“Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson acknowledged the influence of several directors from the studio’s Golden Age when introducing the new season at its Hollywood premiere. Howard Hawks, John Ford, and Don Siegel are all mentioned, as is Levinson’s father Barry, a later Hollywood classicist. The most obvious influence from season 3’s opening, in which drug mule Lou (Zendaya) struggles to cross the border, is the American Western, a reference point that really excited production designer François Audouy.
“I thought it was a really interesting opportunity and challenge to think about modern-day Southern California as the setting for a Western,” Auduy told IndieWire. “We were really excited to show the audience a fragmented landscape, a fragmented American West. Especially in the first episode, the Western DNA is very evident in the atmosphere of the show.”
The influence of Westerns and other classic Hollywood films permeates throughout the new season, even in places that seem unsuitable for such an approach. For example, in the second episode of season 3, viewers are introduced to the strip club “Silver Slipper” and Lou gets a job there. Instead of working as a dancer, she works as a manager who helps the owner, Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), run the shop. The bar embodies the new season’s unusual tension between the spiritual and the secular, jutting out into the desert as an institution dedicated to the sins Lou considers salvation.
“She ends up meeting this guy named Alamo and they really connect, and she’s like, ‘This is my dream to work here,'” Levinson told IndieWire on an upcoming episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast. “I love the idea that the superficial aspects of this strip club, like the giant legs reaching for the sky, become an oasis for her, and gradually she begins to uncover the darkness within. She also learns what happens when you just follow your desires instead of your sense of right and wrong.”
The giant legs, made in Lancaster along with the rest of the Silver Slipper’s exterior, were part of Levinson’s concept from the beginning. “In our first interview, Sam told me a vision of a giant foot sticking out into the desert sky,” Auduy said. “It came out of a book of great black-and-white photographs he had of a giant leg in a 1930s Hollywood nightclub. It was great to be able to build this giant leg like a roadside attraction along Route 66. So many locals came just because you could see this leg sticking out of the desert miles away.”
For the interior created on stage, Oduy chose to emphasize the dark side of the silver shoe through taxidermy brought in by set decorator Anthony Carlino. “I thought it would be interesting if all the stuffed animals were predatory animals,” Auduy said. “This whole place is full of predators, including humans.” Audui thought of the Silver Slipper as something like a western saloon, and incorporated that influence into the design, but he wanted to avoid leaning into any single element or sticking to one overall guiding principle.
“It had a bit of a funky vibe from the 1970s and 1980s, which was fun to play with,” Oudui said. “It’s a combination of different ideas.” Levinson noted that some of the Western influences came not from movies but from unexpected points of reference. “We were looking at Mike Tyson’s old house in Ohio for the idea of combining zebra print and cheetah print,” Levinson said. “We wanted to capture the kind of Western spirit that Alamo aspires to. It should feel like a place of our own design.”
The key for Audui was to ensure that The Silver Shoes provided many visual opportunities for Levinson and cinematographer Marcel Lev. many “We set it up the first week of shooting and it was still there the last week of shooting,” Auduy said. “It was one of our star sets, so it was designed like Swiss cheese, with lots of holes and angles that Sam and Marcel could shoot through.”
“It’s rare to find a location where you can shoot for months and never get bored,” Lev told IndieWire. “We kept finding new angles there,” as Audui embedded two-way mirrors in the set and other forms of glass that could be used to provide new perspectives. “Looking through the doorway into other rooms gives you very interesting angles,” says Audui. “The challenge is to infuse the set with a lot of opportunity for composition, but also a lot of detail. We want the set to be fully interactive.”
To that end, Audui and Carlino made sure the silver shoes worked perfectly for the actors and felt alive. “Anthony made sure you could open every drawer, every door, and it was completely authentic,” Auduy said. “Not only is it great for the camera, but the actors love it. It’s a complete transformation for them, and the whole set seems to become part of their wardrobe to help them feel the characters.” For Levinson, it was important to make the strip club seem a little dated.
“We wanted to create a strip club that was outside of modern sensibilities,” Levinson said. “We didn’t want to deal with strobe lighting. We wanted to have a more old-school feel, like a burlesque house with beautiful tungsten lights.” Levinson said building the Silver Slipper above the stage not only gave him a lot of flexibility camera-wise, but also helped with the slightly retro feel he was going for. “We wanted to create something that felt authentic yet could evoke the spirit of the past. In a way, it’s our Rick Cafe.”
Ironically, the Silver Slipper, along with many other classic movie sets of the kind that Levinson, O’Dui and Lev wanted to emulate, was on the same Warner Bros. stage where Rick’s Café American was built for “Casablanca.” “Every day before I went into the house, I read all the movies that were shot there,” Levinson said. “It was really special. It was a beautiful, beautiful experience.”
Additional reporting by Chris O’Falt. To Listen to future conversations between Sam Levinson and Marcel Rev and never miss a single episode of Filmmaker Toolkit. Subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.
#Euphoria #Builds #Huge #Legs #Desert #Season #Silver #Slipper #Strip #Club