Sam Levinson - 'Euphoria'

27:56And she said, well, great. Go write that. And I said, what? She goes, everything we talked about. I said, well, OK, but how does it connect to euphoria? She said, I don't know. You figure that out. And I said, well, what do you like about it? She goes, I just like how raw it is. I said, great. OK, so I should just write whatever. She said, yeah, just everything we were talking about. Just put that in the scripts. I said, okay. And, you know, I'm walking out the door and she says, oh, can you do it really cheap? I said, what do you mean? She was like, I don't know, like$2 million an episode. I said, sure, no problem.

28:35And walked out and I thought, wow, I think I just got a job writing a pilot for HBO. And so I go back home, go back to New York, and my wife and I, Ash, just had a baby, our son. And I'm sitting there and I'm going, okay, so I'm writing a pilot for HBO. What do I do? Do I write the kind of the real version of it? Do I pull punches? And I'm thinking back to HBO when I was younger and Oz and Sopranos and all of these shows that really kind of pushed the limits of what was allowed on TV and characters that were dark and evil at times. And I thought there's no sense in trying to play it safe here, write something that's kind of down the middle.

29:25I ought to just go for something that feels honest and truthful but also is something I know hasn't really been put on TV before because the worst that can happen is at least it gets their attention. And they say, okay, well, why don't you pull back A, B, and C? And at the same time I was thinking, but how do I do it for two million an episode? And I just thought, just write the thing. and you're not sending it into a line producer tomorrow. We'll get to that point. And so I just sort of just went for it. Amazing. And I guess one thing I was thinking about, you spoke earlier about how drugs today even are just so different than they were when you would have been in high school.

30:11And a lot of things are different. Yeah. And, you know, I'm trying to put myself in your shoes And I'm thinking, was a concern sort of, and how do you address this, that you don't want to become like the Steve Buscemi 30 Rock meme where it's like, how do you do fellow kids? You know, where you're trying to, you don't really grasp what, if you don't, like how you have to figure out how to really get in touch with what the high school experience is now. How did you do that? To be honest, I just sort of drew upon my own life at that time, which would have been late 90s into early 2000s, the sort of the people I hung around with, the situations I got myself into.

30:58And then I figured the way to modernize it was directorial as opposed to, sure, there's some new drugs, new chemicals and different names, and there's social media and all this stuff. But if you approach it with a kind of a modern sensibility in terms of directing that reflects the internet and social media in particular, and what I mean by that is it reflects the manic nature of what it feels like to scroll, watching a puppy video, watching a fistfight in a backyard, watching someone get killed in a foreign country, the sort of emotional instability. If I applied that to the filmmaking and also gave it a propulsion that signified to audiences very early on, if you look away for two seconds and you pick up your phone, we're going to leave you in the dust.

31:59So it had a sort of a cocaine energy to it while also being sort of very visual. And I think that's how I found a way to modernize it and not be the meme of Steve Buscemi hanging out in the high school hallway. So the characters that you created, the principal ensemble includes people who are white and black. straight and gay, cis and trans, skinny and fat, every variety of person you can imagine. Yeah. And you've said there's a part of you in every one of them. I wonder if you break that down a little bit, like who you, how you relate to a Cassie or a cat. I can kind of see it and I've read a bit, but I think it would be interesting for people to hear that.

32:50You know, look, I think that it's the job of the writer to give a piece of themselves to their characters. And it also, I think, just on a human level, just in terms of what life is about ultimately, is you take your sort of life experiences and maybe the hardships and the things you've gone through, and you try to put it into something that can transform it. So you can take the sort of darkness of your own life and transform it into something that begets light. At least that's how I view creativity and, and filmmaking, you know, in creating a character like Jules, right. Who's a, who's trans and, you know, new in town.

33:37You know, I took, for instance, some of what I just told you about, you know, being in a, in a psychiatric hospital at the age of 11. I took that and I, I gave it to that character. I mean, everything down to the, the suicide attempts in the ginger ale can. I mean, that's all real. The knife scene in the kitchen, I think you've said was another. Yeah, the knife scene in the kitchen. You know, a character like Ali, Coleman Domingo, you know, was based in part on a sponsor that I had and a counselor that I had who helped get me clean and helped kind of point out to me in various ways how I wasn't the person that I wanted to be.

