You’ve also recently wrapped the long-awaited third season of Euphoria. What was it like to return to the show after so much time?
I had so much fun shooting the show. It felt like I was playing a completely different character, because so much time has passed. It was also exciting to come back because on the first season of that show, I would bug [series creator] Sam Levinson about how badly I wanted to make movies and how much I love movies. I felt like the prodigal son returning with my bags full of stories of the movies I’d made. I was like, “Father, look what I have gathered!”
Is it possible for Nate to find redemption, or is that even something you’d hope for that character?
Did you watch Frankenstein?
It and Euphoria are in conversation, I would say.
Yes. It’s possible for everybody to have redemption. Guillermo said something great: He’s like, “The biggest and the hardest step is the conversation. The conversation doesn’t need to yield a result, but you have to have the conversation.” It’s the only way you can move toward redemption. I would like to believe that there’s redemption for everybody, and if not redemption, possible understanding.
Do you feel like Euphoria was the turning point or catalyst to you getting that career in movies you wanted?
I suppose so. I had gotten the opportunity to work with [Deep Water director] Adrian Lyne at the same time as making Euphoria. I’ve always been very lucky in the sets that I found myself on, but I felt a noticeable change—whether it was just because I finally felt like I was being given the work that gave me the opportunity to do the sort of prep that I wanted to do, to play the characters that I’d wanted to play for a really long time. I think when I worked with Sofia Coppola, there was, for me, a noticeable sort of shift in perception. But it had also taught me a little bit about the world, because Euphoria alone is full of excellent performances—like really, really detailed work. But then it gets lost in this kind of social lens, because of the popularity. In Australia, [we call it] “tall poppy syndrome.” When something is so big and universally acclaimed, it does lose some of its punch. Or it’s uncool to like it because so many people like it.
