Why Adam From You Season 4 Looks So Familiar
Old habits die hard for Joe Goldberg — especially when his sociopathic wife was fanning the flames of their mutual violent streaks. By the end of "You" Season 3, Love doesn't stand a chance (in either sense of the word), and Joe sets his suburban life ablaze to find the newest subject of his attraction, Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle).
With "You" Season 4 now upon us, Penn Badgley's Joe has found his way to London and secured a cushy gig as a professor under the fake name Jonathan Moore. Across the pond, Marienne has reentered Joe's life, as has his new neighbor, Kate (Charlotte Ritchie).
In London, Joe starts palling around with the local aristocracy, not that he thinks very highly of them. "I fell in with the most insane, damaged people on Earth," he intones in the "You" Season 4 trailer. "A circle of privileged douchebags." One member of Joe's new circle is Adam Pratt, a wealthy American expat. Here's why Adam looks so familiar.
Lukas Gage's first major role was in T@gged
A few common themes can be traced through Lukas Gage's early roles. "Sickhouse," with its Snapchat-based formatting, and the satirical thriller "Assassination Nation" both interrogate the overwhelming importance of social media. "T@gged," the San Diego native's first significant television role, is no different (via IMDb).
Created by Hannah Macpherson, "T@gged" looks at online privacy — or lack thereof — and its potentially deadly consequences. In the series, which debuted in 2016, three high school girls are targeted when a mysterious stranger named "monkey-man" tags their profiles in violent videos. For all three seasons, Gage stars as Brandon Darrow, a troubled teen who bullies his peers for fun.
With "T@gged," Gage participated in a classic and wonderfully angst-ridden teen whodunnit. That experience would prepare him for his five-episode arc in Season 1 of "American Vandal," Netflix's hilarious true crime parody that premiered in 2017.
He got on Nate's bad side in Euphoria
Lukas Gage's roles in "T@gged" and "American Vandal" led to single-episode appearances in series like "Supergirl" and "Veronica Mars." In 2019, Lukas Gage reunited with "Assassination Nation" director Sam Levinson on his hit HBO series "Euphoria." Though Gage's time on the series was relatively short — only four episodes — his character, Tyler, would loom large. At a wild party in the pilot, 22-year-old Tyler unknowingly finds himself in the middle of a love triangle between Maddy (Alexa Demie) and Nate (Jacob Elordi). When Nate stalks, threatens, and brutally attacks Tyler, it establishes Nate as the villain of the series. Later, Nate impersonates Tyler to catfish Jules (Hunter Schafer).
For Gage, joining "Euphoria" was an excuse to work with Levinson again. "I'm such a fan of his writing and directing," the actor told Pop Culturalist. "His point of view is so strong, and he's willing to push boundaries and make people uncomfortable. There's so much truth and humanity in his stuff."
Gage was easy to hate in Love, Victor
When "Love, Simon" premiered in 2018, the groundbreaking film was the first gay teenage love story released by a major studio (via Variety). Lukas Gage knew he wanted to be involved when a straight-to-series order was announced for the spin-off "Love, Victor" in 2019. "I loved 'Love, Simon,' and I reached out to my team, and I said: 'I need to audition for it,'" the actor told Courageous Nerd. "I also felt like I needed to be part of the story. It was such an important queer story that needed to be told. Something I wish was available when I was a teenager."
In the Hulu series, Gage plays Derek, the boyfriend of Victor's (Michael Cimino) love interest, Benji (George Sear). Derek may balk at Benji's romantic gestures, but he is by no means a villain. Victor even stands up for the couple when they're caught kissing in front of his conservative family. Still, Gage understands that plenty of fans were rooting against him. "I'm probably the most hated person on the show, understandably," Gage told Pop Culturalist. Still, it was important for Gage to play, in his words, "a gay character who's trying to navigate his first real love and his notions of monogamy."
Lukas Gage stood out in one White Lotus episode
Lukas Gage would continue to explore LGBTQ+ characters in Season 1 of "The White Lotus." In the Hawaii-set season, Gage plays Dillon, a surfer-bro bellhop at the ritzy eponymous hotel. In Episode 4, "Recentering," Dillon comes into his own when he joins his boss Armond (Murray Bartlett), for a coke-fueled bender before the two are caught in a compromising sex act. "I expect to be surprised by Mike White because he is such a brilliant writer, and I love that there's a natural defiance in almost everything that he does," Gage told The AV Club. "There's a sense of burning down the system in his writing, and I love that."
Gage was already familiar with White's writing on a personal level. The actor's first on-screen role was a small part in the showrunner's HBO series, "Enlightened," in which a teenage Gage was part of a group therapy scene. "It was my first time on a set," he continued. "I just remember being so nervous, so curious, asking 100 questions to Luke Wilson and Mike White, and they were being so kind to me."
Gage played a documentarian in Angelyne
After roughly ten years in the industry, it was fitting that Lukas Gage would eventually sign on to a project exploring the artifice of fame and image-making. Enter "Angelyne," a limited series starring and executive produced by "Shameless" star Emmy Rossum. Rossum plays Angelyne, the billboard queen who gained notoriety after cropping up across Los Angeles in the 1980s. Gage appears as Max Allen, a documentary filmmaker who's one of several figures trying to unlock the mystery of Angelyne.
For Gage, Allen and Angelyne have a strange, cat-and-mouse dynamic. "Although he's upset that she did all these things, he's thankful that she taught him how to work the system, how to work the game, how to manipulate back, how to not be timid and shy, and to break out of his shell," the actor told Forbes. "So, it's really a love-hate relationship between the two of them."