The brains behind the hit show Euphoria have explained Sydney Sweeney’s character’s unexpected career move into creating OnlyFans content.
The premiere of season three begins with Sweeney’s Cassie and Nate, played by Jacob Elordi, on the precipice of planning and paying for an expensive wedding. As Nate struggles with the inheritance of his father’s business, Cassie decides to shoot OnlyFans content to boost their income.
In the premiere episode, their housekeeper films Cassie, who is dressed as a puppy. In a later promo, released over the weekend, she’s seen dressed as a baby, complete with a pacifier—a scene that has divided fans.
The show’s creator, Sam Levinson, 41, said that he wanted to “break the wall” between the show and its viewers with the bizarre storyline.
He explained that Cassie has “got her dog house and her little dog ears and the nose, and that has its own humor, but what makes the scene is the fact that her housekeeper is the one filming it.”
“What we wanted to always find is the other layer of absurdity that we’re able to tie into it so that we’re not too inside of her fantasy or illusion—the gag is to jump out, to break the wall,” Levinson said.
Euphoria cinematographer Marcell Rév said they wanted to juxtapose the “aesthetic” of OnlyFans with the “tacky” mid-century home where Cassie and Nate live.
“OnlyFans has its own aesthetic, and how you elevate that aesthetic to the show’s aesthetic is a challenge, I’m not going to lie,” Rév said.
To accomplish this in some scenes, Cassie is seen in the brightness of the ring lights she uses to film her cam-girl content. Zooming out of her “fantasy,” however, her surroundings are dark.
“Some of these scenes we only lit with these ring lights that she would use…. When you’re inside, it’s a beautiful, glowing front light, but then you jump out of it, and it’s just a pool of light, and everything surrounding it is dark. It’s just gnarly and jarring,” Levinson said.
“We wanted to capture what she’s trying to show the audience and be inside of it,” he continued. “But then also pull back wider and see how depressing it is.”
Sweeney, 28, addressed her character’s wild plotline, telling Entertainment Tonight at the show’s premiere, “Cassie is a crazy character.”
“She will do anything and at all costs to be famous this season,” the actress said, laughing. “She makes a lot of wild, interesting choices.”
The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager wrote that all Cassie wants this season is “a lavish wedding decked out with $50,000 worth of flowers.”
“When Nate won’t agree to that insane sum, she takes her racy Instagram posts—of herself as a dog, a baby, and soaking wet in the Stars and Stripes—to OnlyFans,” he explains, “Which she roundly defends as not pornographic despite her own evidence to the contrary.”
Cassie’s baby costume has drawn widespread criticism online, but some critics have suggested that the narrative arc aligns with Cassie’s persona, as seen throughout the show.
Sweeney has spoken out about her character’s nudity on the show, becoming one of four female cast members who expressed discomfort at their character’s portrayals of nudity or sexuality. Sweeney, who skyrocketed to fame after Euphoria, told the Independent in 2022, “There are moments where Cassie was supposed to be shirtless, and I would tell Sam, ‘I don’t really think that’s necessary here.’ He was like, ‘OK, we don’t need it.’”
“I’ve never felt like Sam has pushed it on me or was trying to get a nude scene into an HBO show. When I didn’t want to do it, he didn’t make me,” the Emmy-nominated actress, who was 24 at the time, said.
Sweeney said she believes there’s “a stigma against actresses who get naked on screen.”
“When a guy has a sex scene or shows his body, he still wins awards and gets praise. But the moment a girl does it, it’s completely different,” she said. “No one talks about it because I got naked. I do The White Lotus and all of a sudden, critics are paying attention.”
Levinson praised Sweeney, calling her “a joy to work with,” in an interview earlier this month with Rolling Stone. Sweeney, he said, “can literally do anything.… Sometimes I’ll give her a take to just go off: ‘Whatever you want to do, just make sure it’s nutty.’ Then this whole other performance will come out.”
Season three of Euphoria premiered on HBO on April 12. The final season of the controversial–and embattled–series will conclude on May 31.
