{"id":631222,"date":"2026-04-27T05:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T05:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/631222\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T05:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T05:07:10","slug":"euphoria-star-on-that-surprise-death-and-his-first-job-on-the-wire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/631222\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Euphoria\u2019 Star on That Surprise Death and His First Job on ‘The Wire’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t[This story contains spoilers from the third episode of\u00a0Euphoria<\/a>\u00a0season three.]<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first time Darrell Britt-Gibson appeared on our screens, he killed a beloved character on one of the greatest TV shows ever: The Maryland native had joined The Wire<\/a> in its fourth season as Darius \u201cO-Dog\u201d Hill, a member of the crew backing rising gang leader Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector) \u2014 and who promptly killed Preston \u201cBodie\u201d Broadus (J.D. Williams), whom viewers had been following since the pilot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPeople still haven\u2019t forgiven me for that \u2014 my own mom has a problem with me for that one,\u201d Britt-Gibson says with a laugh. \u201cGoing out in the world in Baltimore, and just in general, people did not like me. It was a very visceral reaction, people not liking me. I was unaware of the magnitude of the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNow 20 years later, Britt-Gibson is back on an HBO<\/a> hit, again circling various crime underworlds and again spending a lot of time with some OG fan favorites \u2014 in this case, no less than the series protagonist. But Britt-Gibson came in well aware of Euphoria\u2019s magnitude. And portraying Bishop, one of the main henchmen to kingpin Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who has taken in Rue (Zendaya<\/a>) as his newest recruit, the actor has given viewers far less reason to be angry with him. Unless you were big fans of rival drug lord Laurie, since episode three ends with him killing her prized bird, Paladin, on Alamo\u2019s behalf in an escalating turf-revenge war.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOtherwise, Bishop is one of several mysteries circling the season. \u201cI don\u2019t like to give away other people\u2019s secrets \u2014when people tell me something, it stays with me,\u201d Britt-Gibson says. \u201cThis show and everything that we\u2019ve done, it\u2019s like somebody was telling me a gigantic secret, and I\u2019m telling everybody involved, \u2018Your secret is safe with me.\u2019\u201d In conversation about the first three episodes of Euphoria\u2019s third season and what\u2019s to come, we tried to pry at least a few.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDarrell Britt-Gibson in \u2018Euphoria.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPatrick Wymore\/HBO<\/p>\n

\n\tHow was Bishop pitched to you and what excited you about him?<\/p>\n

\n\tI had just come off of an intense, whirlwind promotion for the film that I wrote and starred, and She Taught Love. We were fighting so hard for people to see this movie, and for every door that was open three were closed, so I found myself at a moment where I had told the people around me that I just didn\u2019t want to act for a beat. I wanted to just sit down and breathe and just come back to myself a little bit. And then this audition for Euphoria came in\u2026. I look at auditions as practice, like I\u2019m going to go to the gym, putting some shots up, and then letting it be what it is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI sent in this tape, and then\u2026a couple weeks or a month later, they were like, \u201cSam loved your tape. He wants to meet.\u201d I\u2019m thinking, \u201cThis is actually going further than I thought it was going to go.\u201d We do this Zoom and it\u2019s my first time getting to meet Sam. I was just telling him about how amazing the world that he had created is. It was about, probably \u2014 it felt like three months later, and I could be wrong, but it was somewhere in the one to three month range, where they were like, \u201cHey, so the initial role that you read for, they wanted to age that up, but Sam loves you so much and he wants to craft this character with you.\u201d I was like, really?<\/p>\n

