HBO defends Euphoria following claims of toxic conditions on set during production of season two
The Daily Beast published an exposé that featured quotes from anonymous background actors and production crew members
Aux News Euphoria
After publishing an investigative report on the allegedly tumultuous behind-the-scenes conditions of Euphoria in February, The Daily Beast posted a follow-up exposé on Friday morning. This time, the piece featured accounts from anonymous background actors and production crew involved in the HBO series’ second season.
The background actors allege that they worked under unfair conditions that included not getting proper lunch or bathroom breaks. “There were times after 14 hours we were told, ‘This is the last scene, we’re done after lunch,’ we took lunch, waited around two and a half hours, and then we went back to set. It felt toxic to me because I don’t think anybody was really happy to be there,” says one of the show’s extras.
Another adds, “I’m not the most important person there, I know where I am on the totem pole. But it got to a point where I was like, I’m still a person, I’m still human. Please let me go to the restroom, don’t tell me I can’t go for 30 minutes or tell me I can’t get a snack when you’re not going to feed me and it’s 4 a.m. It just very much felt like we didn’t exist as people.”
The meal break situation, which allegedly involved cast and crew being fed “far past the six-hour mark that SAG-AFTRA mandates” was subject to so many complaints that, according to sources in the Daily Beast piece, a SAG-AFTRA union rep visited the set.
A production member also said that showrunner and director Sam Levinson’s lack of organization affected the production negatively. The production member alleged that Levinson didn’t even having a shot list put together.
HBO has now responded to these claims. In statement, per Variety, HBO says there were “never any formal inquiries raised.”
The full statement reads: “The well-being of cast and crew on our productions is always a top priority. The production was in full compliance with all safety guidelines and guild protocols. It’s not uncommon for drama series to have complex shoots, and COVID protocols add an additional layer. We maintain an open line of communication with all the guilds, including SAG-AFTRA. There were never any formal inquiries raised.”
HBO has already renewed Euphoria for a third season.
60 Comments
performers are a lot more tight lipped about collaborating this season as well, things be looking messy.
That TINDERBOX paperback edition is going to be juicy.
Maybe if they cut out about 100 pages of C-suite minutiae to add some Euphoria gossip, yeah. That book was disappointing.
I’m shocked that a show that made it blatantly clear it was exploiting its female cast has a toxic on-set atmosphere. Wonder if we’ll ever hear anything about what it was like for the crew on the GOT set.
I haven’t heard about the show blatantly exploiting it’s female cast, but clearly something is seriously wrong on that set. Entertainment isn’t worth people being exploited or treated badly. One can do the right thing and still make a good product. I hope.
How has it exploited it’s female cast? The only thing I’ve read was when Sydney Sweeney talked about being able to nix nude scenes if she was uncomfortable.And as for the nudity, there’s much more make nudity in this show.
Sweeney wasn’t the only one who was uncomfortable with nude scenes. Though I think everyone still says they’re allowed to veto such scenes.The thing is, why would Sam Levinson keep writing such scenes into the script? Dude’s obsessed in a way.
The difference is that the male nudity involves prosthetics.
That’s the thing. And while I’m sure that’s not an easy task either, to go out in nothing but a prosthetic, it’s way different from what the female cast goes through. Every bit of the women are exposed and open to criticized, meanwhile the men get to have something they might not find perfect hidden behind a plastic wang. It just isn’t the same.And it isn’t like they can’t give prosthetics for women. Lily James is wearing them in Pam and Tommy. But I bet you they don’t offer that to women the way they do to men.
it’s absolutely ridiculous that this show takes as long to shoot as a season of game of thrones just because sam levinson doesn’t show up with a shot list and changes scenes and storylines the day before.it’s such a slap in the face to production especially the crew and background actors. i wish that iatse stories account was still active so that the crew could send in their experiences anonymously.the cast talk about how tough the shoots are. if it’s tough for them imagine how much more demanding it is on the crew who have to arrive hours earlier and after.
On the other hand, who gives a shit? Everybody’s work sucks, that’s why the call it work. Tell it to the doctor with a 24 hour shift.
”and changes scenes and storylines the day before”as if that asn’t happened in TV production from day one for plenty of good, bad, and indifferent reasons
i’m genuinely curious what is happening in your life right now that has motivated you to be such an obnoxious menace in this thread
As anyone who works in tv production will tell you, that’s done to accommodate the exceptions. If it’s the rule, you’ve got much deeper problems
There’s a world of difference between changing up a few lines or changing a proposed angle of filming due to some last-minute necessity and, say, up and rewriting a hugely choreographed SWAT team scene that would have already been strenuously blocked and rehearsed the day before filming it.
