Entertainment
HBO “Had No Business” Hiring This ‘Once Upon a Time’ Star To Direct ‘Euphoria’ [Exclusive]
Jennifer Morrison is known by fans for a lot of different roles. The multihyphenate star made a name for herself on shows like Once Upon a Time and House M.D.; she briefly starred in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie reboot; now she’s an accomplished director working on even more of your favorite TV shows. Her work behind the camera includes helming one of the earliest episodes of Sam Levinson‘s hit HBO series Euphoria. Joining the series in Season 1, Morrison directed Episode 5 titled “’03 Bonnie and Clyde,” a reference to a Jay-Z and Beyoncé song released in 2002. During a conversation with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Morrison spoke about working with Levinson and bringing Euphoria to life.
Season 1 of Euphoria set a very specific tone for the series as a whole. It helped to establish the aesthetic fans know and love and brought characters like Zendaya‘s Rue to life. In “’03 Bonnie and Clyde,” the episode heavily featured Maddy Perez (Alexa Demie) and Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi) while also following Jules (Hunter Schafer) helping Rue with her sobriety. With relatively little directing experience under her belt at the time, Morrison spoke with Nemiroff about how knowing Levinson through his wife and her best friend, producer Ashley Levinson, helped her understand his creative process.
“I think they were very similar. I think the vision and the experience was very similar. The reason I was lucky enough to be in a position to be up for that job is because I knew Sam Levinson so well, and Ashley Levinson so well,” Morrison said. “Ashley is my best friend and lived with me for a while, and when she lived with me, she was just starting to date Sam, so Sam was there with us a lot. And so I was very aware of his creative process, and I was very aware of just how wildly visionary he was and how incredibly, uniquely talented he was.” Morrison went on to say:
“I can’t say that I understand how anyone’s brain works, but I feel like I had a better sense of it because I had such proximity and time spent. So, I had been hearing about and feeling elements of Euphoria way before Euphoria was being made because I was around for him making his feature before that, and I was around watching some of the things that started to really come into focus for him — that feature’s sort of impact, the way he was thinking about Euphoria, and seeing him connect with Marcell Rév, who was the cinematographer that he kind of found that visual together with, and hearing those conversations.”
Jennifer Morrison Shares How Her Inside Knowledge Helped Her Direct ‘Euphoria’
Outside of her impressive body of work as an actress, Morrison has become a prolific television director. With shows like Dr. Death, Yellowjackets, Tracker, and the new series Five Star Weekend on her resume, a lot of her work is beloved by television fans. Part of what makes her episodes stand out is Morrison’s understanding of each show’s vision, much like how her work with Euphoria was rooted in knowing how Levinson worked creatively and what she needed to do to make his vision come to life. Morrison shared how Levinson had to trust filmmakers to come into his show to create the vision he had for the hit series.
“So, I was like a fly on the wall for a lot of conversations that led up to what was the pilot and what was the beginning and the genesis of that first season, so I had insider energy for that. It was funny, I felt like I already knew it was a huge hit, and I remember being surprised when I was talking to maybe my lawyer or someone, and they were like, ‘What is this Euphoria?’ I was like, ‘What do you mean what is it?’ In my mind, it was already this massive show. Like, I somehow felt its future in some way. I felt it. But I think some of that is just because I was living inside the energy of that creative hunger and voracity that Sam has. So, I knew how important it was to him to protect the visual concept of that because he wanted to give the audience in that first season a visual experience of what the drugs would do to someone.”
Morrison went on to talk about how Levinson’s own struggles with addiction gave him a unique perspective while creating his show and telling Rue’s story. “He’s a recovered addict, and he spent a lot of his life working through all of the different things that Rue works through, through the three seasons of the show, and so he is intimately aware of what he’s offering people,” she said. “And it felt important to him that the visuals give people the highs and lows of what an addict is experiencing at that point in their journey of addiction. I was very excited to be trusted with that, and it wasn’t something that anyone had done before. I mean, now people rip off the show all the time, and I rip off the show all the time. I steal from my own stuff from Euphoria all the time. But before there was Euphoria, there wasn’t Euphoria, right? He was establishing something that required him to trust his filmmakers to not come in and try to mess with that vision or try to undermine it in some way.”
As much as Euphoria has permeated the television landscape, Morrison doesn’t take her time on Euphoria for granted. “So the fact that he trusted me, and he knew enough of my work, and we had enough of a creative shorthand with each other that he would fight for me. I had never directed television before,” Morrison told Nemiroff. “HBO had no business hiring me for that job, and the reason I got hired is because Ashley and Sam, and at the time, Kevin Turen, really went to bat for me and said that I was going to deliver.”
You can see Morrison’s work on Euphoria on HBO Max and watch her full episode of Collider Ladies Night below.
- Release Date
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2019 – 2026-00-00
- Network
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HBO
- Showrunner
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Sam Levinson
- Directors
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Jennifer Morrison, Augustine Frizzell
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