Sweeney’s character, Kathy Howard, becomes an online sex worker in season three.
Alana Ubach talks filming ‘Euphoria’ Season 3 with Sidney Sweeney
Alana Ubach, who plays Sidney Sweeney’s mother on HBO’s Euphoria, shares her favorite memories from working on Season 3.
Like her role in Euphoria, Sidney Sweeney doesn’t shy away from some controversy.
Emmy-nominated actress Kathy Howard, who explores the world of online sex work in the latest season of the HBO drama, was balked by the risqué storyline, Euphoria creator Sam Levinson revealed in an interview with The New York Times published Monday, June 1.
“The funny thing is, when I first wrote this song, I thought, maybe we could just shoot this whole thing and there would be no nudity,” Levinson, 41, told the magazine. “Maybe there’s a way to get around certain things?”
But Levinson said Sweeney didn’t want to take the safe route. “She looked at me and said, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m an OnlyFans model. Are you saying I’m going to wear a skirt?'”
“I think she’s a completely fearless actor,” Levinson continued. “She is also very professional and comes to the game every day. I love working with her because she is very flexible in terms of performance. We have a lot of trust.”
Season 3 of “Euphoria,” the final installment of Levinson’s button-pushing youth drama, aired its finale on May 31st. When the season was released in April, several critics slammed Cassie’s professional pursuits as an adult content creator.
Mashable’s Beren Edwards called the graphic portrayal of Cassie’s profession, including the backlash from her loved ones, “a gauntlet of overly sexualized humiliation.”
“‘Euphoria’ does not question these prejudices or further explore the complexities of sex work,” Edwards wrote. “Instead, we are happy to continue to embarrass ourselves by using Cathy’s wishes as a springboard to launch suggestive images designed to generate maximum controversy.”
USA TODAY TV critic Kelly Lawler said the season was “oversexed and underplotted, with characters more like Abercrombie cardboard cutouts than real people,” adding that the stars “simply get dragged and forced into Levinson’s male gaze.”
In an interview with the New York Times, Levinson defended the sexual provocation in Cassie’s storyline, saying, “She just wants to be loved. She just wants to be loved. It feels to me like a natural evolution of social media, whether it’s Instagram or anything else. You’re a product, you’re a brand. It’s based on external validation.”
“Look, we’re working in this OnlyFans world where women are getting paid to whisper into ear-shaped microphones and things like that,” Levinson added. “There’s a level of absurdity there that’s just fun, and we’re always trying to figure out ways to make it feel authentic and humorous and dramatic while also speaking to the characters’ larger desires and aspirations.”
Sweeney seemed to tease the character’s evolution in an Instagram post on Sunday, May 31, which included several photos of Cassie’s exciting looks from this season.
“It’s… called acting,” she wrote.
