Trisha Paytas Addresses Euphoria Improv Rumors & Her Deleted Scene
"I remember coming home and being like, 'I feel like I was being trolled.'"
Trisha Paytas is clearing some things about about her brief but memorable cameo on Season 3 of Euphoria. The podcaster popped up in this season’s fifth episode, where she played a version of herself interviewing Sydney Sweeney’s Cassie. The short scene quickly went viral, since it involved up-and-coming OnlyFans star Cassie flinging around ableist slurs, right-wing rhetoric, and controversial men’s rights talking points. It attracted even more attention when a clip resurfaced from Paytas’ podcast last year where the influencer described the scene by saying “there was a little improv” involved.
Since Sweeney has had some infamous brushes with conservative controversy before, Paytas’ remarks had people wondering just how much of Cassie’s divisive speech was made-up. But Paytas cleared that all up in the May 12 episode of her Just Trish podcast.
“I need to clarify that I did not have a script. Obviously, it seemed like Sydney Sweeney had a script for Cassie. [When I was] being like, 'It's all improv,' it was all improv for me,” Paytas said.
The podcaster shared that while Sweeney was clearly in character, Paytas was basically told to just conduct herself as she normally would on her podcast. While the scene only lasted a few seconds on the show, Paytas said that she filmed with Sweeney for about an hour.
“They were just like, 'You're going to interview Cassie.' So there is probably like an hour-long podcast, not even kidding, of just me interviewing Cassie,” Paytas said. “I didn't know what they were going to use. But obviously, my acting was not really acting. Because I remember coming home and being like, 'I feel like I was being trolled or something.' It didn't feel like a real episode. And I thought, 'Is this like, some set-up? Am I being Punk'd?”
Paytas said she was genuinely thrown off when Cassie started spouting off right-wing talking points, since she hadn’t expected the character to become so political. “I wasn't expecting the turn. I didn't know much about Cassie prior, but ... I tried to watch some episodes to catch up,” Paytas said. “And I was like, 'Am I missing something?' Because all the sudden she started talking politics, and I did not know how to react.”
She also shared that a confrontation between Paytas and Cassie was filmed, but didn’t end up making it to air. “The official Euphoria showed a still of Cassie crying, and that's what I always referenced. But they didn't end up showing it in the episode,” Paytas said. “I remember towards the end, I was directed to start to make her cry and really attack her. I want them to release it. I remember she just started crying, and her eyes were filling up, and she got so scared.”
Paytas isn’t the only influencer to be majorly edited down for Euphoria. A week earlier, TikTok star Vinnie Hacker hinted at the series removing a large portion of his cameo after he only appeared for a couple seconds in Episode 4.
