{"id":581451,"date":"2026-04-13T10:44:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T10:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/581451\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T10:44:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T10:44:12","slug":"how-sam-levinson-brought-back-zendayas-rue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/581451\/","title":{"rendered":"How Sam Levinson Brought Back Zendaya’s Rue"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t[This article contains spoilers from the Euphoria<\/a> season three premiere.]<\/p>\n

\n\tOriginally, Rue was going to cross the border by river. Following the four-year gap from his season two finale, writer-director Sam Levinson<\/a> knew Euphoria would return with his oft-addled protagonist (portrayed by Zendaya<\/a>) in Mexico, having made the jump from teenager to adult<\/a>, still working off the debts incurred during the recklessness of high school. The story had her going back and forth on dangerous drug runs for the unlikely kingpin Laurie (Martha Kelly). But when Levinson started doing research for how he\u2019d introduce this new world, he changed course.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe went to the DEA headquarters in Los Angeles and they\u2019ve got a bunch of photos of drug busts that they\u2019ve done \u2014 kilos of cocaine, money, all this \u2014 and suddenly I see this one photo of a Jeep stuck on top of a border wall,\u201d Levinson says. \u201cI said to the head, \u2018Well, what happened here?\u2019 And he said, \u2018Some idiot tried to drive a car over the border loaded with drugs, and it got stuck.\u2019 I thought: That sounds like something Rue would do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSo Euphoria season three begins, with Rue behind the wheel, stuck in midair between two countries. The setpiece introduces the HBO<\/a> drama\u2019s new ambitions in several ways. In its wider aspect ratio and expansive vista caught on 65mm, Levinson and his longtime D.P. Marcell R\u00e9v reset Euphoria\u2019s visual palette. And in the combined comedy and tension of the scene, the show establishes its tricky tonal balance going forward.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat scene is like Jurassic Park meets Buster Keaton,\u201d R\u00e9v says. Levinson adds that Keaton inspired the season as much as classic western filmmakers like Howard Hawks and Sergio Leone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\tMarcell R\u00e9v and Sam Levinson behind the scenes of Euphoria.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEddy Chen \/ HBO<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe have a motto of: Evolve or die,\u201d Levinson says of how he and his crew approach each season of Euphoria. With the massive time-jump this go-round, Levinson and R\u00e9v knew that the cinematography would need to reflect that kind of dangerous maturity. \u201cWe wanted to make sure we were changing things up. We wanted to give it a feeling of a memory that was fading away \u2014 a bit rougher,\u201d Levinson says. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing them out in the world, in the wider world, and allowing the actors to communicate emotionally through the performance, as opposed to in the past, when we did it moreso through camera. We wanted to see them fending for themselves.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\tZendaya in Season 3 of HBO\u2019s Euphoria.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHBO<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore the Hollywood strikes of 2023, Levinson had the bulk of a third season of Euphoria scripted \u2014 which was ultimately, largely scrapped. There were several reasons for the change, but he says the most profound one was the death of castmember Angus Cloud, who played Fezco, from an accidental overdose. Levinson was close to Cloud and wanted to honor his memory as best he could in the show, since he was meant to play a large role in season three. This meant keeping his character alive, if of course offscreen, and confronting larger questions of life and death.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe end of the first episode, for instance, finds Rue making a dropoff at a party hosted by rival kingpin Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), only for things to go terrifyingly awry when it\u2019s clear the drugs have been laced. \u201cShe send you to sabotage my shit?\u201d Alamo asks Rue of Laurie. She shakes her head nervously, the stakes of the episode raising exponentially, but the moment isn\u2019t placed there just for the mood shift. \u201cI was really angry about fentanyl, the fact that in 2023, the year Angus died, 73,000 Americans died of fentanyl overdoses,\u201d Levinson says. \u201cI couldn\u2019t understand what it was about our country that we were allowing so many people to be poisoned.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother key development: Levinson and R\u00e9v made an entirely different show between seasons of Euphoria in The Idol<\/a>, which was ultimately canceled by HBO following poor ratings and reviews for the embattled first season<\/a>. The pair say their time on that music-driven series informed Euphoria season three.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe way that I saw [The Idol] was almost like I was filming a reality TV show at times \u2014 so it would be three cameras, minimal lighting. It was almost documentary style,\u201d Levinson says. \u201cAnytime you do something, whatever you\u2019re doing next, you kind of want to do the opposite\u2026and there\u2019s a certain objectivity that this season [of Euphoria] has that we discovered, that is really exciting and creative and gives it a new kind of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\tLevinson and R\u00e9v.<\/p>\n

