{"id":532589,"date":"2026-06-13T01:53:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T01:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/532589\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T01:53:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T01:53:14","slug":"euphoria-sam-levinson-pitching-rues-death-to-zendaya-was-tough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/532589\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Euphoria’: Sam Levinson Pitching Rue’s Death to Zendaya Was ‘Tough’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPitching Rue\u2019s death in the series finale of \u201cEuphoria<\/a>\u201d to Zendaya<\/a> was not an easy conversation, according to the show\u2019s creator Sam Levinson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I pitched her this season and the ending, it was a very emotional reaction,\u201d Levinson said in an interview with Variety\u2018s Daniel D\u2019Addario for the \u201cHalf Hour With\u201d series. \u201cWe love the character Rue. [Zendaya] has done such an incredible job bringing this character to life \u2026 in the hands of a lesser actor, the character wouldn\u2019t be as charming and lovable and humorous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo it was a tough discussion,\u201d Levinson added. \u201cEven through shooting, it sort of weighed on both of us. At the end of the day, she understood what I was doing, and it felt like the right way to honor Angus, someone whom we loved dearly and really rooted for and saw the best in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLevinson, who himself struggled with drug addiction, has spoken about how the narrative arc of Season 3 was largely inspired by Angus Cloud, who played Fezco in the first two seasons and died at age 25 of a drug overdose. In the final episode of \u201cEuphoria,\u201d Rue \u2014 after repeated attempts to stay clean \u2014 takes painkillers given to her by her boss Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). It turns out the pills are laced with fentanyl, and after a dream sequence where Rue returns home and reunites with her mom, it\u2019s revealed that the protagonist died in her sleep on her mentor Ali\u2019s (Colman Domingo) couch.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen when it came time to shoot the scene [where Rue is found dead], we also had Colman Domingo there, who\u2019s been one of my closest collaborators for over a decade and a grounding force in Zendaya\u2019s life as well,\u201d Levinson said. \u201cThat kind of camaraderie really helped this sequence feel authentic and meaningful. We\u2019ve been doing this for eight [or] nine years together, so it was a beautiful couple of days as we were shooting those scenes, because we knew how audiences would respond to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tElsewhere in the interview, Levinson revealed his original idea for the opening sequence of \u201cEuphoria\u201d Season 3, which sees Rue attempting to drive a car over the U.S.-Mexico border, her beat-up Jeep teetering on the fence.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOriginally, she was supposed to be swimming across the Rio Grande,\u201d Levinson said. \u201cI had written that, but early on we did a scout at the Drug Enforcement Administration offices in Los Angeles, and they have all these photos on the walls of their best drug busts. \u2026 I saw this one photo of a Jeep stuck on top of a border wall, and I said, \u2018Well what happened?\u2019 The DEA guy says, \u2018Oh, you know, some moron tried to drive a car over the border,\u2019 and I thought, \u2018That\u2019s the kind of moronic thing Rue would do.\u2019 And so we ended up recreating it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatch the full conversation between Levinson and D\u2019Addario below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pitching Rue\u2019s death in the series finale of \u201cEuphoria\u201d to Zendaya was not an easy conversation, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[265],"tags":[18,117,12264,19,17,77487,128,18238],"class_list":["post-532589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-euphoria","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sam-levinson","tag-tv","tag-zendaya"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116740306190312197","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}