Zendaya issues a content warning for the second season of Euphoria
The Emmy-winning star of the HBO series said the new season is "deeply emotional"
Aux News Zendaya
Before the second season of Euphoria premiered on HBO on January 9, the show’s Emmy-winning star Zendaya took to Instagram to warn fans that the show’s content might be heavier than they were expecting.
In the post, Zendaya wrote, “I know I’ve said this before, but I do want to reiterate to everyone that Euphoria is for mature audiences. This season, maybe even more so than the last, is deeply emotional and deals with subject matter that can be triggering and difficult to watch. Please only watch it if you feel comfortable. Take care of yourself and know that either way you are still loved and I can still feel your support. All my love, Daya”
Sunday night’s premiere was the first proper episode of Euphoria since 2019. In that time, the show aired two special episodes, one about Zendaya’s character Rue and one about Hunter Schafer’s character Jules. During the hiatus (and the COVID-19 pandemic), Zendaya also collaborated with the show’s creator Sam Levinson on the movie Malcolm & Marie, which premiered on Netflix in early 2021.
In the new season, Zendaya’s Rue is dealing with a drug relapse. She told The A.V. Club of Rue’s journey, “The whole show is nuanced, and nothing is just one way. [Even after season one], she still doesn’t know how to navigate sobriety. That adds a whole other layer of complex issues.” She added, “We wanted to start the show by giving Rue everything she says she wants. We give her her ideal dream situation and see how it works. She tries to balance two lives. We’ll see how well that goes for her.”
Zendaya had a busy year 2021. In addition to her work in Malcolm & Marie, she also voiced Lola Bunny in Space Jam: A New Legacy, starred alongside Timothée Chalamet in Dune, and reprised her role as MJ in the box office smash Spider-Man: No Way Home. She’s expected to film Dune: Part Two later this year.
55 Comments
I am a grown ass adult and I was so not ready for the first five minutes of last night’s episode.
kudos to Zendaya, continued success! Hopefully more Marvel voice work in the near future.I’d suggest her for a superhero at Marvel, I think that she’d be excellent to portray…. _____________
she’s already MJ in Spiderman
Every tv show and movie should now open with “warning: may cause feelings” because apparently no one can handle those without a disclaimer.
Normally I would agree. I think it’s weird that we need trigger warnings suddenly, for basically any content. But at the same time, as much as this seems like “snowflake” nonsense, is it functionally much different than the movie ratings system? Rated R for violence or adult language or sexual situations or smoking or whatever is just as much a trigger warning as anything else.But we never complain that the ratings system is for sissies.
You say this as if TV shows haven’t started with disclaimers and parental advisory ratings for decades.
Yes, for violence and mature themes. Not for “this dramatic presentation may cause you to experience emotions”
Her warning is literally about the mature themes, mate. You’re the one turning this into a big deal like a fucken drama queen.
Her warning is about triggering emotions in a dramatic television show for adults. I’m sorry I didn’t realize leaving a snide comment on a message board hardly anyone visits anymore is “making a big deal”. Get fucked you fragile moron.
Yo there’s no need for that kind of language, now you really are making a big deal out of it… please apologize
I love these gimmick accounts. Now do that photosensitive seizures warning at the beginning of Doom Eternal!
HEY… we prefer “burners” or “characters.” Respect our community.
“Her warning is about triggering emotions in a dramatic television show for adults.”
Triggering isn’t just “emotions”.
“Get fucked you fragile moron.”
Someone’s certainly fragile! Seems you’ve been triggered…
You went “snowflake” on her, which isn’t going to be taken well here. Get over it…. snowflake.
Lol looks like it’s going over quite well. I was actually just kidding about how people are afraid to have feelings now, and are afraid of other people having feelings, when that’s sort of the entire purpose of art. Then you all got your feelings hurt. Pretty amusing.
She didn’t even use the word feelings.
Emotion is a synonym of feelings chummmmp.
Yeah, keep crying about it. “Oh no, someone gave a warning about violence and assault in a TV show. Oh lordy me this offends my sensibilities!”Keep getting so heating and you’ll melt, ya fucken snowflake.
Lol that’s literally the opposite of what I said. And look how upset you are about it. Maybe you do need a warning about experiencing feelings, you’re obviously not very adept at dealing with them
You’re here bitching about an actor’s innocuous statement and you’re not the fragile moron?
it’s a show about drug use disorders, which triggers relapses. not just emotions you moron.
Those have historically been a network television thing, having a big “viewer discretion advised” warning beyond the usual “TV-MA” screen is not normal on HBO outside of this show.
