Sam Levinson responds to ‘Euphoria’ backlash: “Deeply funny”
Sam Levinson is reading your posts. The Euphoria director has admitted to reading much of the online backlash to the third season, deeming it “deeply funny”.
After seven tumultuous years, the star-studded HBO series Euphoria has finally come to an end. The third season of the show, which jumped five years from a teen high-school show to an adult drama, received mixed reviews, and the season finale garnered an overall lukewarm response.
Speaking on IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, Levinson revealed that he wanted the hit HBO series to be tonally abrasive to mirror the nature of the internet.
While critiquing online culture, the 41-year-old then admitted that he reads much of the online response to the third season as each episode aired.
He began, “I know the noise it creates. Sometimes on Sundays, I like to watch the live reactions pour in. I find it to be deeply funny.”
Expanding on that, Levinson added, “I’m usually with a group of friends. We do kind of a live watch party. And we just find the funniest, most outrageous tweets and sort of read them aloud.”
Though the filmmaker is aware of the hyperbolic opinions online, they don’t affect his creative direction: “It doesn’t influence my creative process,” he clarified.
The Euphoria creator went on, “I think it’s really important to stay kind of pure and to make sure that the intentions of the show come from a pure and honest place.”
Much of the backlash has critiqued Levinson for disrespecting his characters and for putting them through hell as a means of spectacle. As a nod to this, he explained, “I know that certain people are attached to certain characters; I know that in general, people want the characters to live kind of happy, wonderful lives, because they love them.”
For Levinson, this wouldn’t make narrative sense: “But that’s not true to who these characters are. These are characters that make poor decisions. They operate from a place of deep security, addiction.”
Later, he admitted that it is “very easy to become a hostage to the culture and to people’s expectations. And it’s something that, if I allowed it to have that much control over me, I think it would be debilitating artistically and emotionally.”
The director concluded that making something “that runs counter to the counterculture, which I think of as the establishment now,” as well as making “something that’s honest and true,” matters to him “more than being liked or loved by everyone”.
Elsewhere, Levinson confirmed that the show won’t be returning, after the main character of Rue Bennett, played by Zendaya, died following a drug overdose with fentanyl. “This feels like the end to me,” he shared.
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