\n\tSo what went into that \u2014 how did you craft Bishop with Sam? What ideas did you bring to the table?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe was sort of pitching me who this character was. I remember having ideas about what I thought that this character could be. A lot of times as an actor, if you have thoughts, you\u2019re preparing yourself for the creator to be like, \u201cWell, that\u2019s not how I see it. This is what it should be. This is how we want it to be done, do that.\u201d But every idea that I pitched to Sam, he loved it \u2014 every one. He actually believes in the collaboration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFor me it just was sort of like, \u201cWhat does this character do? How does he function in this world? What\u2019s his purpose in it?\u201d One of the ideas I brought was the beads that I carried, and then it was the stillness with which he operates. And my hair \u2014 this is my real hair, and I was like, \u201cI\u2019ve never really had my hair out like this.\u201d He was like, \u201cLove it, love it, love it.\u201d He gave me the real estate to find it. And then his genius is that he\u2019s going to go make a whole bunch of stuff with these ideas that you present.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBishop can be really hard to read sometimes, and the energy is not what you expect. It seems core to your way into the guy, right?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah. So I studied samurais. I studied a lot of monks. And I also watched a lot of cartoons. How do you stay present in your stillness? Cartoons are a great example. Let\u2019s say The Simpsons: Let\u2019s say there\u2019s a scene where you\u2019ve got Homer, Marge, Maggie, Bart, and Lisa. And if lHomer is speaking in that scene, if you watch the scene, are you watching everybody else or are you only paying attention to Homer? I\u2019m like, \u201cAre they breathing? Are they blinking? Do they move? Are they still?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThen one of the bigger inspirations for me for this role in addition to those things was Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men. The presence with which he commanded everything without having to say a lot; you always knew he was there. That\u2019s what I really wanted to play with this character. For actors, sometimes we feel like we need to be saying a lot of things \u2014 \u201cI\u2019ve got to cry\u201d or \u201cI have to have this monologue.\u201d I\u2019m always fascinated by the most quiet person in every room \u2014 if I go into a room and everybody\u2019s talking, I see one person who\u2019s very quiet. That\u2019s the story that I really want to know more about. He\u2019s the onion, like when you learn a little bit more every time, but not everything all at once.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, getting into episode three, Bishop kills Laurie\u2019s beloved bird, Paladin, on behalf of Alamo. Before that, Laurie asks Bishop if he likes animals, and you reply in this kind of mesmerizing tone, \u201cI love them.\u201d He really comes out there!\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBishop doesn\u2019t lie. That was important. He\u2019s been given orders to do a thing, so it\u2019s that weird sort of juxtaposition of, you are being told to do something that goes against what you are and what you believe in. There\u2019s also the duty calls aspect of it, which further deepens the amalgamation of what Bishop is in totality, right? He loves animals \u2014 I felt like I believed that \u2014 but then he does this thing that he was told to do. It\u2019s asking an audience to ask its own questions about a character.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019ve had more scenes with Rue than most this season. How would you describe Bishop\u2019s dynamic with her? In this episode he asks her, \u201cDo you have a moral problem with what you\u2019re doing?\u201d in a tone that could also be read a few ways.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s almost as if he\u2019s a master interrogator. He wants to know somebody\u2019s true intentions, and I think that he can see through people, around people, over people and behind them. And I think with Rue, because she is so layered and nuanced and multifaceted, he is very curious about her true intentions. Him asking a question like that, he\u2019s not asking it to be a bully; he really wants to know. How she would answer that question informs what he would start to build foundationally about what he believes this person is here for. He\u2019s going to ask you a real question and he\u2019s going to expect a real answer, and if you don\u2019t give him a real answer, he\u2019s going to know you\u2019re lying to him.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat\u2019s it like to play in those shades opposite Zendaya?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tShe\u2019s an incredibly giving scene partner, and I think at that level \u2014 the global superstar that she is \u2014 you just don\u2019t know what you\u2019ll get. It\u2019s really hard to explain. I almost feel like I wish everybody could work with her to understand what I mean by how giving she is and how funny she is and how professional she is. Some people are number one on the call sheet, and then there are people who are like, \u201cOh yeah, you are supposed to be the number one on the call sheet.\u201d It\u2019s being able to dance with her. Iron sharpens iron, and working with her epitomizes that statement.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019ve been on all kinds of TV shows over the years: Barry<\/a>, Californication<\/a>, Power<\/a>, You\u2019re the Worst. What makes Euphoria unique on set?<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen you show up to work with Sam, he\u2019s going to give you everything he has and that makes you want to give everything that you have. Every detail matters to him: where the camera turns just a little bit, and maybe you\u2019re sitting there like, \u201cI wonder why.\u201d Then you see it and you\u2019re like, \u201cOh, that\u2019s so crazy.\u201d From the naked eye, you\u2019re like, \u201cA light kind of looks the same,\u201d but then you see the difference and you\u2019re like, \u201cThis dude is out of this world.\u201d Some people are just born to be directors and writers, and he\u2019s born to do the thing.<\/p>\n

\n\tI wanted to close by asking you a little bit about your first screen job on The Wire, another HBO drama. You were talking earlier about fan reaction to your role on that show: Anything you learned there that relates to Euphoria?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tYou can only be that invested in something if you\u2019re that invested in the characters. David Simon, Sam Levinson<\/a> \u2014 these are the creators of these characters that people get so invested in that they have these visceral reactions to them. In Hollywood, we\u2019re in the world-building business, and sometimes you can be so focused on building a world that you forget that that world needs characters to inhabit that world and they build from the inside out. It\u2019s character-first. That is why people can be so invested in a way that they see you on the street and they are angry 15, 20 years later for something that you did on a television show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[This story contains spoilers from the third episode of\u00a0Euphoria\u00a0season three.] The first time Darrell Britt-Gibson appeared on our…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[158924,49,236270,48,75,13461,5862,40714,106001,156656,348,236271,39778],"class_list":{"0":"post-631222","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-barry","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-californication","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-euphoria","14":"tag-hbo","15":"tag-power","16":"tag-sam-levinson","17":"tag-the-wire","18":"tag-tv","19":"tag-youre-the-worst","20":"tag-zendaya"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}