The Controversial Idol: Sam Levinson

Sam Levinson has been in the spotlight since his hit show Euphoria shocked every high schooler and their parents. The 2019 hit show brought a beautiful and hyper sexualized outlook on high school, featuring a star-filled cast with heavy hitters such as Zendaya and Alexa Demie. Set in Los Angeles, Euphoria garnered a cult following, but it also showed Levinson through a new lens – a completely obsessed lens. Levinson's work across Euphoria seasons one to three will go down as some of the most influential short-form cinema work that appeared on American home televisions. Since when are sixteen-year-old girls sitting down to watch a TV show shot on 35 mm film? Since 2019. When Sam Levinson decided to collaborate with Petra Collins.

The television show was originally an Israeli show that Levinson brought to HBO and A24 in 2017. At the beginning of pitching Euphoria, Levinson sat down for dinner with Ravi Nandan, the executive producer of A24, and said,

"I want this to be No. 1... So, what works on HBO?”

The answer at the time was, of course, Game of Thrones, and with that, Levinson pitches a television show where:

"There’s a ton of nudity. There’s a lot of internal family drama. There’s a lot of social, political drama between everyone backstabbing each other and trying to fuck each other over."

But to understand Levinson's creative process, you have to go back to his teenage years and look at the events that formed the artist. Levinson dropped out of high school and struggled with drug addiction, panic attacks, anxiety, and other daily obstacles. He was born to a filmmaker, Barry Levinson, and a designer, Dara Rhodes. Levinson discussed his mental health struggles at the premiere of Euphoria in 2019. As reported by Variety:

“I spent the majority of my teenage years in hospitals, rehabs and halfway houses...”

It’s always enlightening when a creator allows personal experince to influence their creative pursuit, especially when the shot list features mental-health episodes that are so in tune with modern struggles. In my overstimulated, young American opinion, this is best portrayed in the episode, "The Trials and Tribulations of Trying to Pee while Depressed," which aired in Season One.

As the seasons have gone on, the Euphoria shot sheets seem to stray away from mental health and drug use and move to much more surface-level material. As Levinson chooses to move away from one of the central characters, Jules, who is played by Hunter Schaefer, and focus on Rue, played by Zendaya.

When watching the third season of Euphoria, it definitely seems like there was a switch that coincided with the societal shifts that viewers were actually seeing in 2026. For instance, OnlyFans, an online platform that pays creators to provide X-rated content, became popular in 2020. The platform is featured in the script an uncomfortable number of times; specifically, when Cassie Stevens, played by Sydney Sweeney, is asked to defend her usage of the app,

"I started reading, and it’s actually the biggest misconception. I mean, the platform is used to sell content, communicate. I’d be the one in charge."

After Cassie says this line while lounging on a pool chair, my sister paused the T.V.

"This has to be an ad," she said as we sat in stunned silence following the greatest OnlyFans campaign I've ever heard.

This shift seems to primarily occur in the character of Cassie Stevens. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in early May of this year, Levinson describes how, "we sort of flirt with a bunch of different genres this season." The word choice "flirt" is interesting considering that Stevens seems to flirt with everything that can net her a profit. But even with the looming questions from viewers online regarding why this season is so hyper-sexualized, in interviews, Levinson appears to stick to his personal script – this is all about fighting through addiction and mental struggle via creation.

Levinson's treatment of actors on the set of Euphoria has not changed over the seasons, but it is also unique compared to other shows. In a New York Times interview before the release of the third season, Levinson discusses his relationship with the fallen star, Angus Cloud, specifically, how Levinson chose to have a sober coach for Cloud on set. In the summer of 2023, Cloud passed away from an accidental overdose.

 Q: “You’d had a sober coach for him on set and were really hands-on, I assume in part because you saw yourself in him as a former addict. Is that fair?"

A: "Absolutely. The reason I’m here today is because someone in my life gave me a second chance. I wanted to do that same thing for him and for anyone who was struggling with addiction stuff."

In terms of the criticism that Levinson has been met with, there is a lot of discussion around the ethics of his shows, more directly regarding the way they're written. For Euphoria, Levinson is the sole writer for the show. There are a multitude of articles that break apart this specific controversy that surrounds a middle-aged man writing an intimate scene between two teenagers... by himself. Most notably, in my opinion, are articles published by The Telegraph. In 2022, an article written by Eve Barlow titled, "Perhaps a middle-aged man should not be writing Euphoria," brings online arguments from viewers to light. Twitter comments about why Sam Levinson seems so obsessed with Sydney Sweeney's b**bs, or another saying:

“I feel the way it [the show] depicts Jules is exploitative and dehumanizing. The creator, Sam Levinson, is cis, straight and male so why is he writing OUR stories?"

There have been similar controversies on other shows that Levinson has taken over, such as The Idol. After the original shooting of the show, which features Lily Rose Depp and Abel Tesfaye, was scrapped by Levinson, production members describe the final result as “any rape fantasy that any toxic man would have in the show — and then the woman comes back for more because it makes her music better.” The Idol, which had a budget of $57 million, ended up costing closer to $74 million following Levinson's request to reshoot. The complete rewriting and reshooting of the project definitely gives the impression that Levinson doesn't like to collaborate, but that doesn't seem to be the best option for Levinson or the shows he's writing.

A similar greed was also shown towards Petra Collins, a media visionary who coined the Euphoria aesthetic. After bringing Collins on to work on creating the world of Euphoria, from casting to set design, HBO let her go. Levinson has publicly noted how he wrote the show with Collins' style in mind and attributed much of the cinematic success to her. But her name does not appear when they roll the credits. Even though Collins had previous experience photographing stars of Euphoria, such as Alexa Demie, who plays Maddie, her name is not up there with the rest. Because of this, "her name will be pushed to the margins, a footnote when it should be a headline."

The final two episodes of Season 3 of Euphoria are set to premiere at the end of May, and even with the drama that has surrounded Levinson and his relationships with other creators, Euphoria will likely go down as one of the most influential television shows ever. It has and will continue to shape generations of artists.

Excuse me... Petra Collins, Sam Levinson, and others will continue to shape generations of artists.