HBO’s Euphoria has attracted massive ratings and is one of the hottest television shows. With the season 2 premiere on January 9th drawing 13.1 million viewers and Episodes 2 and 3 tracking similarly, crushing Season 1’s average of 6.6 million viewers, the series written and created by Sam Levinson has already been renewed for a Season 3. However, while the buzz surrounding the show remains at an all-time high, according to sources at The Daily Beast, things aren’t so peachy behind the scenes. Sources have alleged that the set of Euphoria has just as much drama off-screen as on-screen, mostly centering around star Barbie Ferreira and writer/creator Sam Levinson.

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In its second season, the teen drama about identity, sex, drugs, and growing up earned Spider-Man: No Way Home star Zendaya’s first Primetime Emmy Award for playing the drug-addicted, self-destructive teenager Rue. As for the rest of the ensemble cast, the show has rocketed the rest of the cast’s careers to the next level, including leading ladies Sydney Sweeney, Maude Apatow, Hunter Schafer, Alexa Demie, and Barbie Ferreira. However, with the sophomore season coming to a close, Euphoria fans are upset that one of the more interesting storylines from the first season was never fleshed out, Kat Hernandez.

Ferreira plays fan-favorite character Kat, a fanfic writer and One Direction stan, who became a symbol of body positivity during the first season of Euphoria. Given that Kat’s sexual awakening was a crucial plotline in the first season, fans feel Kat has taken a backseat in recent episodes. And according to The Daily Beast, the alleged reason behind Kat’s diminished role this season is that Ferreira butted heads with Levinson over some elements of the direction of her character, which led to a dramatic reduction in her lines on-screen presence in Season 2.

Barbie Ferreira and Sam Levinson “Not Vibing”

     HBO

When the second season dropped in January, rumors started circulating that Ferreira was finding it unbearable to work with Levinson. The anonymous tip sent to ELLE Australia said:

The Daily Beast spoke with a handful of production sources to support the earlier reports. They claimed, “Ferreira indeed walked offset at least two times—not including the time Ferreira had to be helped off after she slipped and fell twice, twisting her ankle during the filming of episode four’s hot tub-puking sequence.” Additionally, the outlet’s sources say one of Kat’s intimate scenes was cut from a final cut of an episode—of course, there is some truth to this speculation as it’s already been confirmed Levinson almost wholly scrapped the original Season 2 script.

New season of Euphoria is going to be real DARK. So much so that some actors, especially Barbie Ferreira, were not vibing with the director’s vision. Barbie got into it with him on set and left one day. He then cut a lot of her lines.

Also prompting rumors of a rift between Ferreira and Levinson, the Kat actress did now show up to the show’s premiere in January. In a recent interview with The Cut, the cast talks about the rumors of the rift onset and the Kat actress missing the show’s premiere. However, for her part, when asked about missing the premiere (or that’s what it seems like the reporter asked), Ferreira say:

Euphoria Set Is “Like Being in Hell”

But then again, Ferreira is reportedly not the only person who has had issues on set with Levinson. Sources told The Daily Beast that the workday could be anywhere from 15 to 17 hours, attributing it to the fact that Levinson wouldn’t come to set with his shot list prepared. One allegedly terrible day on set was shooting the premiere’s New Year’s Eve Party scene, which took over a week to film. Jacob Elordi said, “The thing is, we do it for so long. We shot that party for over a week, so very quickly, it’s like being in Hell. It’s like being at a party that you don’t want to be in. At all. And you can’t wait [to leave].”