Sydney Sweeney is opening up about bringing her character Cassie’s controversial OnlyFans storyline to life in season three of Euphoria.
The actress recently chatted with Vanity Fair about the final season of the Sam Levinson-created drama, which followed Cassie’s rise in popularity as an OnlyFans model after marrying Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi).
“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,” Sweeney said. “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.”
Cassie’s storyline also featured quite a bit of nudity, but Levinson previously told The New York Times that he initially considered shooting the OnlyFans scenes without nudity. However, the creator said Sweeney pushed back, telling him. “‘Are you kidding? I’m playing an OnlyFans model. You’re telling me you’re going to like, skirt around it?’”
The Housemaid actress also told VF that she had conversations with Levinson before filming began and was committed from the start to bringing “Sam’s vision to life.”
“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,” she explained. “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.”
Elsewhere during her interview, Sweeney also revealed that Cassie’s pole dancing scene inside Alamo Brown’s (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) strip club was cut from the final season.
“There were some really fun scenes between us when Cassie goes to the strip club with Maddie (Alexa Demie) and they’re doing the photoshoots,” the Anyone But You star shared. “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. 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.”