\n\tR\u00e9v reveals that The Idol indicated how to expand Euphoria\u2019s actual world too. \u201cThinking of The Idol, on a very practical level, it encouraged us to go out and shoot more real locations,\u201d he says. \u201cThe second season of Euphoria was very much on a stage \u2014 80% of if we didn\u2019t have to go on location, we would build it on stage. Here we were pretty eager to find certain things in the real world.\u201d Take that opening sequence: \u201cWe were able to build this 200-foot border wall out in the middle of the desert, four hours outside of Los Angeles, to achieve this sequence,\u201d Levinson says. \u201cShe\u2019s really up there \u2014 she\u2019s 20, 25 feet in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis also informed the updates in the lives of Cassie (Sydney Sweeney<\/a>) and Nate (Jacob Elordi<\/a>), who we meet in the season premiere engaged and anxiously preparing for an expensive wedding. Scouting their gaudy, sunny California home proved crucial.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAn obvious choice would\u2019ve been something modern and very plain and fancy, but we ended up choosing this mid-century home, which is a little tacky, but also stuck in the \u201870s,\u201d R\u00e9v says. \u201cIt\u2019s probably a strange choice, but also it gives us possibilities.\u201d This goes especially for when Cassie pivots to making OnlyFans content to bolster their income. \u201cOnlyFans has its own aesthetic and how you elevate that aesthetic to the show\u2019s aesthetic is a challenge, I\u2019m not going to lie,\u201d R\u00e9v says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[Cassie] has got her dog house and her little dog ears and the nose, and that has its own humor, but what makes the scene is the fact that her housekeeper is the one filming it,\u201d Levinson adds of how they approached her OnlyFans scenes in the premiere. \u201cWhat we wanted to always find is the other layer of absurdity that we\u2019re able to tie into it so that we\u2019re not too inside of her fantasy or illusion \u2014 the gag is to jump out, to break the wall.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThis meant juxtaposing the iPhone visuals with how Euphoria makes its images: \u201cSome of these scenes we only lit with these ring lights that she would use\u2026. When you\u2019re inside, it\u2019s a beautiful, glowing front light, but then you jump out of it and it\u2019s just a pool of light and everything surrounding it is dark. It\u2019s just gnarly and jarring,\u201d Levinson says. \u201cWe wanted to capture what she\u2019s trying to show the audience and be inside of it, but then also pull back wider and see how depressing it is.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShooting it on a 65mm camera with our lenses on our film stock \u2014 it gives it a certain look, and I think that\u2019s an interesting pairing there,\u201d R\u00e9v adds. \u201cDoing an OnlyFans aesthetic with these tools is something that excites me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first episode ends with Rue being put in a life-or-death roll of the dice with Alamo, as he tests her fate after Laurie\u2019s seeming betrayal. Rue survives narrowly, letting out an ecstatic gasp in celebration of her survival \u2014 no matter the uncertainty of what comes next. As the season unfurls from here, that moment \u2014 sitting on that edge between the living and the dead \u2014 speaks to what Levinson hopes to explore this season. The episode is dedicated to Cloud, as well as fellow costar Eric Dane<\/a> and former executive producer Kevin Turen, both of whom also died between the release of seasons two and three.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wanted to tell a story about the step of surrendering our will and our lives to the care of God as we understand him,\u201d Levinson says. \u201cThese characters who are now adults are free to choose what kind of life they want to live, but there are consequences that come with those actions. I look at that long period of time [between seasons], with all of its tragedies and everything, as a blessing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEuphoria airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO and HBO Max.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[This article contains spoilers from the Euphoria season three premiere.] Originally, Rue was going to cross the border…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,112897,27686,1035,34564,221688,7105,254954,49615],"class_list":{"0":"post-581451","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-eric-dane","10":"tag-euphoria","11":"tag-hbo","12":"tag-jacob-elordi","13":"tag-sam-levinson","14":"tag-sydney-sweeney","15":"tag-the-idol","16":"tag-zendaya"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}