Euphoria: A Look Back

I don't think any of us knew...

-I'm Jacob Elordi. -Angus Cloud.

-Storm Reid. -...the impact that Euphoria would have.

I'm 12 years old and I am Ashtray.

I had no idea.

Like, at all. It's kinda crazy.

I look back on it. We were, like, literal babies.

-Wait, are you actually scared? -Yes, bitch!

When you make a piece of art,

you don't know what's gonna happen.

Hyah!

Sam is an expert

provocateur as a filmmaker.

You wanted to engage the audience.

Everyone's gonna have a different opinion.

- -Love yourself!

And that's the beauty of it all.

It's like such a lucky feeling

to create something that is this massive.

- -I'm a huge fan of Euphoria

since the beginning.

How are you feeling tonight, Coachella?

We wanted to get it right,

we wanted to make sure

we worked as hard as we fucking needed to.

Whoo!

Looking back on the show,

I'm incredibly proud of what we accomplished.

What if you could go back to the beginning?

- -

Okay, so give us the origin story of Euphoria.

I think it was in 2016,

I got a call about an Israeli format called Euphoria.

It was, you know, kids behaving badly,

for lack of a better description.

We decided to buy the format

and look for somebody...

who has their own take on it.

There was an executive that worked in the drama department

named Christine Kim.

She had been aware of Sam's rewrites for HBO films.

So, I go to sit down with the head of HBO drama

Francesca Orsi.

And we just talk about

all of the fucking bad shit

we both did when we were teenagers.

At the end of the meeting, she goes,

"Well, go write that."

I said, absolutely.

So, I took certain experiences,

people I had grown up with

and the kind of situations you find yourself in

when drugs are your primary motivation in life.

And I just put all of it on-- on paper.

Part of the opportunity was to show

teenagers today are dealing with a lot

that we didn't have to deal with.

You add drugs, social media,

-smartphones to that equation... -

...that's what cracked it for us a little bit.

Addiction is a universal story,

but putting it in high school

and having a high school student deal with it

was what felt somewhat revolutionary.

And I think it's only at HBO

could we have really gone there.

They were all very excited and they greenlit the show.

I'm Zendaya, I play Rue,

and we are here for the Euphoria premiere.

When the show first came out,

you know, we got pretty good reviews.

We had certain viewership, but it wasn't through the roof.

And also an enormous amount of controversy at the time.

Wanna get high?

I remember going like, ah, fuck, you know,

this could go either direction here.

It was right around the time

that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was coming out,

and Leonardo DiCaprio was on the red carpet

and they said, you know, "What have you been watching?"

I just saw Euphoria, which is amazing.

That show is amazing.

When he said that, it was the first time

that the trajectory of the show kinda changed.

We were an interesting show that people had watched,

-some people had heard of. -Goddammit!

But it wasn't popping yet.

And when he said that, it sorta launched it

into, like, another stratosphere.

Something shifted.

Getting a show out is a small miracle.

So, I was happy when it got the reception it did.

A big part of that, I think, was the cast.

I'm Jacob Elordi, and I'm 6'4".

-Hi, my name is Nika King. -I'm Storm Reid.

I'm 12 years old and I am Ashtray.

When we started casting, we did very extensive search

for who these actors were.

-Oops. - You know, we just sorta looked

for fresh faces and people

who hadn't necessarily acted before,

but had a kind of, a raw charisma to them.

Do you think my areolas are weird?

-No! -You're not even looking.

And it was rounds and rounds of auditions.

Mom, I'm literally going to poison you in your sleep.

Sydney Sweeney, she originally read for Maddy.

Do you think most people are, like, 100% straight or...

And then we had asked her to put herself on tape for Cassie.

Oh, my God, Mom, stop!

When I auditioned for Euphoria,

I didn't know what kind of character Cassie was.

I talked to Sam, and I found that I had

a really deep care for her,

and that was kind of the beginning of it.

Why is everyone, like, so dramatic?

Alexa, I just remember meeting her, and her coming in to read,

and her having a very unique personality.

The first scene that, uh, I had to go in and do

was the carnival scene for a large group of people.

Yeah, I'm not supposed to be here right now

because I'm dressed like a hooker

and none of you like me.

I don't know what got into me, but I was, like, charged.

And I looked at all of them, and I said what I needed to say.

So, if they got something to say,

they should just say it to my face, right?

I fell in love with the character,

and suddenly the possibilities

for where it could go just became endless.

You look beautiful.

I don't know.

Maude Apatow, you can see all of the,

the sort of criticisms she's launching at herself

in a given scene,

which then just, you know, deepens the character.

You think she's, like, a bad influence?

I just remember being

so nervous and so insecure.

I just wish I could have, like, relaxed a little bit more.

That would have avoided a lot of, uh, unnecessary energy.

The fuck are you looking at?

Jacob Elordi, he was new to us

because he's from Australia.

Who the fuck is that?

I was getting ready to go home

and Euphoria was my last audition that I had.

Yo, somebody better speak up, or this bitch

is gonna get fucked up.

He had sort of given up on acting

and he was, I think, living in his car.

He came in and he was just so fucking good

-and committed. -Did you rape her?

-No. -Did you fucking rape her?!

And I remember I got so red,

'cause I get so nervous.

He liked that, apparently.

Come on.

I was driving home, and then I got a call from--

from my agent, and he was like,

"Can you get back to the-- to the casting office?"

And I was like... I whipped that car around.

Yo, I'd do it for Rue!

And it all just kind of, uh, it panned out.

It was such a great challenge

to try to discover all the new talent

and make them all fit together as one.

It made sense to see what was out there in the real world.

And so, we worked with Jennifer Venditti,

who was doing the street casting.

A24 approached me and said, like, Sam had wanted

to kind of use my philosophy of casting

'cause I had developed this idea of street scouting.

I'm 17 years old.

Some people just need they ass whupped, like, you know what I mean?

- I had scouts, like, all over. -Two thumbs up.

One day, one of the young women that works for me,

she saw these two guys,

gave them my business card and said, like,

"If you're interested, you should go by here."

And then the next day I was at my office,

and Angus walked in.

My name's Angus Cloud...

and I'm from Oakland, California.

Oakland, USA. You get what I'm saying?

So, I remember the first tape that I saw of him.

The scout had said, "Can you give me your, you know, your name and height?"

Alright, my name Angus Cloud.

And I'm about 5'12".

I thought, perfect, cast him.

Hunter...

well, you know, when we were looking for her,

it was a very hard role to fill.

And then, I began to reach out to people

in the fashion industry that I knew.

And she was a person that had come up.

See? I'm fucking invincible.

You're a fucking psychopath.

We sort of all instantly knew, oh, this is Jules.

Rue?