34:19You know, there's a lot of talk about how do you write diverse characters and how do you understand someone else's experience? And I think it just boils down to if you're giving them a piece of yourself and building upon it, it creates an authenticity and an emotional sort of anchor that allows for that character to be real and three-dimensional and human. And so I do it with every single character I write. And then when I cast an actor, I sit down, I talk to them, I talk to them about the character, I talk to them about their own life. And then I go back and do another revision on that character and try to bridge a little bit of the gap between the character and the actor so that they also have a sense of ownership over that character and they want to protect that character you know and and so I think that's the beauty of filmmaking is it's this collaboration between writer director actors crew camera you know grip electric it's everyone is there from all of these different backgrounds and you're bumping up against each other and and figuring out how to tell a universal story Well, and it's, you know, to your point about that, this was this has been a conversation, especially in recent years about, you know, who can write what.

35:47I remember we sat down to record remotely during the dark days of COVID, the Hollywood Reporter Writer Roundtable when you when you had Malcolm and Marie. It turned out to be January 6th, 2021. So we and we had technical issues, so we abandoned it. But this was something we were talking about then, and I had come across a quote from Zendaya, which was pretty related to this, which is, quote, I'm glad that he wrote himself as me because he could have written it as a white dude, and then I would never have had the opportunity to play a character like this, close quote. So, I mean, I can understand people being sensitive, but at the same time, nobody's forcing anybody to do anything they don't want to do, I guess.

36:28No, and I also think that it's imperative that artists feel free and free to express themselves and to kind of work towards a certain universality, whether that comes from specificity, and the specificity is what makes it universal or however they get there. But I think that a lot of these debates and conversations have resulted in artists and writers feeling fearful about what can I do, what can I say, what can I write. And I think that that's the death of creativity and it's the death of the entertainment industry. I think you have to approach it with a fearlessness and a boldness and just let the chips fall where they do.

37:26In terms of casting, I mean, people are going to look back and study Euphoria because it's unbelievable that, you know, Zendaya certainly had a big following. But, like, you know, she wasn't a full-fledged movie star. Sidney Sweeney, Jacob Lorty, certainly not at the outset when you cast them. others have had you know have gone on to to great things as well but i mean the fact abrams yes coleman domingo coleman domingo now back-to-back oscar nominations but i mean the idea that zendaya sydney sweeney and jacob lordy are still not 30 years old and they're probably the three biggest movie stars in that demo and i just wonder if you can share starting with zendaya because again, she was like 16 months removed from the Disney Channel when you cast her in this part and a couple of family films.

38:17There was nothing that anyone else would have seen, I think, that would have suggested that this was where things were headed for her. What made you think of her and maybe some of the others as well? But she's the real amazing case study there. I loved her face. Sometimes it's as simple as that. I thought that she had just a great face And there was something that kind of would allow me as a writer to push the character into areas where other actors would become unlikable. There's a charm, a humor, a sense of kind of physical comedy that I think was just the perfect fit with the sort of harshness of the character and the world.

39:01You know, I remember when I came into HBO, you know, I had written, I think, four scripts at that time. They said, who are you thinking about for the cast? And I had a mood board and Zendaya was Rue. And I then tried to meet with her, but she was doing another movie at the time, so she was unavailable. We went through the casting process. We read a lot of people. And then her movie ended up falling apart or something happened. And she got a hold of the scripts and read them and then wanted to sit down and meet. And, you know, we had a meeting with her and she was sort of sitting there with this hoodie on.

39:36And she had a kind of, there was a certain sort of physicality to her that felt kind of androgynous and also kind of young and youthful. But I had seen her work on Casey Undercover, and I knew how good she was with comedic timing. And so I was sort of interested in juxtaposition between the two things. And I just, I had faith in her. I mean, I say it to almost every actor. I say before if we're shooting a scene or a tough emotional scene I say I have faith in you you're going to give an amazing performance it might take two takes and it might take 65 takes but we're going to get there and I'm not going to let you fail and that's sort of how I would do it I remember after the pilot we shot the pilot and she saw you know the cut of it and she called me and I think she was in London at that time doing Spider-Man and she said you know she was emotional And she said, you know, I always knew I had it in me to deliver, you know, a performance like this.

