Editor’s Note: The following story contains spoilers for “Euphoria” Season 3, Episode 3.
It’s a shocking, presumedly series-altering scene.
On his wedding night, Nate (Jacob Elordi) is beaten to a bloody pulp by a henchman he borrowed money from for his failing real estate endeavor. The scene culminates with Nate’s toe being cut off, as his hysterical new bride, Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), realizes their money troubles were far more serious than she imagined, their palatial suburban home and country club life was a facade.
When “Euphoria” writer/director Sam Levinson was on this week’s episode of IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, he discussed why the scene didn’t initially work, and he ultimately needed to reimagine it.
“We started shooting it, and there were these quick shots: Boom, his head goes this way; we pull back with him as he gets slammed into the wall,” said Levinson. “We end up wrapping for the night, and I go home, and I’m thinking, ‘This is out of our language, the cuts are too quick, there’s something that’s not right, we’re not actually making an action movie.’”
“Euphoria” is not a series that has a problem taking genre detours — heck, Season 3 is grounded in westerns. The problem with this climactic Episode 3 scene wasn’t necessarily the action itself.
“You always want to be careful that even if you’re moving into a genre section of a story, that it’s still carrying a certain rhythm,” said Levinson.
The next day, when Levinson returned to the set, he started walking and talking through the scene with his longtime cinematographer Marcell Rév. While on the Toolkit podcast with Levinson, Rév discussed the importance of the months of prep work he and the “Euphoria” writer/director put into establishing the language of each new season — from creation of a new film stock, to use of large format, to specific lens choice, and even more fundamental things like how scenes are staged and covered to establish a distinct point of view.
“There were stylistic choices that were translated to technical choices that unifies [the season],” said Rév. “If you have that basis, then you can be free, the show starts to have a logic, the way you block certain things, the way you approach scenes, that will give you a sense of a language, no matter if you’re shooting at the [western strip club] The Silver Slipper, or in Jule’s [swanky downtown] apartment, it’ll still feels like the same thing, no matter how different the colors or [backdrop].”
It was clear, when they returned to set, that they had broken their more patient, objective Season 3 language. There was something fundamentally wrong with the conception of the scene. Levinson explaining that as a director, he often has to separate it from his role as writer, showing “little allegiance to what was there on the page” while on set.
“We started to talk about it, how do we make this rooted in the psychology of Nate and Cassie, and suddenly it started to make sense,” said Levinson. “If we’re playing this on Cassie, what would her response be to Nate getting the crap beaten out of him? Well, she would start going [Levinson imitates Cassie], ‘This is my wedding. How could this happen to me?’”
Their psychology is in the lines delivered by a crying Sweeney, still in her wedding dress, in the foreground of the frame, as Elordi’s ass-kicking enters the background and (almost comedically) travels up the stairs, before he falls violently back down. The increasingly gruesome pummelling continues, cross-cutting with Cassie’s discussion with Naz (Jack Topalian), calmly eating pie on the couch, about what this means to her, and how her wedding was supposed to be the best day of her life.
Said Levinson, “We started to block it that way, and it was that second night that we really discovered, ‘Oh no, this is the scene is rooted in Cassie’s psychology and her narcissism,’ as her husband is just getting the shit kicked out of him up and down the stairs.”
To hear Levinson and Rév‘s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.
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