As criticism came barging back following the release of Euphoria Season 3, Sweeney fired back at critics and justified her role.
“It’s called… acting,” she wrote on Instagram, accompanied by a series of photos showing her in provocative outfits from the show’s set.
In an interview with The New York Times, Levinson revealed Sweeney told him to keep the nude scenes in Season 3 when he was thinking about leaving them out.
“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?'” the Euphoria creator said. “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.'”
Levinson was also asked about complaints that the show included unnecessary nude scenes in its first two seasons, especially when the story focused on high school students.
“From the script, you get a sense of what the role requires,” he said. “Even when you go up to audition, let’s use the role of Cassie, you know the role requires a certain amount of nudity. 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 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.”
Above all, Levinson stressed that protecting the cast is his top priority.