40:38I just never had any proof. Further proof is an Emmy for season one, which was pretty great. Youngest person ever went. Yeah, which was also a shock, too, because we came out in June, the first season. And so, you know, they weren't thinking about it as an Emmy show at all. And it was, you know, a year had gone by, longer than a year. What a wonderful, beautiful night. One of many other things that she brings to the show was, you know, some very effective narration. And the fact that there was narration at all, I thought was pretty interesting because you've said it kind of comes from your mom, like that she had some questions or something.

41:16And then you realize not everybody's going to come to the table with the same set of information. And it's not a bad like, you know, screw Robert McKee. Like sometimes narration is needed. No, absolutely. I think if you were to strip out the narration, it's a much darker show. And I think what was interesting about having her character narrate the show is that you get a sense of who she is inside and that tension between her actions and who she is inside and who she wants to be. And I thought that was important in sort of illustrating who a drug addict is and that it's not – being a drug addict, you can be incredibly destructive to everyone in your life.

41:56And so I just thought it was an interesting juxtaposition and one that I think helped illuminate the character and also helped audiences sort of fall in love with the character despite the terrible things she's doing. Right, where we even see with her sister and things the harmful effects. I think another thing when people look back years from now and they'll have the benefit of time to kind of have some of these things seep in is that historical moment in which the show came along. Which, just to remind people, I think Harvey Weinstein revelations and Me Too stuff all took off in 2017. The show debuts in 2019, which I assume means you guys were working on it throughout 2018.

42:38So this is right in the aftermath of people thinking about looking at some of the sexual behavior in society and sexualization of the way people are – younger people are separate issue but sexualization, all of that. And I wonder – a lot of people would have been scared to touch that subject matter and would have run in the opposite direction. You obviously leaned into it in this show and in The Idol and took plenty of flack for that. Although I've seen, and it makes sense where you say it's very integral to these characters where somebody like Cassie, her whole thing is seeking external approval and gets that and even then finds herself unfulfilled.

43:25So anyway, I guess my question, though, is was that historical moment, did that give you any pause about potentially touching the stove here with this subject matter? A hundred percent. I think that it's not the easy route. I knew that I would catch flack for some of the scenes in this show and others. But at the same time, I believe that I have a responsibility as a writer and a filmmaker to reflect the world as it is. And Me Too aside, if you look at where the internet has gone over the last 15 years, it is further and further toward exploitation and sexuality. And it has only gotten more normalized.

44:15And so to duck that massive trend that's happening in culture felt like a cop-out. And I thought, OK, well, this is the world that people are growing up in now. And if I'm going to be honest and truthful, then I'm going to lean into it. And I'm going to know how I run a set and know how I work as a collaborator and know that there's a difference between what I write and who I am. And also know that people are going to conflate the two and be OK with that. Well, and to that point, you guys obviously sparked a lot of conversations on social media. And I thought it was amusing to learn that you would follow along when an episode would air live.

44:59Because I always wondered, what would Sam be thinking if he saw this stuff? And it turns out you were seeing the debate where you've got people, in a lot of cases, loving the show but getting angry at you for the trajectory of a character or whatever. However, I wonder what – so how did you experience the conversation around the show? I often think how is it possible that we have gone through the most politically tumultuous kind of 15 years in recent American history and yet our artistic response, you know, Hollywood's artistic response in terms of film and television is incredibly timid. It doesn't make sense to me.

45:45And I think that there is kind of a combination of factors that happened all at the same time where, you know, you had these sort of social media mobs. You had kind of political, you know, revolutions inside Hollywood that were a reaction to political revolutions that happened in the country. it started to kind of push a utopian style storytelling onto Hollywood in which characters were sort of fulfilling political objectives as opposed to human objectives. And I think that, you know, social media plays a large role in that. You know, the first time that I found myself trending as the number one topic in the country, it was a little unnerving.

