The third — and possibly final — season of Euphoria takes its already troubled group of Southern California teens into even darker territory. According to creator Sam Levinson, that means exploring the world of sex work.
Rue, played by Zendaya, takes a dangerous turn, smuggling fentanyl from Mexico into the United States and working at a grimy strip club to repay the massive debt she owes Laurie. Jules, portrayed by Hunter Schafer, becomes a wealthy sugar baby for a plastic surgeon with unsettling fantasies involving wrapping her in Saran wrap. Meanwhile, Cassie — played by Sydney Sweeney — launches an OnlyFans account to fund the extravagant $50,000 floral arrangements she wants for her wedding to Nate, played by Jacob Elordi. Maddy, played by Alexa Demie, reluctantly agrees to manage Cassie’s online career, hoping to turn her into the next Sophie Rain.
Cassie’s content on OnlyFans quickly escalates into bizarre territory. In one set of videos, she dresses as a dog, complete with ears, a collar, leash, cuffs, a tail, and a satin corset from Sweeney’s lingerie brand SYRN, while drinking water from a bowl on the floor. In another shoot, she appears dressed as a baby, sprawled across a couch in a sheer pink shirt with pigtails and a rattle in her mouth. The person behind the camera for many of these shoots is Cassie and Nate’s housekeeper Juana, played by Minerva Garcia.
The way the show portrays OnlyFans creators through Cassie’s storyline has angered many real-life creators, who say they already face enough judgment because of their work.
“There’s just a lot that’s ridiculous and cartoonish about it,” Sydney Leathers, an OnlyFans creator since 2017, tells Variety. “There’s so much that they have her doing that is not even allowed on OnlyFans, and that alone is infuriating: the age-play stuff where she’s dressed as a baby in a diaper, for example. Credit card processors have very strict rules that you have to abide by, and the rules are getting stricter all the time.”
OnlyFans’ own “Acceptable Use Policy” specifically bans content involving real or simulated minors, meaning age-play material could result in content or account removal.
Maitland Ward, one of the platform’s highest-earning creators and a former star of Boy Meets World and White Chicks, said the baby-costume scenes were especially harmful to public perceptions of sex workers.
“In the climate we’re in, that they dressed her up as a baby to make pornographic OnlyFans content was beyond troubling and again serves to perpetuate stereotypes that sex workers have no moral compass and that they will do anything for money,” explains Ward. “And there’s always this untrue stigma that somehow sex work is synonymous with sex trafficking and abuse. And they just said, let’s make a joke of it. That is so funny. I’m not laughing.”
Levinson, however, defended the absurd tone of the scenes while speaking to The Hollywood Reporter.
“[Cassie] has got her dog house and her little dog ears and the nose, and that has its own humor, but what makes the scene is the fact that her housekeeper is the one filming it,” Levinson said. “What we wanted to always find is the other layer of absurdity that we’re able to tie into it so that we’re not too inside of her fantasy or illusion — the gag is to jump out, to break the wall.”
He also discussed how the OnlyFans scenes were filmed.
“Some of these scenes we only lit with these ring lights that she would use. When you’re inside, it’s a beautiful, glowing front light, but then you jump out of it and it’s just a pool of light and everything surrounding it is dark. It’s just gnarly and jarring… We wanted to capture what she’s trying to show the audience and be inside of it, but then also pull back wider and see how depressing it is.”
For Ward, those comments only reinforced the idea that the storyline treats OnlyFans creators as a punchline rather than real people.
“That speaks volumes to me about why this OnlyFans storyline is being represented in the way that it is. It’s not being taken seriously,” says Ward. “It reminds me of when I pranced around in lingerie on ‘Boy Meets World.’ It’s just the guys in the writer’s room coming up with their fantasies. To take someone so traditionally blonde and beautiful with the biggest boobs and dress her up as a dog and baby is really bizarre, but at the same time so expected in Hollywood.”
One part of Cassie’s journey that some creators found believable was her attempt to build an online audience. Encouraged by Maddy, Cassie attends a wild influencer mansion party hoping to go viral. She dances on a platform, kisses another woman while creators livestream the moment, and even allows an influencer to do cocaine off her stomach before Maddy barges in with a videographer to capture compromising footage.
“When Cassie goes to the influencer’s house to get video, coming from a marketing background myself, I thought, ‘OK, that’s fuckin’ smart. That’s a great formula,’” says creator and adult actress Alix Lynx. “On the other hand, it’s portrayed that if you just dress up and do crazy shit, you’ll instantly make money, or you just have to be hot and have big boobs and you’ll instantly cash out, and it doesn’t work like that. You have to really grow and nurture a fan base.”
According to the creators interviewed by Variety, the reality of building a successful OnlyFans career is almost the opposite of what the show depicts. Most creators first build large audiences on social media before moving subscribers onto the platform.
More broadly, many feel Euphoria continues Hollywood’s long-standing habit of portraying sex workers through exaggerated, negative stereotypes.
“Sex workers in general, myself included, tend to be hyper-sensitive about the way Hollywood portrays us because it’s almost never nice,” says Leathers. “It’s always absurd or depressing and rarely ever on point. When you’re part of a marginalized community, it’s easy to get upset about certain portrayals of it.”
Harnaik Singh Rathor is the Founder, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of StudioX News Canada, Canada's multilingual digital news network serving diaspora communities across 44 languages. With a background in media production, public relations, and multicultural communications, he founded StudioX Film and TV Corporation to bridge the gap between mainstream Canadian media and the country's diverse immigrant communities. He is a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), RTDNA Canada, CPRS Vancouver, Unifor, NEPMCC, and the Canada Freelance Union. He holds CAVCO Personnel Number SINH0106. Based in Surrey, British Columbia. | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harnaiksinghrathor/ | Muck Rack: https://muckrack.com/harnaiksinghrathor | Email: editor@studioxnews.ca
