Note: This story contains spoilers from “Euphoria” Season 3, Episode 1.
“Euphoria” Season 3 picks up with Zendaya’s Rue still paying the price for her high school mistakes from drug lord Laurie (Martha Kelly), but, by the end of the premiere episode, Rue’s alliance has shifted towards another major player.
The Season 3 premiere reveals Laurie found Rue a couple years after high school, forcing her to atone for her debts by becoming a drug mule, leading to several unpleasant trips across the border. So when Rue happens upon a party full of beautiful, scantily clad women during a routine drop off, her interest is piqued — but she first has to answer to head honcho Alamo Brown (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje).
“I always had this shot in my head of just this smoke that was coming — there’s a guy in a hot tub with a cowboy hat and the smoke, and then as the camera pushes in, it reveals his face and the sound of Adewale’s voice as Alamo, ‘You walk into my house dancing with my girls, and you don’t even introduce yourself,’” creator Sam Levinson told TheWrap about the introduction. “It tells you everything you need to know about who this character is … instantaneously … He’s a man who likes to have fun, but he’s also scary as f–k.”
Akinnuoye-Agbaje identifies the moment as “one of the best intros of a character that you could have on TV,” applauding the “sublime” texture in the scene. “For Rue, his world represents possibilities and freedom,” the actor said. “She’s coming away from her past, and here is all this glamour, girls, party … it’s bigger than life.”
Despite the harsh introduction, the pair gets to chatting, with Rue in awe of how Alamo has built his slice of heaven with several clubs in the area. “They both start to meet in the middle and realize that maybe their dreams are a little more similar than they thought,” Levinson explained. “It just felt like a good entry point into … humor and also the tension of these two characters and what their journey would be like.”
During their conversation, Akinnuoye-Agbaje noted how Alamo “seduces” and “charms” Rue into his world, while both of them discover and suss out who the other is, with Alamo’s eyes specifically on how “he can exploit this.”
“Yes, he’s high, but he does identify something in her, something of himself —ambition, somebody that is quite fearless … I think he sees something in her that he sees in himself,” he shared. “I think that continues, and when they do finally partner … [it’s] a bit of a mentor-disciple relationship, albeit somewhat twisted, because he’s ultimately going to exploit her talents for his own gain.”
Akinnuoye-Agbaje also saw the conversation as a dance between Alamo and Rue, recalling that “Sam had this signal that he would give me, which meant I could dance between the lines and seduce and elicit the performance out of my scene partner, and it just made for these brilliant interactions and chemistry to be born in the moment — wonderful, unexpected moments, too, and humor in quite tense circumstances.”
Their moment of carefree connection gets interrupted, however, when Alamo learns that the drugs Rue delivered were laced with fentanyl, leading one of his girls to overdose. After hearing Rue’s pleas that she didn’t have anything to do with packaging the drugs while so badly wanting to get out from Laurie’s thumb, Alamo puts her faith to the test by shooting an apple off her head.
The scene is full of the season’s Western tinge as anticipation built towards the shot, but once he makes the shot to the apple and not to Rue’s head, Rue lets out a spout of laughter.
“In terms of what it meant for their relationship, it really was the gateway to her entering my world when he says to her, ‘Do you believe in God? Let’s see if he believes in you,’” Akinnuoye-Agbaje said. “I mean, he’s not really going to kill her. He’s just testing her faith and her core, and I do believe if she had flinched, she might not have made it, because then you’re not worthy to walk in my world. You’re a coward, you know? I think that was the beginning and opening of their relationship.”
“Euphoria” premieres Sundays on HBO.
The post ‘Euphoria’: Sam Levinson and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje Unpack Rue’s ‘Twisted’ Discipleship With Alamo appeared first on TheWrap.
