![]() I’d been curious about screenwriting for a bit and did a little studying on my own. The beginning of quarantine left me scrambling for things to keep myself occupied within the sudden isolation. ![]() How did this episode come together during quarantine? What were you doing before you and Sam started talking about putting it together? For press things, we like to be in the work zone. But we got a little pearl gradient moment going on. My makeup artist is here, and we’re always figuring out new things to do. Tell me about your amazing eye-makeup situation. She Zoomed me from a hotel room in classically Jules-esque eye makeup (tiny pearls lined up in a V-shape along the inner corner of her eyes) to tell me the whole story about how the episode came together - including her cross-country conversations with Levinson, how writing it kept her from checking into a mental hospital, Torrey Peters’s Detransition, Baby, and what, exactly, “Fuck Anyone Who Is Not a Sea Blob” means. This makes the episode, a possible Emmy contender, feel in some ways as if we’re getting a line to Schafer’s own roiling thoughts. Schafer has spoken at length about how Levinson has allowed her to shape Jules, blending her character’s backstory and personality with her own. Schafer co-wrote and co-produced the episode alongside series creator Sam Levinson - both things she had never done before - most of which the pair accomplished spontaneously over the phone during quarantine. The compounding traumas might have felt overwrought without Schafer’s performance, which anchors the whole thing in reality: Her face crumples and expands, her body curling in on itself as she allows herself to be equal parts vulnerable and self-protective. The episode, titled “Fuck Anyone Who’s Not a Seas Blob,” engages unflinchingly with themes ranging from Jules’s suicidal ideation to her being catfished and sexually exploited to her evolving understanding of her gender performance and its inextricable link to male desire. ![]() But Jules’s episode functions on another level, doubling back and replaying much of the first season through her eyes (at one point, literally), giving us new information about her backstory that we aren’t privy to in season one. Both spend time parsing and unpacking that moment - and its emotional aftermath - without giving away what may unfold in season two (which is filming now). Each episode takes place a few weeks after the show’s protagonist, Rue (Zendaya), and her best friend–(ex?) love interest, Jules (Hunter Schafer), part dramatically at a train station at the end of season one. ![]() In the segment, Levinson adds that Jules is “looking at herself and her gender and her evolution as a person through a philosophical lens as opposed to a political one.Last winter, after the pandemic postponed the filming of Euphoria’s second season, HBO surprised fans of its smash hit with two “special episodes,” both of which are pared down and more intimate than the series’s usual Technicolor, rapid-fire teen chaos. “I think I was around her age when I started to understand that transitioning wasn't this point A to point B sequence.” “If I've learned anything from being trans for my whole life, it's that that spiral kind of never stops,” she explained. She admitted that she “felt a little complicated at first” with Jules being so vulnerable about gender and sexuality on-screen, but that she wanted to document the ongoing internal dialogue that she’s had about her own gender identity. “Because I do feel so deeply connected to her, she becomes a bit of a vehicle for me to express my personal stuff, and turn this episode into a processing moment,” the 21-year-old actor said in a HBO behind-the-scenes segment. In interviews, Schafer has said that writing the episode alongside the show’s creator Sam Levinson was “very personal” because of her deep affinity to the Jules character. ![]()
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