Actress Sydney Sweeney’s dad and grandfather got quite a surprise when they turned on the TV to watch her on “Euphoria” for the first time without knowing much about the boundary-pushing HBO series. They were so surprised, in fact, that they walked out of the room.
“My mom visited me on set quite a few times, so she knew the story,” Sweeney told Willie Geist during a recent “Sunday Today” interview. “My dad didn’t — I didn’t prepare my dad at all,” Sweeney said, adding that her conversations with her dad don’t usually focus on work.
As a result, Sweeney’s father decided to watch “Euphoria” without telling her — in the company of his parents, Sweeney’s grandparents.
“My dad and my grandpa turned it off and walked out,” the “Reality” actress said of their first time watching the series, which includes nudity and sexual content surrounding Sweeney’s character, Cassie, who plays opposite Zendaya’s Rue, Alexa Demie’s Maddy, Hunter Schafer’s Jules and Jacob Elordi’s Nate.
There was one family member who stuck around amid the mature content: Sweeney’s grandmother.
“My grandma is a big supporter of mine, she’s a big fan of mine,” Sweeney said. “I bring her usually all over the world to my different sets and I make her an extra.”
Sweeney recently verged into new territory in HBO’s “Reality,” which follows former American intelligence specialist Reality Winner, who is accused of leaking government information regarding the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election to the press.
Despite being renewed for a third season in February 2022, “Euphoria” likely won’t return to the small screen until 2025, according to a recent interview with HBO’s head of drama Francesca Orsi, who noted the difficulty in juggling the series amid post-production for “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson’s upcoming HBO series “The Idol.”
Fans are already on the edge of their seat to see how Sweeney’s character, Cassie, will return from the mess left in Season 2, which saw Cassie and Maddy’s friendship breaking down after Cassie began an illicit relationship with Maddy’s ex-boyfriend Nate behind her back.
“There’s so much to Cassie that I loved, especially in the beginning,” Sweeney told Geist, calling Cassie a “beautiful, broken character.” “I always tend to drift towards characters who might read one way on a page, and I like to find the layers to that character … and the emotional depth to who she is and why she is, how she acts and what she thinks.”