46:37But I also think that it's like, you got to go against the mob. Historically, the mob is never right. But again, not everyone has the gumption to take on this stuff. Sure. But it's also, I think it's because there's not enough people in Hollywood who tell the truth, which is the mob's not actually going to destroy you. You are free. You're free to say what you want, think what you want, and make what you want. And if you do it, it'll only inspire more freedom and continue to break up the mob. And, you know, you don't have to follow the rules, and particularly in terms of storytelling, you know, fan service is death.

47:25You have to make something for an audience and an audience who can handle uncomfortable truths, not fans who want their wishes fulfilled. And I think that it's, if anything, that noise and debate surrounding euphoria in particular is what led to it becoming one of the biggest shows HBO has ever had. And so that the controversy, the debate is not something to run away from. It's something to run toward, and it only generates more interest and curiosity in the show, and that it's all okay. Season one of Euphoria was 2019. You guys did the two special episodes between seasons end of 2020, beginning of 2021.

48:10Season two was 2022. Before that was shot, you made Malcolm and Marie with Zendaya and came out in 2021. I thought that was really excellent. Also between season two and three was The Idol. And I wonder, there was, to come back to the word you used, like the noise of the conversation. There was noise, obviously, throughout Euphoria. There was some noise with Malcolm and Marie. But was it noisiest with The Idol in your experience? I don't know if it was noisiest, but it was definitely noisy. I'm incredibly proud of The Idol. And I think it's going to age beautifully. It's a hysterical show and a very funny show, you know, anchored by an incredible beardless performance by Lily Rose Dapp and a wonderful cast.

49:05And I'm not only proud of the show, I'm proud of how we made the show. In the sense of two or three cameras, a lot of improv, shot in Abel's own home, I believe. I guess, though, because the framing of it was that you're shooting, or the public framing of it, you were shooting Euphoria Season 2, right? Yeah. And HBO was not happy with the way Idol was concurrently coming together. So you then come and kind of reshoot. So I'd written the script for The Idol. I'd written the pilot. The show sort of gets up on its feet. Euphoria season two is going at the same time. So I get sucked into Euphoria season two.

49:50I write and direct all the episodes. I finish Euphoria season two. My wife is nine months pregnant at the time. She's also my producing partner. And can I say also the person who inspired Malcolm and Marie to an extent, right? You forgot to thank her. I forgot to thank her once, which was the jumping off point. The rest of the movie is fictional where we fight. But the beautiful thing about our relationship is we never fight, which is incredible. Yeah, so finished season two, which was one of the toughest things I've ever had to do in my life. And she gives birth to our second son, Zeke. And two days later, I'm at Abel's house and HBO wants me to come in and fix the idol.

50:38And it was partially complete. They wanted to do reshoots. I didn't want to step on another director's work and start to kind of cobble together things. And so it came down to, all right, well, how are we going to fix the show? Or do we just go back to what the original script was and try to make this a season or a coherent story with$20 million, which was the amount of money they were going to do for a reshoot? so we end up you know i'm going well how do i actually pull this off and shooting in la has become so expensive and you know there's a number of considerations so i'm sitting in abel's house looking around and i'm going well this is a great location it's like 45 000 square feet and you know we have to call up lily rose and we say you know so you know what you've been doing well you know, we're going to, how do you feel about doing another version of it, you know?

51:38And she was happily on board. And so we ended up having to kind of pull all of these sort of favors. We shot in Abel's house and we treated it a little bit more like, I guess, a reality TV show in the sense that, you know, Euphoria has a very sort of specific kind of directorial style. This, we wanted to feel like we were blurring the line between reality and fiction. And at the same time, it was interesting because in trying to figure it out, I had a conversation with someone who's not in Hollywood. And I was telling her about the show. And I said, you know, so The Weeknd plays this character, you know, kind of snakes his way into this pop star's life.

