The second season of YOU was full of surprises, not the least of which was that Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) finally met his match when his latest stalker victim, Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti), turned out to be just as dangerous as him. Their twisted dance throughout the season proved to be even more suspenseful than Joe's doomed relationship with Beck (Elizabeth Lail), and there was no shortage of intense drama in the series' sophomore outing. To celebrate YOU's ranking as one of TV Guide's 100 Best Shows Right Now, we caught up with Badgley and co-creator and showrunner Sera Gamble to look back on some of Season 2's standout scenes, starting with the moment Joe and Love's story first began.

Fans will undoubtedly recall that during their fateful first meeting at the grocery store, Love famously struck up a conversation with Joe about whether a peach reminded him of a human rump. Many fans perceived the topic of conversation to be a wink to Peach Salinger (Shay Mitchell), who was killed off in Season 1, but any nod to the beloved character was completely accidental. 

When Gamble wrote the scene, the showrunner explained, she was thinking of questions like, "How do people flirt? How do they strike up conversations with strangers?"

She said, "There's nothing that deep about it. I just thought if I was in the produce section, what would I say to try to be funny? … Later, people were like, 'Is it because of Peach Salinger? And I was like, 'Yeah, totally. Totally thought about that.'"

https://www.tvguide.com/news/100-best-shows-tv-right-now-2020/">The 100 Best Shows on TV Right Now

But while Love's memorable flirtation wasn't a subtle nod to the show's first season, Gamble did share the true story that inspired the line. "I have a friend, and she and I have had a long-standing joke about peaches looking like butts, and we sometimes find little figurines and lip glosses shaped like peaches. So I have a little collection of butt-shaped peaches in my home, and that's the actual genesis of the thing." 

No matter the origin of the line, it's one Badgley won't soon forget. The scene was one of the first ones he read for Season 2 as part of his chemistry test with Pedretti. "I remember thinking about the peaches and butts line more than any line in the season," Badgley said. "It's iconic in my mind."

For more of Badgley and Gamble's thoughts on YOU -- including the what the season's final moments mean for Season 3 -- check out the video above.

YOU is available to stream on Netflix.