Hasn’t HBO done it for a number of shows in the past few years anyway? Maybe after the Game of Thrones rape controversy—I often see warnings for sexual violence (and I get why they have them, I honestly do, but, it can be a bit annoying when you know that there’s going to be a rape scene on a show and so cringe at every scene anticipating it. But if someone is triggered by that and the warning helps them, I can’t really complain).
The one warning that gets me is when a show is automatically TV MA if it shows cigarette use–even if that’s primarily in period dramas where… isn’t that expected?
Can’t say I’ve watched every show HBO has broadcast but this certainly hasn’t been normal practice for them historically. The trigger warnings on Oz would have been… extensive.
Oh it absolutely didn’t exist in the Oz days. I feel like I’ve seen it in the past few years though–specifically about sexual violence (which, yes, would have meant Oz would be riddled with it).
She’s saying it because she has a huge audience of young fans!
Zendaya’s fan base skews young. I can see why she might tip them (or their parents) off that this is more upsetting than Dune or Spider Man.
This is such a 2021 selling point. In the 80s we wanted action and comedy. Today we want misery and sexual horror, and the more the better.
I’ve seen kindergartners act out scenes from the Squid Game so 🤷🏼♂️
The best warning was for a Canadain cable channel called Showcase that aired reruns of a classic 80s show called Seeing Things. The advisory was a reminder of how norms in the 80s were different than in the 90s. Btw, Seeing Things was awesome. Dated, hokey, switching between comedy and murder, but awesome.
I remember Seeing Things being rerun in the 90s when I was a teen–I thought it was on Bravo but Bravo and Showcase premiered at the same time (and started off kinda awesome–especially Showcase’s regular foreign films which exposed me to people like Almodovar–before becoming more interested in CSI reruns, etc. I believe you about the warning, but I can’t think of anything on Seeing Things that would warrant a warning like that….
It was Showcase. I know, because I was obsessed with watching it (my parents watched the original run when I was really young and the weird music that played when Ciccone started, well seeing things, haunted me since). I swear the content warning reminding everyone the show was a decade old was real and not only that but all the local papers found it hilarious and talked about the warning more than the actual show.
So she’s basically saying there’s going to be a suicide next season, but we’ll need to tune in to find out who!
No, she is not saying that.
She definitely is
Yeah, or a sexual assault.
She’s a really big deal among tweens, so it could be simply that the show isn’t suitable for a chunk of her fanbase. But it could also be that her character is going to die, and the social media fallout will be hellacious.
I wasn’t planning on watching, but thanks for the warning.
This show is fantastic.
Tom Holland played a drug user in ‘Cherry’, Zendaya plays a drug user in this – someone get Jacob Batalon his gritty drug use drama, stat!
Fantastic that she can make the warning all about her in the end (I can still feel your support). Actors, ammirite?
shocking content? on HBO?!? what is the world coming to?!?!?!?!?
Did season 1 have a warning, cause… dayam. I’ve never quite seen some of the content in that put to film before as viscerally. Maybe some things like Requiem For A Dream or Running Scared.
That one messed me up for life.
I forgot about this movie! So good.
Taking this opportunity to wonder whether this section of the internet is ever going to acknowledge that the steadily growing body of academic research that suggests that at best trigger warnings accomplish nothing and at worst they actually amplify the likelihood of an extremely negative reaction to content.Gonna guess that’s going to be a hard “no” but still wondering anyways.
Shoulda issued a content warning for that dumb David Bowie cover W Magazine made her do.
Violence and mental illness shouldn’t be shown on TV as entertainment it just spreads more of it to the populace. There is a time and place and way to inform the public without acting it out.
Humans are too impressionable. Boys want to be killer soldiers and women are all emotionally swooning alcoholics. 2022 might as well be the 1822. I thought we were supposed to progress as a society.
I guess I’ll throw away my enormous Hong-Kong Martial Arts movie collection. I wondered why I was flying-kicking everyone in the face when I went out to pick up milk.
Yeah, No
Yeah, let’s not show people dealing with real issues and educate people about those dealing with mental illness or drug abuse.
You know, we should also stop depicting people being angry with each other, too. Maybe we should stop depicting conflict of any kind at all. Because no one ever hurt anyone else before TV showed up.
Man, I miss the old AV Club
One of my podcasts mentioned Euphoria just today and I have the same thoughts they do. That if you are a near 40 year old man, you shouldn’t watch it and if you do, telling people will get you on a list somewhere
Ha, someone listens to WHM.