52:27And he's like trying to kind of torture her to make this music. And it's this sort of weird relationship that plays with power dynamics. And he's got this cult that follows him and is living in the house. And she goes, wait, so this is who The Weeknd really is? I said, no, no, it's not who The Weeknd really is. It's fictional. She goes, but why would he want to do it if it's not who he is? And I said, well, because it's a character. And she's going, but why? And I realized at that moment something very specific about pop stars in movies. There is a mythology to a pop star that often clouds an entire narrative in a production, going back to Madonna and a number of other singers and pop stars who have done films.

53:16And I thought, well, isn't that fascinating that there becomes this conflation between reality and fiction? And how can we lean into that and lean into the, is this real? Is this who this person really is? And start to kind of play with it. And ultimately over the course of the five episodes, you start off by thinking that Lily Rose Depp, the pop star, is the victim. And by the end of it, you realize that pop stars are rarely victims and in fact are the ones with maybe the most amount of power at any given time. But I think it was a fascinating sort of experimental thing to pull off. And we just had a lot of fun doing it.

54:00Well, with the homestretch here, I'd love to focus on this most recent season in 2026 of Euphoria, where four years after season two, so much had happened in the world since season two and certainly in the lives of the Euphoria family, not to subject you to hearing sad stuff again, but just for listeners to understand how much we're talking about. I mean, sudden passing of one of your producers, decline and ultimate passing of Eric Dane to ALS. And probably it sounds like, I don't want to, I'm not trying to compare these things, but it was very hard, I know, for you with the sudden death of Angus Cloud as a result of a fentanyl overdose, I guess you would describe as the term.

54:49You've said that in particular is really what shaped your thinking for season three? Yeah, I mean, in the sense that, you know, I had already kind of written a large majority of the season before the writer's strike. Writer's strike happened. Angus passed away. His character was the spine of season three at the time. And he was someone I loved very much. And, you know, over the course of season two, got him into rehabs and tried to keep him clean throughout shooting. I suddenly, you know, was confronted with not just the grief of it. He's, you know, 25 years old and beautiful person, but also kind of the practical implications of, okay, well, what story am I telling now?

55:39Because I have to start this again, pretty much from scratch. And, you know, I think at that time, 2023, 75 ,000 people dying of fentanyl overdoses every year. It's gone down a little bit since then. I was thinking, well, how do I tell a story that peels back the allure of addiction and desire and show the real consequences that lie behind it, which is something we had done for seasons one and two, but how do I do that in a way that I think is a little bit more frightening because the consequences are more frightening? And this is a problem that's only gotten worse. If you just compare it to, say, the Vietnam War, we lost 50 ,000 young people during the Vietnam War over the period of 10 years.

56:34We were losing more than that in a single year, and it wasn't on the front page in the New York Times every single day. And so I thought, all right, how do I tackle what feels like a real plague that's happening and also lean into the kind of bigger, more existential questions? Why is life so fragile? What are we here for? Does God exist? And so I started to kind of imagine season three as, for lack of a better word, it's sort of as like a frontier myth that we're entering a new era in terms of America. Economically, there's a lot of uncertainty where the internet has created a number of new industries that are very new, the consequences of which we don't quite know yet.

57:27And at the same time, How do I tell a story about God? Because if I look at the three seasons of euphoria, I think of them in terms of the three steps of AA. The first being we came to believe that we're powerless and our addiction is unmanageable. That's season one. Season two is we came to believe that only a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. Step three is made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand them. And I thought, okay, if that's the kind of central through line, how is it applicable to now? And I think I started thinking about it as a biblical tale, frontier myth, biblical tale, But also what we're seeing, I think, culturally is an intense hyper individualism to the point where we've lost the greater cohesion of a society.

58:26So everything is about identity, your own identity. And it's less about who we are as a country. And I thought that that was an interesting tension to explore and also the illusions that surround us. So whether it's fame, social media, money, sex, drugs, the promise of reinvention. And I decided to kind of tell this story of Rue who's in debt to Lori and begins to start it off by she's smuggling fentanyl into this country. And this is the journey of this character who's found herself in doing something that she would consider evil, but has somehow justified it to herself given the circumstances.

