Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney has opened up about the details of her graphic strip club scene that was cut from the HBO drama.
The 28-year-old actress, who stars as Cassie Howard on the hit TV show, recently spoke to Vanity Fair about the final season of Euphoria, which saw Cassie trying her hand at being an OnlyFans model.
Discussing her character in the Sam Levinson-directed series, Sweeney explained: "From the very beginning, you can see that Cassie has this need to be loved. She has a need to be validated by other people. She doesn’t know how to love herself unless someone else loves her.
"So I understand how Sam got her to where she was in season three. I think she was more excited by the idea of all these people loving her and knowing who she is and feeling like her world isn’t small."
Highlighting her commitment to bringing 'Sam’s vision to life', Sweeney continued: "He sent me all the scripts, and it already had all of Cassie’s scenes in it, the OnlyFans scenes, and he called me afterwards, and he was talking about it, and we were talking through it all.
"He asked me how I felt about it, and I told him, 'Look, I’m playing a character.'"
She continued: "Do I agree with all of Cassie’s decisions? Would I personally make these choices? No, of course not. But I’m an actor, and that’s my job, and this is Cassie’s life, and to be able to do her justice and play her how she’s to be played is to bring Sam’s vision to life and to play Cassie in the most vulnerable and insane way possible."
Euphoria's Sydney Sweeney has opened up about her deleted strip club scene (HBO) Later in the interview, Sweeney also shared that Cassie’s pole dancing scene inside Alamo Brown’s (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) strip club was axed from the final season cut.
Opening up about the scenes she starred in alongside Alexa Demie, who plays Maddy Perez, Sweeney explained: "There were some really fun scenes between us when Cassie goes to the strip club with Maddie, and they’re doing the photoshoots.
"Cassie starts to see the girls on stage, and she gets really excited. She’s like, 'Wow, these girls are beautiful. I could do this.' She gets wasted, and she goes up on the stage, she gets all dressed up and Cassie pole dances."
Sweeney said she 'put a lot of hard work' into shooting the X-rated strip club scene (HBO) The Housemaid actress continued: "I did lessons for pole dancing, and it was so much fun. Imagine crazy Cassie on a pole, which was hilarious. But man, these girls are strong."
Sweeney added that director Sam Levinson called her a couple of days before the episode that the scenes were supposed to be in aired.
"He was like, 'Hey, it didn’t make sense for the episode.' I was like, 'Totally get it.' I definitely was disappointed. But he was like, 'Maybe we should release it as like behind-the-scenes footage or deleted scenes.' I was like, please do, because I put a lot of hard work into that," she said.