Sydney Sweeney is reflecting on her character’s polarizing OnlyFans storyline in “Euphoria” Season 3.
“From the very beginning, you can see that Cassie has this need to be loved,” she said of her character — who attracts attention as a model on the subscription-based site after tying the knot with Jacob Elordi’s Nate — in an interview with Vanity Fair published Tuesday.
“She has a need to be validated by other people,” she continued. “She doesn’t know how to love herself unless someone else loves her.”
As far as Cassie’s decision to join the site, Sweeney said she thinks her character “was more excited by the idea of all these people loving her and knowing who she is and feeling like her world isn’t small.”
Sweeney also divulged how creator Sam Levinson discussed Cassie’s nude scenes with her prior to filming the third season.
“He sent me all the scripts and it already had all of Cassie’s scenes in it, the OnlyFans scenes, and he called me afterwards, and he was talking about it, and we talked through it all,” she told the outlet.
“He asked me how I felt about it, and I told him, ‘Look, I’m playing a character,’” she explained.
The actress, 28, went on, “Do I agree with all of Cassie’s decisions? Would I personally make these choices? No, of course not.”
“But I’m an actor and that’s my job, and this is Cassie’s life, and to be able to do her justice and play her how she’s to be played is to bring Sam’s vision to life and to play Cassie in the most vulnerable and insane way possible,” Sweeney added.
Elsewhere in the interview, when asked which character she’s played is most like herself, Sweeney insisted most people “have no clue” who she “actually” is.
“That’s why I love acting,” she told the outlet. “The whole point of acting is being able to play all these different characters. It wouldn’t be fun playing myself.”
Showrunner Levinson, 41, recently shared how “Anyone But You” actress allegedly reacted to the storyline prior to filming the season.
“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?’” he said during a New York Times interview earlier this month.
Per Levinson, the “White Lotus” actress responded by asking if he was “kidding.”
“I’m playing an OnlyFans model,” she allegedly said. “You’re telling me you’re going to, like, skirt around it?” Levinson, in turn, said the American Eagle model made a “fair point.”
