Euphoria star Alexa Demie has revealed she feared losing her role as Maddy in the HBO series if she refused to film nudity and sex scenes.
The actress reflected on her time working on the teen drama, which airs its series finale later today, in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, saying she was unclear about what she could and couldn’t ask for while filming season one back in 2018.
“I thought that if I said no to doing [sex scenes], then I wouldn’t have the part,” Demie said. “Not because anyone ever said that to me, but because I was so young and I didn’t know.”
Demie went on to reveal that a montage sequence of Maddy cheating on Nate (played by Jacob Elordi) in season one was the moment she realised she felt uncomfortable filming nude scenes.
“I’m not saying I don’t love sex, and I think it can be portrayed beautifully and I know the show is portraying the life of teenage girls, but once I did it, I realised, ‘OK, I don’t love how this feels’,” she recalled.
“So I said something, and everyone was empathetic, and I never did that again.”
Maddy was one of multiple Euphoria characters who frequently appeared nude in season one, though her sex scenes were scaled back in the following seasons.
Demie addressed her character’s nudity back in 2019, describing it as “tough” because she is “not comfortable like that publicly”.
“When I read the script I was like this all makes sense and I want to do it,” Demie said in a Vogue interview. “So it was hard for me, but it definitely pulled me out of my comfort zone, and after I did it, I watched it and it’s just, it’s not that serious.”
Elsewhere, actress Chloe Cherry said in 2022 that Euphoria creator Sam Levinson wanted to film a sex scene involving her character Faye, but “decided not to” when her co-star described the scene as “a lot”.
For her part, Minka Kelly also revealed in 2022 that a scene of her character in the nude was re-written when she told Levinson it made her feel “uncomfortable”.
Sydney Sweeney, who plays Cassie, shared a similar story of altering Levinson to a “not necessary” topless scene, but later clarified the creator was receptive to her notes.
Levinson’s depiction of sex has been a topic of debate this season, with the divisive choice to have three main characters involved in some form of sex work in the five-year time jump between the events of seasons two and three.
In the lead up to the finale, fans were left shocked by the death of a major character, the (brief) reappearance of a former castmate, and the celeb cameos. The last episode of Euphoria season three airs on HBO Max at 11am.
Lead images: Getty and HBO/Euphoria
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