Sydney Sweeney isn’t afraid to speak up for herself or her character while on the set of Euphoria.
In a new interview with The Independent, the actress, who plays Cassie on the beloved HBO teen drama, said she asked creator Sam Levinson to remove nude scenes that she deemed unnecessary from the series’ second season with no opposition.
“Sam [Levinson] is amazing,” Sweeney said, per Variety. “There are moments where Cassie was supposed to be shirtless and I would tell Sam, ‘I don’t really think that’s necessary here.’ He was like, ‘OK, we don’t need it.’ I’ve never felt like Sam has pushed it on me or was trying to get a nude scene into an HBO show. When I didn’t want to do it, he didn’t make me.”
Though the Euphoria cast works with an intimacy coordinator, Sweeney explained that she hasn’t always felt comfortable on set to advocate for herself. “I’ve had experiences where I want to go home and scrub myself completely raw because I feel disgusting,” she said. “I didn’t feel comfortable with my castmate or the crew, and I just didn’t feel like my character would be doing it. That made me even more self-conscious. I didn’t feel like I was able to speak up.”
View full post on YoutubeSweeney also spoke about the frustration of being recognized for other roles, such as her performance in The White Lotus, in which she doesn’t perform nude scenes.
“I’m very proud of my work in Euphoria. I thought it was a great performance. But no one talks about it because I got naked,” she said. “I do The White Lotus and all of a sudden critics are paying attention. People are loving me. They’re going, ‘Oh my God, what’s she doing next?’ I was like, ‘Did you not see that in Euphoria? Did you not see that in The Handmaid’s Tale?’”
She also said that she views the discrepancy in praise for these different roles as a “stigma against actresses who get naked on screen.” She continued, “When a guy has a sex scene or shows his body, he still wins awards and gets praise. But the moment a girl does it, it’s completely different.”
