'It's not sensational to be sensational.' Go inside the many jarring and explicit elements of HBO's new drama Euphoria
Thirty penises in one episode? Zendaya’s new series, filled with graphic nudity, violence and drug use among young people, is so extreme that one star quit mid-shoot, but the network hopes that authenticity will help the show break through:"It's not sensational to be sensational."
The male genitalia in the pilot is not attached to any of the largely 20-something cast. Instead, it's care of actor Eric Dane, who commits statutory rape with a 17-year-old trans girl . Though the sequence uses a prosthetic, it's still likely to shock most audiences — as will a handful of other graphic scenes in the pilot, from a gut-wrenching drug overdose by star Zendaya, 22, to a sex scene between teens involving choking. In one episode alone, close to 30 penises flash onscreen.
Despite HBO's enthusiasm for authentic and edgy content, the network does have its limits. According to Levinson and Zendaya, execs pushed back on two scenes. One was the opening shot, which in the final version begins with Zendaya's character narrating her birth. "I was repeatedly crushed over and over by the cruel cervix of my mother," she says as a CGI clip of herself as a baby in utero plays onscreen.
What did stay in the series is a tongue-in-cheek montage in which Zendaya deconstructs the art of a dick pic. "We can get away with a lot of shit with comedy," says the star, who'd been searching for a reputation-busting role that would signal her transition from Disney Channel to adult actress. "I've only really done family movies, so everybody sees me a certain way and doesn't assume that I can do [a part like this] — or that I want to.
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