Zendaya revealed to Entertainment Weekly that she still has scars on her legs from filming the fifth episode of “Euphoria” Season 2, titled “Stand Still Like the Hummingbird.” The devastating episode finds her character Rue having a breakdown while in withdrawal from drugs. The extended opening sequence pits Rue against her mother Leslie (Nika King), who has just found out about her relapse. Rue gets confrontational with her family, and she later abandons them when they try to drive her to rehab.
“It was a very tough day. I mean, I beat myself up. I still have some scars on my legs and got quite a few bruises,” Zendaya said about filming Rue’s breakdown episode, which “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson had long wanted to make. “It’s always been a really intense episode…the general idea was always the same, which was this idea of, we cut right into an intervention and it’s Rue just ripping her life apart and setting her life on fire and kind of tearing everything to the ground to basically come to hopefully what feels like rock bottom for her.”
Zendaya filmed this episode after returning from the 2021 Venice Film Festival, which she attended on behalf of “Dune.” The actress said, “It was so intense and scary to tackle, and obviously something that would be incredibly emotionally taxing, but also physically taxing. Also, I care about Rue and I hate when she’s in pain. And I think this whole episode, there’s so much pain and it’s bubbling to the surface, and it’s also crossed with her withdrawing, which is extremely physically painful.”
“[Rue has] lost all control of who she is,” Zendaya added. “And you can see there’s a little moment after that where all of it becomes regret. You can see her doing it and then immediately regretting it and wondering why she’s doing it. And then she does it again, like it’s just a really painful cycle to watch her go through. And I didn’t particularly enjoy having to watch her deal with that.”
Ratings for “Euphoria” have exploded in Season 2. As reported by Variety, the show’s Season 2 premiere episode on Jan. 9 garnered 14 million total viewers across HBO and HBO Max. That nears a 100% increase from the 6.6 million average audience size that was drawn by Season 1’s episodes during summer 2019. HBO has already renewed “Euphoria” for a third season.
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