Euphoria director Sam Levinson defends Sydney Sweeney's nude scenes as he shares rule she had to follow

Warning: this article contains spoilers for Euphoria

After much anticipation, the final episode of the third season of Euphoria has finally dropped.

Much to the dismay of HBO viewers, this season has now been confirmed to be the last, and it’s clear that director Sam Levinson went all-out for the finale.

Titled 'In God We Trust', we see the story of Rue, played by Zendaya, end tragically when she accidentally takes fentanyl-laced pills, believing they're Percocet, and dies of an overdose.

Ali (played by Colman Domingo) discovers what happened and is left devastated. Seeking revenge, he tracks down Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), the man connected to the pills.

In a climactic confrontation at a nightclub, Ali kills Alamo after receiving covert help from Bishop, played by Darrell Hadari Britt-Gibson.

Laurie (Martha Kelly) dies during a DEA raid, while Alamo and Rue also die in the episode, making it one of the show's deadliest chapters.

But other than all the death, we see another batch of X-rated scenes from Sydney Sweeney, who plays OnlyFans star, Cassie.

Now, throughout the series, there's been a lot of controversy surrounding Cassie's more risque moments - including filming a 'puppy play' stunt, creating 'baby' content, trying out extreme NSFW ASMR and even getting involved in the whole foot fetish thing.

Sydney Sweeney's character, Cassie, featured in a number of X-rated scenes throughout the latest Euphoria season (HBO)

Many Euphoria fans have slammed Levinson for Cassie's character arc, with some even going as far as to call her nude and adult scenes 'humiliation rituals', but the actress has since been defended as the show creator has opened up about the specific rule she had to follow on set.

In an exclusive interview, Levinson revealed why he felt it was time to bring the fan-favourite series to an end and issued a direct response to its critics.

Speaking to The New York Times in an interview published today (1 June), Levinson addressed how he manages intimate scenes and nudity with actors, explaining: "There’s a couple of things. From the script, you get a sense of what the role requires. Even when you go up to audition, let’s use the role of Cassie, you know the role requires a certain amount of nudity."

Euphoria director Sam Levinson has defended Sweeney's nude scenes in a new interview (HBO)

He continued: "Are you comfortable? If they’re comfortable, they get the role, then the next layer is the intimacy coordinator. I think it’s a SAG [Screen Actors Guild] rule that if an actor then says, after getting cast, actually, I don’t want to do that, we can’t force them to do a scene."

He added that Sweeney was the one who insisted on nudity, telling the outlet: "Well, it’s funny, when I first wrote it, I was like, maybe we shoot all of this and we don’t have any nudity, maybe there’s ways to shoot around certain things?

"And she looked at me, and she was like, 'Are you kidding? I’m playing an OnlyFans model. You’re telling me you’re going to like, skirt around it?' And I was like, yeah, OK, that’s a fair point."