We sat in the bedroom-the whole crew was in the scene-and we were just cracking up.”įrom behind the camera, Levinson, Euphoria’s series creator, shouted lines for Apatow to recite. “Sam did not tell me beforehand what was happening-he threw me into it, knowing that I’d probably freak out if I did know. “We improvised that whole sequence, the day of,” Apatow reveals. (She’s a superfan, she explains: “I’ll probably watch the new episode right after we get off the phone,” she admits.) Binging reality television ended up benefitting Apatow in the end-during episode three’s Lexi-in-charge montage, there is a fictional imagining of what Lexi would say during a behind-the-scenes, confessional-style interview about her play. If hearing about Apatow’s productivity makes you feel bad about vegging out on your couch during the pandemic instead of working on your own magnum opus, don’t worry-the actress makes it clear she still spent plenty of time at home watching RuPaul’s Drag Race. Once we get going, we power through.” It’s proven to be a fruitful practice: Apatow sold her first script over the summer, and is now in the development phase for the project. “We’ll sit for days and weeks and just write all day,” she recalls. These days, they visit one another’s apartments for writing sessions. During the pandemic, they’d hop on Zoom with one another and flesh out ideas. There, she met a friend who became her writing partner, and even after she left school (just before snagging her role in Euphoria), they have continued to work together. (“But then I realized I wasn’t good at that,” she says with a jittery chortle.) She started to take the craft much more seriously while she was in school at Northwestern University. On the phone, the self-described theater nerd (her favorite musical is Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George) tells me that while writing her entire life, she once briefly considered becoming a journalist. It’s an uncanny moment in which life imitates art: Apatow’s ambition to write and direct movies, plays, and television series suddenly puts Lexi’s own dreams into focus. Prim and proper, wearing an ivory button-down blouse with a scalloped Peter Pan collar, she bursts with childlike excitement when he nonchalantly replies, “Sure.” A montage that depicts Lexi as the writer, director, and creator of a project called This is Life appears onscreen, while Rue’s voice narrates: “She was an observer. Halfway through episode three, Lexi practically runs through her high school’s hallways, approaching the vice principal with a request to put on a play she’s been writing. And in tonight’s latest episode, another Lexi-centric storyline emerges, one that connects to Apatow in more ways than one. But as soon as the first episode of the second season aired, it became clear Lexi’s part will take center stage she and Fezco, the drug dealer with an enormous heart played by Angus Cloud, engage in a flirtatious and deeply emotional conversation at a New Year’s Eve party that signals the start of a romantic arc between them. The first season of Euphoria sees Lexi as a bit player-a goody two-shoes swept up in a world of manipulation, extortion, drugs, sex, crime, and skin-baring fashions. But far and away, her breakout moment came when she landed a role on HBO Max hit Euphoria, which has transformed the way fans spend their Sunday nights (when the second season debuted on January 9, 2.4 million total viewers tuned in, breaking the network’s record for highest total viewership for a digital premiere since its launch in 2020).Īs Lexi Howard, Apatow plays the former best friend of Rue Bennett ( Zendaya), and the younger sister of Cassie Howard ( Sydney Sweeney). She has gone on to star opposite Pete Davidson in The King of Staten Island, made cameos on Girls, and appeared in the Netflix miniseries Hollywood. She’s had a proclivity for writing fiction all her life, but since her first film credit at the age of 10 (she starred in the 2007 comedy Knocked Up, directed by her dad Judd Apatow, and starring her real-life mom Leslie Mann as her mom in the movie), Apatow has mostly been known for her acting. “My teacher was like, ‘What on earth?!,’” Apatow, speaking from her parents’ house in New York City, tells me over the phone on a recent afternoon.
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