Sydney Sweeney made actor Alanna Ubach, who plays her mother in Euphoria, improvise her explosive expletive during their tense fight scene. Sweeney has been acting for many years, picking up steam in popular culture with her work in The Handmaid's Tale, Sharp Objects, and Everything Sucks!, but has become widely known for her role as Cassie Howard in Euphoria. Created by Sam Levinson, the HBO show has been making waves due to its sometimes exaggerated and uncomfortably realistic portrayals of the lives of its main characters. In more recent episodes, the show has focused on the parents of these high schoolers and their relationship with them.
In Euphoria season 2 episode 6, "A Thousand Little Trees of Blood," Cassie and her mother get into a major fight over her sleeping with Nate Jacobs, the on-again-of-again boyfriend of her best friend, Maddy. The fight gets very heated as Sweeney's character feels like she is not being listened to, in addition to wanting to be told she is in the right. Her mother, however, isn't going to let her daughter off the hook - but also just wants to watch Millionaire Matchmaker. The two conflicting goals converge in a disastrous argument, with both yelling at each other while Cassie's sister Lexi watches from the side. This argument ultimately culminates in Ubach's character screaming about how she doesn't care before unleashing multiple expletives.
In an interview with EW, Ubach reveals that the final moment in which she curses at her character's daughter was improvised and came about due to how Sweeney acts in Euphoria. She makes it clear that Sweeney's acting is so lifelike that it brought her back to her younger days in her own family. Ubach had no choice but to engage with Sweeney as directly and fiercely as her character demanded, she says, which brought about much harsher language. Check out her full quote below:
You know, Sydney brings it out in me. She's in character mode the whole time and it gets rather scary because it's so real. And I grew up in a very unpredictable, Latin, feisty household to say the least, and my mother and father fought in front of us. They weren't afraid to fight in front of us and throw things. And so it just sort of comes out.
In the same interview, Ubach, along with co-stars Nika King and Paula Marshall, who respectively play the mothers of Rue and Nate, all mention how the show is set up to allow the actors more room for improvisation. They recall experiences on other series where script supervisors would come up to them and point out a missing word here and there, which they say isn't a part of Euphoria. Often there are noticeable differences between the written script and what the characters say, due to that freedom afforded to the actors.
While some bemoan the act of improving in scripted shows, it can be used to give further life to a character beyond what the initial writing process conceives. While a wave of news stories about improvisation have come out recently, the practice of doing so, even on big-budget movies and TV shows, has a rich history. Fans of Euphoria should be excited to see further instances of this and how the other actors react to the unexpected moments throughout the series.
Source: EW