{"id":2721,"date":"2026-06-01T22:10:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T22:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/2026\/06\/01\/inside-euphoria-season-3-sam-levinson-on-zendaya-sydney-sweeney-and-the-hbo-dramas-evolution\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T22:10:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T22:10:00","slug":"inside-euphoria-season-3-sam-levinson-on-zendaya-sydney-sweeney-and-the-hbo-dramas-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/2026\/06\/01\/inside-euphoria-season-3-sam-levinson-on-zendaya-sydney-sweeney-and-the-hbo-dramas-evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside \u2018Euphoria\u2019 Season 3: Sam Levinson on Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney and the HBO Drama\u2019s Evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\t \t \t\t<\/svg>\t\tLogo text<\/span> \t<\/a> <\/p>\n

\tSam Levinson<\/a> never much cared for high school. That\u2019s not the thing you\u2019d necessarily expect to hear from the creator of a massive Emmy-winning hit that originally was set in high school and firmly centered on teenagers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI was interested in the emotional state of being young and struggling with addiction and depression and relationships \u2014 that stuff,\u201d the Euphoria<\/a> <\/em>showrunner says. \u201cWe used to get notes from HBO in the first season going, \u2018Should they be doing more homework?\u2019 \u201d <\/p>\n

\tThe third season of Euphoria<\/em> offered Levinson the opportunity to move beyond adolescence. Delays in production led to a four-year gap between the second and third installments of the drama series, and Levinson, who writes and directs every episode, was ready for his show to grow up \u2014 and to evolve as a storyteller right alongside it. \u201cI just thought that if I\u2019m going to come back and we\u2019re going to get everyone together, I\u2019d like to explore what feels like the Wild West of adulthood,\u201d he says. \u201cAs an audience, we know that they no longer have the safety net of being able to go home to their parents\u2019 house. It\u2019s the real\u00a0world.\u201d \t<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tJacob Elordi\u2019s Nate wards off an attacker<\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEddy Chen\/HBO<\/cite> \t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tThe first scene of the season reintroduces Rue (Zendaya) in her early 20s, running drugs across the Mexico-U.S. divide to pay off an enormous debt to a dangerous dealer she knew from high school. She\u2019s driving on a makeshift ramp over the border fence only for the car to get stuck at the top, suspending her in midair \u2014 a bravura sequence inspired by an image seen in Levinson\u2019s research at DEA headquarters. She has to figure her way out. The alternately suspenseful and silly scene nicely sets up the tone for this new season, which is infused with references to classic Westerns as much as screwball comedies. \t<\/p>\n

\t\u201cWhat\u2019s so spectacular about Zendaya as an actor is the physicality that she has \u2026and shooting it was just a blast because she\u2019s able to play to the humor and the suspense of it at the same time,\u201d Levinson says. \u201cI always knew opening up this season that I wanted to do something that really just threw us into the middle of the action, but with a certain kind of absurdity to it. \u2026 It speaks to the larger themes of this season in terms of not just drugs and the fentanyl crisis and the amount of people we\u2019re losing to it, but also Rue\u2019s life. She\u2019s teetering on the edge. It can go either way: She could figure everything out and live a happy life or she could fall back \u2014 and it\u2019s over.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tThe sequence was shot in the Mojave Desert, and here we also see Euphoria<\/em>\u2019s refined, retro color palette in action. Levinson and director of photography Marcell R\u00e9v mostly left the soundstages that defined the first two seasons for an expansive, on-location examination of Southern California, from Lancaster to Long Beach. \u201cI wanted the scope and the romanticism of old-school Technicolor and to get something that felt as saturated and punchy as possible,\u201d Levinson says. \u201cI kept watching movies like North by Northwest <\/em>and going, \u2018With all of modern technology, why can\u2019t we have colors like this?\u2019\u202f\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tTo achieve this, Levinson and R\u00e9v went directly to Kodak and asked for Ektachrome film on 35mm. (They\u2019d initially pivoted away from shooting on digital between seasons one and two.) The filmmakers were told this was not something that Kodak produced, which led them to offering to buy 1\u202fmillion feet of it. \u201cThey went, \u2018We might be able to work something out,\u2019 \u201d Levinson cracks. Levinson then asked HBO if it could capture some of their wide shots on 65mm cameras. When they finally got a yes, he and R\u00e9v started pushing that format into the close-ups, too \u2014 bringing big-screen technique to the most intimate of stagings. \t<\/p>\n

\t\u201cOur dream was to premiere the episodes in theaters week to week, which didn\u2019t happen, but hopefully someday it can be experienced on a big screen,\u201d Levinson says. \u201cI really wanted to tell an epic tale about young adulthood and what it means to be alive right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tIn Levinson\u2019s estimation, that modern portrait should feel pretty funny. Take the end of the season\u2019s third episode, which finds Nate (Jacob Elordi) getting brutally beaten in his own home by the shady figures to whom he owes money \u2014 on the day of his wedding to Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), no less. As scripted, you\u2019d probably imagine it reading as disturbing, tense and action-packed. Indeed, that\u2019s how Levinson envisioned it. He hired a choreographer, figured out the sequence\u2019s many complex beats and started shooting it accordingly. In his hotel room that night, Levinson felt doubt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\u201cIt kept me up all night, and I\u2019m thinking about it, and we get to set the next day, and I\u2019m going, \u2018We\u2019re not making John Wick<\/em>,\u2019\u202f\u201d he says. Then he got it: The blocking and choreography of the fight would be the same but move to the background, while the camera held tight on the deluded, self-absorbed Cassie, as she turns hysterical at the sight of a mere nosebleed. Now it plays like a comedy. \u201cHer husband could literally be getting pummeled to death behind her \u2014 and it\u2019s still about her,\u201d Levinson says.<\/p>\n

\tAs with that premiere sequence centered on Zendaya, Levinson knows how to push things with his actors; after so many years, he can intuit what they can deliver and realize how they\u2019ll fill in the missing piece. \t<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tSydney Sweeney\u2019s Cassie marries Nate in season three<\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEddy Chen\/HBO<\/cite> \t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\t\u201cIf you push it a little bit, [Sweeney] becomes brilliant \u2014 you just do a few more takes, and she can reach these levels that are very honest emotionally but also deeply funny,\u201d Levinson says. \u201cKnowing that she\u2019s able to anchor the scene, with this kind of madness and chaos going on around her, is a dream as a director.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tThis story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Logo text Sam Levinson never much cared for high school. That\u2019s not the thing you\u2019d necessarily expect to hear from the creator of a massive Emmy-winning hit that originally was set in high school and firmly centered on teenagers.\u00a0 \u201cI was interested in the emotional state of being young and struggling with addiction and depression and relationships \u2014 that stuff,\u201d the Euphoria showrunner says. \u201cWe used to get notes from HBO in the first season going, \u2018Should they be doing more homework?\u2019 \u201d The third season of Euphoria offered Levinson the opportunity to move beyond adolescence. Delays in production led to a four-year gap between the second and third installments […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[202,2,1428,85,335],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-euphoria","category-hollywood","category-sam-levinson","category-tv","category-tv-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}