Like the previous seasons, the final season of HBO's hit series Euphoria featured some heavy and rather explicit nudity from actress Sydney Sweeney. However, it sounds like she refused to have it any other way.
Following the series finale, which aired on Sunday to mark the official conclusion of the hit series, creator Sam Levinson admitted that he actually considered making the final season with no actual nudity. Sweeney, however, wouldn't have it.
Sweeney Insisted on Nudity
In season 3, Sweeney's character, Cassie, begins a career as an OnlyFans model in order to pay some mounting bills. Despite the inherent explicit nature of the storyline, Levinson said that he actually considered cutting all the nudity, but Sweeney insisted upon leaving it in.
“Well, it’s funny. When I first wrote it, I was like, ‘Maybe we shoot all of this and we don’t have any nudity. Maybe there’s ways to shoot around certain things?'” Levinson said during a recent interview with the New York Times. “And she looked at me and she was like, ‘Are you kidding? I’m playing an OnlyFans model. You’re telling me you’re going to, like, skirt around it?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, OK, that’s a fair point.'”
Sweeney agreed, and the scenes remained, including one rather explicit scene where Sweeney's breasts burst through the window of an office building during a fantastical dream sequence.
Levinson went on to praise Sweeney, calling her a “totally fearless” and “wonderfully professional” actress.
“There’s a lot of trust that we have,” he said. “And look, we’re tackling this world of OnlyFans where women are being paid to, like, whisper into an ear-shaped microphone. There is a level of absurdity to it that is just fun and we’re always trying to come up with ways to make it feel authentic and humorous and dramatic and also speak to the larger wants and wishes of the character.”
Levinson Defends Nudity in Previous Scenes
During the interview, Levinson was also asked about some “complaints that there’s nudity when there doesn’t need to be” in the first two seasons of Euphoria, when the characters were supposed ot be in high school.
“From the script, you get a sense of what the role requires,” he said. “Even when you go up to audition, let’s use the role of Cassie, you know the role requires a certain amount of nudity. Are you comfortable? If they’re comfortable, they get the role, then the next layer is the intimacy coordinator. I think it’s a SAG rule that if an actor then says, after getting cast, ‘Actually, I don’t want to do that,’ we can’t force them to do a scene.”
Levinson made it clear that he is a proponent of making sure that actors are comfortable and safe.
“I believe very strongly that the best, most honest performances are when an actor feels free and safe. That’s how you get a great performance,” Levinson said. “You can’t if there is any tension. The emotion is going to be blocked. And that’s something I’ve known from my days of studying acting. So my job is to create the kind of best, most conducive environment for the actor to play this character.”
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