Dominic Fike admits he was “beyond fucked up” for his first Euphoria audition.
The musician and actor detailed how he eventually landed the role of Elliot on season two of the Emmy-winning HBO series during a recent interview on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast.
Fike recalled one of the show’s casting agents reaching out to his team after they saw a video of him performing “Bags” by Clairo for triple j’s “Like A Version” series. “I didn’t know what Euphoria was,” he confessed. “I didn’t know it’s this big fuckin’ TV show. I don’t know who [director] Sam Levinson is. I don’t know fuckin’ even Barbie [Ferreira] or Zendaya or any of the girls.”
The “3 Nights” singer then remembered shortly before his audition, “I was reading about some actor who did his thing fucked up or something, maybe it was a week before. So I stayed up all night with this girl drinking whiskey, taking shrooms. I show up to the audition, or the read, beyond fucked up. I’m just laughing at Sam, and everyone’s laughing at me because I’m just laughing at them.”
After showing up 30 minutes late to the audition, Fike said he was also “throwing shit around” in the room and teasing Euphoria creator Sam Levinson for his outfit.
“They’re like, ‘Can you do this?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know, probably,’” Fike recounted. “We started reading it, but then the words started jumping around on the page. I was like, ‘I can’t do this script.’ And they were like, ‘Dom, just go get rest.’ And they were so mad at me. I remember they called my agents and were like, ‘This kid’s never doing anything in Hollywood again, ever. We’re so mad.’”
After some time, Fike said he “was living in a different way at that point” as he was “trying to buckle down” and better himself. That’s when the show’s team reached back out to him to audition again about a year later.
“Sam had rewritten this character that I’d shown up to read, but he wrote it with the qualities of the guy who he saw show up,” he explained. “He writes this guy that’s like, half his character and half the dude that showed up that day. And then I was honest with him. He has a meeting with me. He’s like, ‘OK, I know that you get fucked up, obviously. You have some problems. I have those problems too. We can get someone to help you, but you have to do this. You sign a five-year contract. It’s just a formality.’”
Fike recalled Levinson telling him, “‘I need to know that you’re not gonna fuck me on this.’ I was like, ‘Brother, I got you.’ At this time, I’m not understanding the stakes, still, of this show. I don’t know what this is.” But once he got on set to film season two, he added that “you find out real quick when you see that budget.”
His character Elliot becomes close friends with Hunter Schafer’s Jules and Zendaya’s Rue in season two, initially bonding with the latter over their shared struggles with substance abuse.
Fike has previously been open about his personal struggles with drug addiction and how it played out during his time filming Euphoria, saying, “I almost you know got kicked off the show.”
“I mean I was a drug addict and coming onto a show mainly about drugs was very difficult,” he told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in 2023. “Sam, the director and writer, he got me a sober coach, somebody to be there you know all the time. Did not work. I was so fucked up during a lot of that show. It was really bad.”
Fike is also set to reprise his role in Euphoria season three, which is set for release in spring 2026.