59:13And so that was kind of at least the sort of ideas, you know, that were sort of swirling around it as I started to write it. And at the same time, you know, I thought of it almost as like we used Julio Perez, our supervising editor and producer, is a longtime collaborator. I've been working with him for since Assassination Nation, so 10 years. We talked about the season as like a repilot. And I wanted it to be a show that if you hadn't seen the first two seasons, you could still jump into it from here and enjoy it. So, you know, it's five years after high school. The characters are still pretty much in the same self-destructive cycles.

59:53It's only gotten a little bit worse. This is the story of what happens when you chase desire. It's really fascinating the way you explain it and also the fact that at its core, it feels like a Western. I mean, you start out in the Western setting with Ru there by the border and essentially close with a duel, a shootout, and many things in between. Just really interesting. Well, with the last minute here, can I just hit you with a few rapid fire, just a sentence or two of random things? You've been immersed in the problems of young people for the last several years. If you could snap your fingers and magically change one thing about the world that would make life better for that generation, what would it be?

1:00:39Gratitude. I think that if you have gratitude for your life, your health, the things you have, it's the antidote to the prevailing narcissism and envy and darkness of social media and culture. You've covered a lot of dark stuff in the projects we've discussed. Do you have any desire to do something kind of light? 1 ,000%. Yeah? That could be next? And there are moments of comedy in all of these. No, no, of course. But I think, I mean, it's something I talk to Ash a lot about. I want to make movies for my sons. You know, I want to make movies for anyone between the ages of 8 and 80. I think we're on the cusp of a really exciting revolution in Hollywood, artistically and creatively.

1:01:27I know that there's a lot of pessimism out there. I don't feel that way. I feel very optimistic. And I feel like we're going to start to move closer towards films that are really unifying collective experiences that we can have with each other and also our families. On Euphoria, you wrote all 26 episodes. You had a co-writer on Only One, the second special. the one that Hunter Schaefer's credited alongside you. You also directed five of the eight episodes of season one, both special episodes, all eight episodes of season two, all eight episodes of season three. How tired are you right now? A little bit, but I'm also filled with a lot of energy and passion.

1:02:08I mean, there's nothing better than being on set. And we've worked with the same crew for eight, nine years. I love going to set. I love working with this crew. They're so talented across the board from our production designer. hair, makeup, costumes, cinematography. It's such a blessing. It's what I've always dreamed of since I was a kid, and there's no better job in the world. So I'll sleep later. I've heard other people comment on this, but until I've heard it from you, I'm not going to believe it. Is Euphoria over, or is there any chance that it continues? season three is is the last season of euphoria i i feel immensely proud of of what we achieved and it's an important story and also i'm not sure where else to go with it i think i've said everything i need to say about this world of addiction and desire and its consequences and you know for three seasons we've pushed ourselves as filmmakers and and as storytellers and i think it's good to go out on top.

1:03:14Second to last, you've worked more closely with Zendaya than I think anyone else in her career. Where do you think her career goes from here and what direction do you think she's... I've heard you guys talk about directing and other things. If you had to guess, where is it going from here for her? It's a good question. I think the simple answer is up. Good. And lastly, for you, anything specific? I know we've just established that maybe some lighter stuff as well, but anything specific that you have in mind right now as far as a specific project or a specific kind of project, whether it's, I don't want to put any limits on it, just what's on your to-do list?

1:04:00I'm in the middle of writing a feature right now that I'm I'm very excited about and hopefully I'll have more to share very soon. But on my to-do list, I think, is spending some time with my boys and my wife and watching some, I don't know, Marx Brothers with them and just enjoying their lives right now. It's such a kind of beautiful time. I've got a four-year-old and a 10-year-old and I want to see the world through their eyes for a little bit. I have no doubt that the future will be bright. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Scott.

1:05:01handle is at awards chatter on those platforms we announce upcoming guests and provide details about special live recordings of the podcast that you can attend until next time thanks again for tuning in legally we can't say drinking storm makes you smarter and more focused but with zero sugar 200 milligrams of caffeine and immunity support you're smarter and more focused for drinking storm storm good energy in good energy out energy for life

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