I mean, it’s like sending your army to invade your neighbor and not telling your soldiers until the last minute and not having a solid resupply plan.
Or like moving your your office to the west coast and not giving your writers a cost of living increase.
And they weren’t even given the option of working remotely, were they? I would think “pop culture critic” is probably one of the world’s jobs most amenable to remote work.
I’m not accusing G/O Media of constructive dismissal. But if you wanted to constructively dismiss some people, this would be an excellent way to do it.
You don’t understand. If your office is not in LA, how are Hollywood people gonna just drop by? Just yesterday, Brad Pitt was in the neighborhood getting coffee, and stopped by to see the new neighbors moving into his town. BAM, easy article!
Right now, some farmer in a tractor is pulling a Zendaya he found abandoned by the side of the road.
Employees unhappy with work conditions, film at 11.I mean, gimme a break, a late lunch equals a “toxic work environment”? What a bunch of bullshit, call your mom and complain.
Ok but can HBO defend why the show sucks so much?
Gasp, not the proper lunch breaks!
Yes, God forbid the little people earning a wage get treated with dignity and respect. I guarantee Sam Levinson was getting all the breaks he needed.
Or, almost as bad, he’s one of those bosses who don’t take breaks so they think their employees—who make a fraction of their salary—shouldn’t either.
There’s nothing worse than a workaholic boss without a family and a love affair with hearing their own voice.
Are you fucking kidding me with this comment? Have you had a job? I know it’s hard to believe that for the majority of people in the cast & crew, this shit is a job and not a fairy tale, but can you imagine if in your job they said “Hey you can’t go to the bathroom until we tell you it’s ok” or “You’re not allowed to take a lunch break today”? Like what fucking planet are you on where that’s not a big deal?
I would be a fucking man, tell them its the labor law, and go take a shit and eat my sandwich. What I wouldn’t do is whine anonymously to some trash blogger writing a hit piece.
They reported it their union oh manly 3rdshallot.
sounds like they did a bang-up job resolving the situation.
You must get fired, a lot.
If someone told me I cant go to the bathroom, I would ignore them and go to the bathroom. What kind of idiot is going to just hold it forever?
Not taking lunch is a HUGE deal on productions that can run into some cost. There’s a reason the meal penalties for not giving the production a lunch break are usually really stiff.I remember reading that one of the issues on “Heaven’s Gate” was that director Michael Cimino was obsessive to the point of keeping the production sitting, waiting for the right appearance of clouds in the sky, just so it would look just right, incurring meal penalties by working them through lunch.
Working as an extra can be miserable. Shows can at least feed them on time.
I gotta say, when I saw the headline, I did not expect “no piss breaks and too long shoots” being the reason. I mean, it’s still messed up and I feel for the actors, don’t get me wrong, but I was really expecting some kind of sexual assault story so uh… bullet kinda dodged?
Kind of bittersweet I guess that it’s a relief when the news is just “actors exploited and abused in the usual capitalist way.”
Yeah, i was totally expecting some sexual harassment horror stories. But this is still shitty. Like cmon, youre working 16 hours you cant give people a fucking break to eat?
Yeah, the news from the last few years prompted me to expect something far worse.
this reeks of preemptive damage control. this show and everything about it is the definition of sus. a grown man making female-centric over-sexed stories that seems to have a fetish for putting teen girls through hell for no reason other than Levinson gets off on it. his treatment of Cassie comes across like Levinson was a creepy weirdo in school who could never get the attention of the pretty popular girl and is now writing a character to enact a vengeance on her that he never could as a teen.i’m a fan of A24 and a lot of the actors on the show but even with that, i can’t look away from how blatantly disturbing everything about this show is. especially the mindless support surrounding it.
A24 is a distribution company, not a production company. Stop giving them credit for things they don’t deserve, a24 has literally zero input on the content of any movie or show
I wonder who the audience for this show is supposed to be? Bet its a lot more skewed towards middle aged men than actual teenagers.
There is simply no artistic literacy in this country so people lose their minds after watching something ‘stylish’. Everything is called “art” now.
