I was like: ‘I’m not going to have a job. “Everything I was reading just wasn’t right. “I was having this weird section in my life where I didn’t really know what I was going to do next,” says the actor, who was last seen in the Spider-Man reboot opposite Tom Holland. “Thank whoever that he did, because, you know, you need people to believe in you.”Īll the young dudes. “I was like : ‘There’s no way that you’re able to see the work that I’ve done and think that I’d be capable of delivering that performance,’” recalls Zendaya. In a twist of fate, the role was exactly what The Greatest Showman star was after, in a Miley Cyrus-style move away from her Disney past. Levinson was so keen on Zendaya for the lead that he stuck a picture of her on his initial mood board of characters. I wanted to do something that didn’t rely so heavily on characters talking about their feelings because one of the toughest aspects of being young is not being able to articulate how you feel.” “Every time we deal with tough subjects or gritty material, it’s done in a docu-drama way. “I wanted to make a show about the anxiety of being young and the insecurities and unsureness of relationships, but I wanted to do it in a way that I felt we hadn’t seen before,” he explains. Because of his past experiences, HBO – which was already interested in remaking the original Israeli version of Euphoria – asked him to write about his formative years.

“For better or worse, a lot of it comes from my own experiences with anxiety and addiction,” he says, recalling an adolescence spent in hospitals, rehab centres and halfway houses until he finally got clean aged 19. Levinson, 34, clearly has a lot to say about sex, social media, anxiety and addiction, but what sets Euphoria apart from other teen dramas is that this is, in part, his own story. Eight episodes seen through the eyes of 17-year-old drug addict Rue (played by former Disney darling Zendaya) and already renewed for a second season, it has all the makings of a provocative, hit teen drama: a cast of hot young things, such as model Hunter Schafer and Mid90s star Alexa Demie a super-credible soundtrack, including Billie Eilish, Migos, Doja Cat and Lizzo, among others and a shed-load of complaints, obviously. It was originally supposed to be 80.Įuphoria, written and directed by Sam Levinson ( Assassination Nation) and executive-produced by Drake in partnership with indie production company A24 ( Lady Bird, Moonlight, Hereditary), is to Gen Z what the brilliant Skins once was to millennials. Critics wrote numerous articles dissecting this now-viral moment, one claiming it was “pointlessly gratuitous”. The president of the Parents Television Council claimed that the content was too graphic for its target audience. When the sequence – said to be a homage to Brian De Palma’s 1976 horror Carrie – aired in the States in June, it triggered a panicked response: horrified viewers counted a total of 30 penises in the scene. T here is a scene in episode two of US teen drama Euphoria when dozens of naked high-school boys swarm around the show’s leading jock, Nate, in a locker room, his eyes pained as he attempts to avoid the flailing slow-motion genitalia surrounding him.

Where does euphoria take place