Maude Apatow on Her First Saint Laurent Show, #Fexi, and Euphoria’s Jaw-Dropping Finale
Cast your mind back eight weeks, to the night that the first episode of Euphoria season two debuted. Naturally, the HBO teen drama—infamous for its graphic sex, drug use, and copious on-screen penises—set Twitter aflame. (This week, it surpassed Game of Thrones as the most talked-about show on social media in the past decade.) And yes, memes might have been circulating of Sydney Sweeney, hand clamped to mouth and eyes bulging in the bathtub, or of Alexa Demie furiously banging on the bathroom door with both fists; but, in something of a surprise, the hottest topic of conversation was the romantic interest blossoming between Fezco, played by Angus Cloud, and Lexi, played by Maude Apatow.
Immortalized over the following weeks in the hashtag #Fexi, Apatow—currently in Paris for the Fall 2022 Saint Laurent show—is charmed by the fervent response to this budding relationship. “It’s so crazy, but it’s so sweet,” Apatow says. “I wasn’t expecting people to be this invested. I think it’s so nice that people make these beautiful drawings of us—all of the fans of the show are so thoughtful. But I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s just crazy that many people seem to care.” When Apatow and Cloud were reunited for the Thom Browne show at New York Fashion Week last month, it was, of course, the first topic of conversation. “I mean, he’s like family now!” Apatow adds.
This familial spirit holds true for the cast of Euphoria as a whole, she explains. “I think a big part of why we’re so close is just how much time we spend together,” Apatow says. “A lot of the reason why the show is so beautiful is that the shots are very intricate, and they take a long time to set up. Going through that experience together definitely brings us closer. There’s a lot of time where we’re just shooting these party scenes and all hanging out together on set. And it’s way more fun to be with your friends than it is to be sitting alone in your trailer. To be honest, we talk about that all the time: We’re just really lucky we all like each other. I know that I’m so grateful for that.”
While Lexi was an important member of the show’s central ensemble in the first season, as the level-headed childhood friend of Zendaya’s lead character Rue, this season, she truly came into her own. “I was so excited,” Apatow says of receiving the season two scripts and reading Lexi’s rich character arc, which both explores the backstory of her relationship with her family in greater depth and sees her friendship with Rue evolve dramatically. “I remember when I signed on to the series, Sam [Levinson, Euphoria’s creator] always told me that my arc was going to take off in season two. So, I was anticipating it a little bit and also hoping that he would keep his word. But I was very happy, and I think it was worth waiting for.” Were there any new sides of Lexi that she herself was surprised to discover? “I mean, I was surprised by a lot of things,” Apatow says. “I think I was definitely surprised by the confidence she gains through the season. She really comes a long way.”
It’s Lexi, after all, who serves as the pivotal figure in Euphoria’s most delightfully bonkers sequence yet: the second season’s final two episodes, which revolve around the play Lexi has written as a (very) thinly veiled dramatization of the lives and loves of her friends. With elaborate stage sets that some have speculated should have bankrupted the school; a riotously funny homoerotic dance sequence starring Austin Abrams’s Ethan and oiled-up hunks, set to Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero”; and an unexpected intervention from one of the play’s real-life subjects, it was Euphoria at the peak of its powers, blending kaleidoscopic visuals, metatextual flair, and plenty of good old-fashioned teen drama.
Anchoring it all was Apatow’s extraordinary performance, which moved between heartbreaking sensitivity, as Lexi grapples emotionally with her absent father and heavy-drinking mother—not to mention her attempts to comfort Rue in the wake of her own father’s death, and help her conquer her addictions—and moments of unintentional hilarity as she fully embraced unhinged-theater-kid energy while bossing around her minions backstage. “Sam and I had a lot of conversations about that,” Apatow says, laughing. “A lot of the stuff we talked about and the backstage stuff is loosely inspired by my high school experience. I was very, very serious about theater. It totally brought me back to my psyche in those days.”
