It’s an important scene, as Rue reflects on her father and his death, which was the catalyst for her eventual descent into drug addiction. How emotional was it on set?
It was fucking emotional. Literally the whole place was crying at the end. For me, I was halfway between “don’t fuck it” and “you have to throw it on the ground, it’s a spiritual moment”. So I just zoned into the idea of someone sincerely thinking: “Oh my God, how disgraced have I fallen?
But before we even did that scene, we were writing I am tired. I found the melody because I wanted something that expressed this deep sadness. So I started a melody, and then Sam and Zendaya came into the studio, and I was like, “I’m trying to understand the lyrics…” Then I started to say: “Hey, Lord, you know, I’m tired…” And then the pen started rolling.
The next episode, Stand still like the hummingbirdis the “Rue on the run”, which was very physically demanding for Zendaya to film (“It was a very difficult day,” she said. Recount Weekly entertainment. “I fought. I still have scars on my legs and I have a lot of bruises. “) How did you manage to score an episode that speaks of desperation, action, terror, peril and stress?
I remember Hans Zimmer saying this: when you work with great editors and a great director, they know how to take what you’ve done and make it work, make it sing with an image. So Julio [C. Perez IV, Euphoria’s editor] is very instrumental in image editing. So I wrote a record, Yeah I fucking didwhich is a single that we released.
The energy of it, it was just like action, like someone was really running. Sam really felt the grit and harshness of the disc [matched] this action, so he really wanted to use it to do this. He was like: “Lab, I just need you to go a little further than where it is right now, to help the scene. I really owe them that.
Then big gear shift at the start of the episode after that (A Thousand Little Trees of Blood), which is Rue in the agony of withdrawal. The score is very sparse and minimal, with only weak synth hits. What’s the music doing there?
It’s all based on Sam’s instinct. That’s why I think he’s really amazing and surprising and a bit unpredictable for a lot of people. Because Sam is very instinctive. He is like : “This should be quiet. Or: “This one must be crazy. As you go through this show, you’re literally going on Sam’s emotional journey. And so with episode six, he wanted to have a very sparse film noir feel. You know how film noir [music] it’s – it’s a line of strings, and a lot of tension and a lot of moments of silence.
