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Editor’s Note: The following story contains spoilers for “Euphoria” Season 3, Episode 3.
The impending nuptials of Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) and Nate (Jacob Elordi) have been a key topic of discussion since the season premiere of HBO‘s “Euphoria,” and tonight, all the anticipation in a wild wedding that ended with the bride in tears and the groom bloodied and missing a toe. Before Nate’s unfortunate encounter with a disgruntled investor, however, the series provided a ceremony as lavish and garish as the dialogue had promised ever since Cassie’s demand for a $50,000 flower budget in episode one — a plot point that originated in debates between production designer François Audouy and series creator Sam Levinson.
“My set decorator Anthony Carlino and I wanted to do all real flowers at both the ceremony and the reception, and because I wanted it to be a very specific color scheme, the quantity meant it would cost a small fortune,” Audouy told IndieWire. “We were talking about it for weeks, and I ended up saying we might as well not even have a wedding if we’re not going to be able to afford the right flowers. Instead of seeing my challenge as a crisis or a problem, Sam wrote it into the script, and it became a wonderful detail in Cassie’s dialogue.”
Audouy — and Cassie — did end up getting the desired floral arrangements, but it wasn’t easy. “I wanted the flowers to have the same color palette as shrimp cocktail,” Audouy said. “I literally sampled the colors from cooked shrimp. We bought not only all the flowers in this color scheme in California, but in three surrounding states. I had never seen so many flowers in my life. To add to that, we had to refrigerate the soundstage to keep the flowers from wilting over the week of filming.”
The shrimp cocktail idea came from Auduoy’s desire to make Cassie’s wedding both extravagant and comical. “I was looking for a reflection of how absurd some of these over-the-top weddings can be,” Auduoy said. “The absurdity of families who overspend on these weddings as a reflection of status in the community, and how that can manifest itself in things like ice sculptures. I found references of shrimp buffets in serving receptacles carved out of ice, with shrimp cascading onto the table. It was so perverse and ridiculous, and when I was going on about it, Sam said, ‘That should be the color scheme for the whole fucking thing.'”
‘Euphoria’Eddy Chen
Ice sculptures found their way into another aspect of the production design, the hilarious statue of Cassie and Nate — another case where production discussions or problems found their way into the script. “Trying to create a realistic effigy of human beings out of ice is very tricky,” Audouy said. “It’s a bit wobbly, and you’re designing it to be a bit chunky so it melts to be thinner, because it’s constantly melting. I was freaking out because I thought it didn’t look like Sydney Sweeney and that she would freak out, but Sam just wrote it into the dialogue with this funny line where she looks at it and is concerned about its proportions.”
The exteriors for the wedding were shot at the Langham Huntington hotel in Pasadena, while the interiors were all stage builds, in keeping with the overall approach to Season 3. Levinson wanted to work in the tradition of old masters like Howard Hawks and John Ford, and to that end, he and Audouy often found themselves on soundstages creating meticulously appointed sets that merged naturalism with classical Hollywood glamor.
“I love old Hollywood movies, and it was a great opportunity to be in that playground for a year,” Auduoy said. “To craft something in that classical style, and shoot it in Los Angeles, was a real gift.”