unfortunately this is something that has tainted the art world for years. there are foreign filmmakers like Lars Von Trier (an actual rapist) or Gaspar Noe who use cheap plotting to create misery solely for the sake of them getting off on making people suffer through it. Noe famously laughed loudly in the theater as LVT’s The House The Jack Built tormented audiences. a film so cheap as to depict child murder all for the sake of some ill conceived anti-Trump metaphor which is rich considering LVT got banned from Cannes for saying he sympathizes with Hitler and “jokingly” called himself a Nazi. as far as here in America, i think the biggest offender is Ari Aster. i plead for people who enjoyed Hereditary or Midsommar to watch his early short films. the man has a very twisted and demented view of mothers. he’s also always operated on base, depraved shock value simply for shock value’s sake. but he uses nice cinematography so everyone automatically calls it art.hearing the way FANS talk about Euphoria, Hereditary, Midsommar, the language they use is always negative. like how it “broke” or “traumatized” them. good art doesn’t do that. i mean don’t get me wrong there is some soul crushing art out there but the stuff people praise is far more malicious than artful. i always bring up directors like Michael Haneke or Yorgos Lanthimos when it comes to artistic depictions of trauma. the work of both is very dark and deals with extremely heavy stuff but its ultimately the humanism of the characters that stays with you, not the traumatic imagery. the issue is, a lot of people are influenced by that stuff but don’t see the art in it and then they make art thats simply hurtful and disgusting. Louis CK has a famous quote about Haneke’s The Piano Teacher in which he basically explains that he thinks the movie is awesome because it makes you feel bad and theres a scene where the main character sniffs jizz rags while watching porn at a video arcade. what is ultimately supposed to be a really honest look into emotional nihilism is just interpreted by these men as “hehe she sniff jizz”because of that, i think its super important to always be critical of art that portrays trauma. sorry if that was overly long, clearly i have a lot of thoughts on this lol but a lot of it is just because NO ONE talks about this stuff.
Hey, I come here more for the comments than the articles these days, so I appreciate a thoughtful, lengthy response.
wow, if this was the production that got extras and PAs treated like human beings, that would justify its existence. That’s too big a shift to ever realistically happen The extras are talking about bare minimum terrible conditions, nothing like the average of how awful it is, and the union says they’re not union so they can just die. We need a non-union union lol. If anybody thinks any of these extras are exaggerating…no it’s way way way way way way worse than this.And the questions about HBO and forced nudity are a separate issue.
Yeah I understand why not everyone can just immediately join SAG, but I’m also on set like “this is kinda fucked though. can we get some collective bargaining too?”
I remember I saw once on a set they took a few girls who were extras and decided they were going to be strippers, so they gave them g-strings and told them to get into them…a few left and probably had to change agencies, a few stayed and were treated like meat. Nobody looks out for them, they’re treated as subhuman. Coupled with the fact that some extras are legit weird, or have mental health issues, and are in close proximity to very famous powerful people and I’m frankly surprised there aren’t more incidents.
Eeeesh. I was on a remarkably good set the other week with strippers. One of the Power spin-offs. There was an intimacy coordinator there the whole time, and she and the director gave a joint speech up top telling everyone basically “don’t touch them, don’t talk to them, don’t ogle (except when the cameras are rolling)”. Each stripper had a PA with a robe to cover them in between takes. I hope that can be the norm more and more.
yeah, or at least knowing you’ve been hired to play a stripper and agreeing to that before some PA with his ass coming out of his pants throws a possibly unwashed G-string at you and barks “get changed!”
Welcome to being exploited for the sake of ‘art’. So much fuss for such low stakes.
The meal breaks not being on time is unusual for hollywood, but in my opinion thats nowhere near what I would call a toxic workplace. Try working at a regular job and you go through much worse bullshit than that on a regular basis.
What kind of monsters would mistreat union employees?
“A production member also said that showrunner and director Sam Levinson’s lack of organization affected the production negatively. The production member alleged that Levinson didn’t even having a shot list put together.”Sorry, but this is just piling on, has zero to do with ‘toxic”, he can work however he wants
Toxic conditions? Where there jellyfish and rattlesnakes on set, injecting everyone with their toxins?
So a SAG-AFTRA rep actually visits EVERY SET, EVERY DAY on any real production. And they are completely clueless. Background actors pretty much deal with these conditions every single day on every set I’ve ever been on, just so happens there were people actively investigating this one.
Maybe I haven’t been paying attention, but I feel like AV Club never mentions the unions in these stories, this being the rare exception.
Know I brought this up on the other Euphoria thread, so I am evidently now that person, but surprised that this article on the potential toxicity of the set doesn’t bring up the whole Barbie Ferreira thing? Esp as the Daily Beast article also did when discussing the toxicity? The lack of Kat was so noticeable this season, and I found her to be such an unlikeable character when she did not begin that way, that I googled and looks like the actress and Sam were majorly fighting all season and he pretty much cut her out of the show. Cause she didn’t feel comfortable doing yet another unoriginal angsty eating disorder story line and of course, as a plus sized actress, she would be the only character who would have an ED. Super petty on Sam’s side that he handled it by excising the character and an indication of the environment he creates on set (and the need for a writer’s room).
for sad characters we need sad people
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I see (53) people were here during the strike. Tsk tsk.